[WP-Tues] The Lester Dent Pulp Fiction Writing Model
Readers of Doc Savage and Doctor Kildare may recognize the plot model here. This sets you up for a page-turning adventure series readers can't get enough of...
Fiction Writing Models of Lester Dent and Nelson S. Bond
(Note: I’ve had to refer to this multiple times, and am usually sending people off my site to get this data. While I included these write-ups in a nearly complete “Stop Feeding the Beast” writing manual, I wanted to get this out to you soonest. Both of these are in the public domain. Dent’s method is his write-up of the common model used in the 1930’s/40’s/50’s pulp magazines. It’s how that generation learned to write and become the great brands we’ve known and loved.)
The Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot
By Lester Dent
This is a formula, a master plot, for any 6000 word pulp story. It has worked on adventure, detective, western and war-air. It tells exactly where to put everything. It shows definitely just what must happen in each successive thousand words.
No yarn of mine written to the formula has yet failed to sell.
The business of building stories seems not much different from the business of building anything else.
Here’s how it starts:
1. A DIFFERENT MURDER METHOD FOR VILLAIN TO USE
2. A DIFFERENT THING FOR VILLAIN TO BE SEEKING
3. A DIFFERENT LOCALE
4. A MENACE WHICH IS TO HANG LIKE A CLOUD OVER HERO
One of these DIFFERENT things would be nice, two better, three swell. It may help if they are fully in mind before tackling the rest.
A different murder method could be — different. Thinking of shooting, knifing, hydro-cyanic, garroting, poison needles, scorpions, a few others, and writing them on paper gets them where they may suggest something. Scorpions and their poison bite? Maybe mosquitoes or flies treated with deadly germs?
If the victims are killed by ordinary methods, but found under strange and identical circumstances each time, it might serve, the reader of course not knowing until the end, that the method of murder is ordinary.
Scribes who have their villain’s victims found with butterflies, spiders or bats stamped on them could conceivably be flirting with this gag.
Probably it won’t do a lot of good to be too odd, fanciful or grotesque with murder methods.
The different thing for the villain to be after might be something other than jewels, the stolen bank loot, the pearls, or some other old ones.
Here, again one might get too bizarre.
Unique locale? Easy. Selecting one that fits in with the murder method and the treasure — thing that villain wants — makes it simpler, and it’s also nice to use a familiar one, a place where you’ve lived or worked. So many pulpateers don’t. It sometimes saves embarrassment to know nearly as much about the locale as the editor, or enough to fool hlm.
Here’s a nifty much used in faking local color. For a story laid in Egypt, say, author finds a book titled “Conversational Egyptian Easlly Learned,” or something like that. He wants a character to ask in Egyptian, “What’s the matter?” He looks in the book and finds, “El khabar, eyh?” To keep the reader from getting dizzy, it’s perhaps wise to make it clear in some fashion, just what that means. Occasionally the text will tell this, or someone can repeat it in English. But it’s a doubtful move to stop and tell the reader in so many words the English translation.
The writer learns they have palm trees in Egypt. He looks in the book, finds the Egyptian for palm trees, and uses that. This kids editors and readers into thinking he knows something about Egypt.
Here’s the second installment of the master plot.
Divide the 6000 word yarn into four 1500 word parts. In each 1500 word part, put the following:
FIRST 1500 WORDS
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 — something the hero has to cope with.
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.)
3 — Introduce ALL the other characters as soon as possible. Bring them on in action.
4 — Hero’s endeavors land him in an actual physical conflict near the end of the first 1500 words.
5 — Near the end of first 1500 words, there is a complete surprise twist in the plot development.
SO FAR:
Does it have SUSPENSE?
Is there a MENACE to the hero?
Does everything happen logically?
At this point, it might help to recall that action should do something besides advance the hero over the scenery. Suppose the hero has learned the dastards of villains have seized somebody named Eloise, who can explain the secret of what is behind all these sinister events. The hero corners villains, they fight, and villains get away. Not so hot.
Hero should accomplish something with his tearing around, if only to rescue Eloise, and surprise! Eloise is a ring-tailed monkey. The hero counts the rings on Eloise’s tail, if nothing better comes to mind.
