What are you reading in 2024?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

True that. At least the authors are deceased at this point. Just trying to keep up with one of the more prolific pulp writers would be a serious strain.

"What are you doing this afternoon?"
"Writing a novel."
"Oh. Well, what about tomorrow?"
"Writing another novel."

I know several romance novelists who keep this kind of pace and even if I know some of the ways they make it easier on themselves, the work ethic is super-impressive.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I know several romance novelists who keep this kind of pace and even if I know some of the ways they make it easier on themselves, the work ethic is super-impressive.

Yep. It's not great literature but the sheer word count produced is daunting and they know what their audience wants.

The pulp-era writers impress me even more for having done so much using typewriters, and often manual ones at that (electrics were relatively expensive back then). Anybody who's worked on one of those things knows how much of a godsend word processing is. Plus they were doing business by snail mail, no easy-peasy click a button and send over an electronic manuscript while negotiating with editors via text or email.

They also tended to work in multiple genres, going from Wild West to erotica to scifi to horror without batting an eye.

 

[overgeeked]

True that. At least the authors are deceased at this point. Just trying to keep up with one of the more prolific pulp writers would be a serious strain.

"What are you doing this afternoon?"
"Writing a novel."
"Oh. Well, what about tomorrow?"
"Writing another novel."

They were fast, but not that fast. I’m reading Lee Server’s Danger Is My Business, an overview of the pulps and pulp writers. In it he talks about pulp writers, the really fast ones, hitting something like 500,000 to 1 million words a year. The tiny handful of super-fast writers, like Max Brand and Walter Gibson, hit 2-3 million a year. On the low end, that’s about 1400 words/day. On the high end, that’s over 8000 words/day. Most pulp novels are in the 40-60,000 word range. Assuming 60,000 words, that’s between 8-42 days to write a novel. Walter Gibson wrote 283 of The Shadow pulps under the house name Maxwell Grant. Gibson wrote two 60,000 word The Shadow novels a month for years. That’s wildly impressive.

For comparison, Stephen King says he writes 5-6 pages a day where one page is ~250 words, so about 1250-1500 words/day. And he’s considered prolific.

 

[overgeeked]

I know several romance novelists who keep this kind of pace and even if I know some of the ways they make it easier on themselves, the work ethic is super-impressive.

What are the ways they make it easier?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What are the ways they make it easier?

Romance novels get a bad rap for being formulaic, but the prolific writers do have a formula, but it's not typically the story elements people think of. They know that there are certain things they have to include in a standard romance story if they're going to get it turned around in X amount of time.

So they know they have to come up with, say, (these are not the exact examples) two compelling main characters, a starting situation, two or three plot complications, one to two additional characters to complicate things, a reversal of fortune, etc. Then they create those, assemble them in an outline and fill in the gaps.

In screenwriting terms, the people I know -- who may or may not be representative of other writers -- are doing something similar to what screenwriters do when they follow the format in Save the Cat.

All that said, craftspeople of all sorts follow formula. If you're making a table, you know it needs three to four legs and a flat top and it's not hacky to plan around that. And the people who are excellent at their craft can work within those structures to do something fantastic. But since they know what the parameters are they're working with, they can save a lot of time and perfect creating those elements quickly and well.

The example in that link traces the Save the Cat method onto The Hate U Give, which is a very well done YA novel and a decent movie. So formulaic isn't necessarily the same thing as bad.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

What are the ways they make it easier?

There's quite a bit of content online discussing how pulp writers achieved their phenomenal output (which yes, I was being hyperbolic about above). One good article can be found here and Gruber's Pulp Jungle book it refers to is almost a must-read if you haven't seen it already. This article rehashes many of the same points but goes a bit deeper into stylistic elements. And this one not only got a good chuckle out of me in several spots, it has a good grasp of the enormity of the task being a really fast pulp writer calls for, solid advice about forgetting literary pretensions in favor of telling an enjoyable story, and a discussion of the way publishers have hamstrung this kind of writer for several decades now (arguably to the detriment of authors, readers, and the industry itself).

That's just the tip of the iceberg, of course.

 

[overgeeked]

Romance novels get a bad rap for being formulaic, but the prolific writers do have a formula, but it's not typically the story elements people think of. They know that there are certain things they have to include in a standard romance story if they're going to get it turned around in X amount of time.

So they know they have to come up with, say, (these are not the exact examples) two compelling main characters, a starting situation, two or three plot complications, one to two additional characters to complicate things, a reversal of fortune, etc. Then they create those, assemble them in an outline and fill in the gaps.

In screenwriting terms, the people I know -- who may or may not be representative of other writers -- are doing something similar to what screenwriters do when they follow the format in Save the Cat.

All that said, craftspeople of all sorts follow formula. If you're making a table, you know it needs three to four legs and a flat top and it's not hacky to plan around that. And the people who are excellent at their craft can work within those structures to do something fantastic. But since they know what the parameters are they're working with, they can save a lot of time and perfect creating those elements quickly and well.

The example in that link traces the Save the Cat method onto The Hate U Give, which is a very well done YA novel and a decent movie. So formulaic isn't necessarily the same thing as bad.

Huh. I guess it's just different definitions of "formulaic" then. Because what you describe above is, to me, basic outlining. Syd Fields' three four act structure. Dan Harmon's story circle. Seven-point plot structure. There's just about as many formulas and ways to outline as there are writers.

I have no problem with formulaic writing. I just don't want to read several books using the same formula in a row.

 

[overgeeked]

There's quite a bit of content online discussing how pulp writers achieved their phenomenal output (which yes, I was being hyperbolic about above). One good article can be found here and Gruber's Pulp Jungle book it refers to is almost a must-read if you haven't seen it already. This article rehashes many of the same points but goes a bit deeper into stylistic elements. And this one not only got a good chuckle out of me in several spots, it has a good grasp of the enormity of the task being a really fast pulp writer calls for, solid advice about forgetting literary pretensions in favor of telling an enjoyable story, and a discussion of the way publishers have hamstrung this kind of writer for several decades now (arguably to the detriment of authors, readers, and the industry itself).

That's just the tip of the iceberg, of course.

Yeah, absolutely. The pulps and pulp writers...that whole era, really...has been a special interest of mine for as long as I can remember. So much of the fiction I enjoy came from that period. It's a great time period to study.

 

[overgeeked]

And this one not only got a good chuckle out of me...

I'm not sure how seriously to take that article as the author mostly just quotes Dean while adding nothing of his own and he praises both Larry Correia, the leader of the Sad/Rabid Puppies movement and who are closely connected to Gamergate, and Castalia House, the publishing company run by Vox Day. Incredibly unsavory.