{"id":1127,"date":"2008-10-12T21:44:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-13T04:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2008\/10\/12\/pulp-direction\/"},"modified":"2008-10-12T21:44:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-13T04:44:00","slug":"pulp-direction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2008\/10\/12\/pulp-direction\/","title":{"rendered":"Pulp Direction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today is the birthday of <span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">Lester Dent<\/span>, creator of Doc Savage (&#8220;The Man of Bronze&#8221;).  <a href=\"http:\/\/writersalmanac.publicradio.org\/index.php?date=2008\/10\/12\">Writer&#8217;s Almanac<\/a> describes his formula for writing a 6,000-word pulp story:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dent wrote more than a thousand pulp fiction stories, all with the same formula, which he detailed in an article that explained an exact formula for writing a 6,000-word pulp story.<\/p>\n<p>Here is the formula for the first 1,500 words:<\/p>\n<p>   1. First line, or as near thereto as possible, introduce the hero and swat him with a fistful of trouble. Hint at a mystery, a menace or a problem to be solved \u2014 something the hero has to cope with.<br \/>   2. The hero pitches in to cope with his fistful of trouble. (He tries to fathom the mystery, defeat the menace, or solve the problem.)<br \/>   3. Introduce ALL the other characters as soon as possible. Bring them on in action.<br \/>   4. Hero&#8217;s endeavors land him in an actual physical conflict near the end of the first 1,500 words.<br \/>   5. Near the end of first 1,500 words, there is a complete surprise twist in the plot development.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The complete formula is online at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.miskatonic.org\/dent.html\">The Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot<\/a>.  In Dent&#8217;s own words:  &#8220;No yarn of mine written to the formula has yet failed to sell.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>~CKL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today is the birthday of Lester Dent, creator of Doc Savage (&#8220;The Man of Bronze&#8221;). Writer&#8217;s Almanac describes his formula for writing a 6,000-word pulp story: Dent wrote more than a thousand pulp fiction stories, all with the same formula,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}