They’re not real. The rings are painted there. Why?
SECOND 1500 WORDS
1 — Shovel more grief onto the hero.
2 — Hero, being heroic, struggles, and his struggles lead up to:
3 — Another physical conflict.
4 — A surprising plot twist to end the 1500 words.
NOW:
Does second part have SUSPENSE?
Does the MENACE grow like a black cloud?
Is the hero getting it in the neck?
Is the second part logical?
DON’T TELL ABOUT IT *** Show how the thing looked. This is one of the secrets of writing; never tell the reader — show him. (He trembles, roving eyes, slackened jaw, and such.) MAKE THE READER SEE HIM.
When writing, it helps to get at least one minor surprise to the printed page. It is reasonable to to expect these minor surprises to sort of inveigle the reader into keeping on. They need not be such profound efforts. One method of accomplishing one now and then is to be gently misleading. Hero is examining the murder room. The door behind him begins slowly to open.
He does not see it. He conducts his examination blissfully. Door eases open, wider and wider, until — surprise! The glass pane falls out of the big window across the room. It must have fallen slowly, and air blowing into the room caused the door to open. Then what the heck made the pane fall so slowly? More mystery.
Characterizing a story actor consists of giving him some things which make him stick in the reader’s mind. TAG HIM.
BUILD YOUR PLOTS SO THAT ACTION CAN BE CONTINUOUS.
THIRD 1500 WORDS
1 — Shove| the grief onto the hero.
2 — Hero makes some headway, and corners the villain or somebody in:
3 — A physical conflict.
4 — A surprising plot twist, in which the hero preferably gets it in the neck bad, to end the 1500 words.
DOES:
It still have SUSPENSE?
The MENACE getting blacker?
The hero finds himself in a hell of a fix?
It all happens logically?
These outlines or master formulas are only something to make you certain of inserting some physical conflict, and some genuine plot twists, with a little suspense and menace thrown in.
Without them, there is no pulp story.
These physical conflicts in each part might be DIFFERENT, too. If one fight is with fists, that can take care of the pugilism until next the next yarn. Same for poison gas and swords.
There may, naturally, be exceptions. A hero with a peculiar punch, or a quick draw, might use it more than once.
The idea is to avoid monotony.
ACTION:
Vivid, swift, no words wasted. Create suspense, make the reader see and feel the action.
ATMOSPHERE:
Hear, smell, see, feel and taste.
DESCRIPTION:
Trees, wind, scenery and water.
THE SECRET OF ALL WRITING IS TO MAKE EVERY WORD COUNT.
FOURTH 1500 WORDS
1 — Shovel the difficulties more thickly upon the hero.
2 — Get the hero almost buried in his troubles. (Figuratively, the villain has him prisoner and has him framed for a murder rap; the girl is presumably dead, everything is lost, and the DIFFERENT murder method is about to dispose of the suffering protagonist.)
3 — The hero extricates himself using HIS OWN SKILL, training or brawn.
4 — The mysteries remaining — one big one held over to this point will help grip interest — are cleared up in course of final conflict as hero takes the situation in hand.
5 — Final twist, a big surprise, (This can be the villain turning out to be the unexpected person, having the “Treasure” be a dud, etc.)
6 — The snapper, the punch line to end it.
HAS:
The SUSPENSE held out to the last line?
The MENACE held out to the last?
Everything been explained?
It all happen logically?
Is the Punch Line enough to leave the reader with that WARM FEELING?
Did God kill the villain? Or the hero?
Lester Dent (1904–1959) was a prolific pulp fiction author of numerous stories, best known as the main author of the series of stories about the superhuman character, “Doc Savage.”
W. Foolproof Fiction: It’s All A Matter of Timing
A Formula by Nelson S. Bond
Note: Believed to be in the public domain as this article comes from the October, 1940 issue of Writer’s Digest. The copyright records from 1940 do not show a filing for either the magazine issue or the article itself. Neither is there an entry in 1968, the year it would have needed to be renewed. Found on Storyhack.com
It’s the damnedest thing! I stand up there with my heart full of hope and my mitts full of driver; I wiggle and I waggle; I straighten my left arm and lower my head; I haul my hips back. I swing. My clubhead goes swoosh! — and the ball goes ploop! A one hundred and fifty yard drive. Fifty up, fifty down, and fifty yards into the lush tangle of crab grass between the tee and the fairway.
