Learning to Write from Pulp Fiction
Pulp Fiction become popular during the depression of the 1920s and 1930s. Publishers at the time used a very cheap “pulp” paper in order to produce these short stories and magazines that cost about a quarter. Yes, twenty-five cents!
Life was difficult and people didn’t want to struggle to make sense out of what authors meant by long run on sentences. They didn’t have the stomach for prose. During a depression, people are lucky they can concentrate at all. People wanted escape.
Pulp fiction is adventurous stories with hard-boiled detectives, larger-than-life heroes, and straight-talking dialogue. The plots were fantastical and melodramatic, but easy to follow and easy to read.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, classical literature was popular. I would even refer to it as high-brow fiction. Oscar Wilde, H G Wells, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner. These authors are known not only for their storytelling ability, but their prose, their wordsmithing. This is what I consider ‘high-brow’. Their books are not read-’em and toss-’em type books. They are written to read and contemplate.
Agatha Christie was also a part of this list, but she may have influenced the pulp fiction genre more than any of the other authors.
Pulp fiction’s prose was everyday tough talk. There was nothing to contemplate. The plots were sensational, violent and maybe strange, but they were easy to read; perfect for people who are distracted and worried.
WHAT MAKES PULP FICTION DIFFERENT?
Because most of the pulp fiction is short, it can help an author to easily see how the pulp fiction writer handled foreshadowing, passage of time, who much and how little back story to add to the story. There is much more for a new author to learn from reading pulp fiction.