My companion says, “Tsk,” and stares after my ball thoughtfully. “You going after it?” she asks. “Be careful. There’s lions and tigers in there!”
She takes her stance. She’s tiny and slim, and her hands are soft. She weighs 106 in her Kaysers. Her biceps are about as tough and sinewy as a cup custard. She swings. A gentle little swaying motion. But the club head goes splat! against the ball. Said pill takes off like a homing pigeon; soars high and far and true, and comes to rest at long last, gleaming whitely upon the green bosom of the fairway halfway to the pin.
Why? I weigh more than she does. I’m taller. I’m stronger. My clubs are heavier.
* * *
If I wrote like I golf, there wouldn’t be any long, lazy, blood-pressure-raising afternoons on the links. There would be handouts and patched breeches and truckloads of rejection slips. But by some quirk of fate-possibly because the gods have a celestial budget to balance-I am so lucky as to possess, in my vocation, that which I can’t grasp when I’m playing. A sense of timing.
I’m not sure that I can tell you what it is, or how to do it. I suspect it’s One of Those Things, like swimming or swinging a golf club or knowing that the third Scotch-and is enough.You have it or you don’t. If you don’t, you just keep on plugging, going through the motions, until one day, suddenly, there it is and you know what I’m talking about.
And when you’ve got it, you’re sitting pretty. Meat on the table, checks in the poke, and luh-huv in my heart for yoo-hoo!
You’re bound to get it, too, if you keep working at it. You know the old gag about how “every writer has to get a million lousy words out of his system.” Of course, that’s the old malarkey. Some writers click on the first go-round, others (like myself) have to do it the hard way. The truth remains, though, that those first, feeble, fumbling attempts are valuable. Every word you put on paper is another lesson in writing. Even if the story comes bouncing back with the stamps still moist, you’ve learned something from it. Maybe you’ve just learned how not do it next time. And, buddy, if you have-that’s valuable!
Did I hear a snarl in the audience? You want me to skip the fight-talk, huh? Get down to business? All right. You’re asking for it. Here’s my theory on the way to “time” a normal, 5,000 word story in such a way as to make it fast, dramatic and salable.
I don’t guarantee it; I don’t claim that all other methods are wrong. I believe, with Kipling, that “there are six-and-twenty ways of constructing tribal lays . . . every single one of them is right!” All I say is that this works for me.
* * *
DESIGN FOR BRICKLAYING A STORY
(Patent not worth applying for)
General Instructions
Lay out approximately 20–25 sheets of clean, white paper. I prefer Corrasable Bond because it actually does-as Arnold Gingrich of Esquire puts it-“take erasure with dignity.” And an ordinary pencil eraser, to. If the Eaton People want to send me a check for this plug, I’m not proud. Use the 16, rather than the 20 pound weight. It costs less, and keeps down the postage.
Lay out an equal amount of yellow “second sheets,” a piece of carbon paper, your cigarettes and matches-Hold it! Change that typewriter ribbon! Your chances of selling fade in direct proportion to the fading of your ink, friend! Now put that damned thesaurus away. Hide it! If you don’t know the words and use them in your ordinary conversation, they’ll bulge in your story like an olive in a snake’s gut.
We’ll take it for granted you know how to title and identify your manuscript. If you don’t you shouldn’t be reading this; you should be studying back issues of Writer’s Digest. Name and address in upper left corner, approximate number of words in upper right, title and your name halfway down the page. All right! Let’s go!
* * *
First 1000 Words. Ends on Page 5.
Get going with a bang! Remember, you’re writing a short story, not Gone With the Wind. You can’t waste words, nor will the editor permit you to waste his or the readers’ time. Your first thousand words must tell who are to be the central characters of this work-of-art, when the story takes place, where the scene is set, what the problem is, and set the question as to how the hero expects to take care of it.
Get me straight! I don’t mean you should start off anything like this-
“John Marmaduke Frasier, tall, blonde and handsome Sheriff of Burp’s Crossing, Arizona, strode down Main Street wondering what he should do about saving the property of his fiancée, sweet Hildegarde Phlewzy, from the clutches of rich bank president, Phineas Gelt, who threatened to foreclose the mortgage on August 19th, 1904, twenty days hence . . .”
You think I’m crazy, eh? Nobody ever introduced a story that way? Guess again! I sat beside Harry Widmer of Ace Publications for a full hour one afternoon, reading over his shoulder unsolicited manuscripts that opened in exactly that fashion. Needless to say, the stories were not offered by “regulars,” nor did they come in the folders of an agent. They were the “unrush” mail, i.e., the free-lance offerings that earn pale blue slips reading, “We regret to say-”
But get the thing moving. Start with something happening to somebody; not with mental maunderings, Grab your hero by the neck and shove him smack into a mess of trouble. Then show who started that trouble-and why. Introduce the other persons involved in the problem, make their opening speeches depict their characters. As you write, keep an eye on your page numbers. Remember that this phase of the story must be finished by the middle of page 5.
End the opening sections with the implication that Our Hero recognizes his difficulty and knows what he’s going to do about it.
Second 1000 words. Ends on Page 9–10.
This is the phase wherein Our Hero’s star is in the ascendancy. Things move along with reasonable assurance of eventual success. Looks like the problem wasn’t so terrible after all. With matters moving smoothly, this section may also be used for brief, telling “flashbacks” (if required), and for strengthening characterizations.
A word about scene changes. Many beginning writers seem to go haywire over time and place transitions. That’s simply because they make an easy job tough for themselves. For instance, We’ve all seen manuscripts in which a character leaves a room, goes to another place, meets other people. The beginner, his “timing” hopelessly off, tries to follow the character all the way-
“He stalked from the building indignantly, found a taxi at the door, rode uptown, got out at his own apartment, paid off the cabby, took the elevator upstairs…”
Sharper-edged, neater and vastly more readable is a device used by all professionals and editors. The bridging of time by a quadruple space. Finish one scene. Slap your space-lever twice-and begin your new section with a scene as fresh, as new, as clean-cut as if you were starting an entirely new story!
Here’s the way it works in actual practice. Scene one was in the apartment of a detective, Sid (“Softy”) O’Neill. A policeman has come to bring Softy to headquarters. The first scene ends and the second scene begins as follows.
“Okay, let’s go!” (said Softy.) Then he remembered and jerked open a drawer in his desk. Dull blue glinted as he jammed something into a harness beneath his left arm-pit. “Let’s go!” he repeated.
The Chief said, “Gentlemen, meet Detective O’Neill. Sid is not a member of the city force, but as I told you . . .”
It is not until some paragraphs later that the Chief is introduced by name, or the second phase of the plot determined. But story stuff is unimportant here; we are concerned only with the question of time-and-place transitions. During the blank space left above, Softy O’Neill presumably covered a number of city miles and consumed a half hour’s time. The reader is made conscious of that by implication. You don’t have to drag him along the route with you. How Softy got to headquarters is unimportant; all that matters is that he got there! Save words, save time. It’s all a matter of timing!
Third 1000 words. Ends on Page 13–15.
Here’s where the Hero stubs his toe. Things looked good-now the Villain heaves a monkey wrench onto the woiks! Trouble-with a capital “Boo!”-pops up. Technically this is known as a “plot complication.” Which is just a literary way of saying it’s a, “Dood Dod, what do I do now?” mess.
Let’s backtrack a moment and dovetail this. We’ll suppose our story to have been (1) sports, (2) science-fiction, (3) detective, (4) love, (5) romantic adventure. Show how a “complication” piles on the major problem in each of the aforementioned.
Hero flashy player, without his team cannot win championship vital to athletic future of small college. In phase one, main problem set forth. In phase two, path looks easy-hero going like house afire. Phase three, complication-vital blocking back busts leg before crucial game!
Hero hastily finishing spaceship with which to visit Mars; must get special Martian desert weed to stave off dreadful scourge which threatens to destroy Earth. Complication. Enemy scientists corners market on beryllium, vitally essential metal for construction of spaceship.
Detective hero hunting Red Jornegan, gangster, whose fingerprints were found all over gun that murdered cop. Tracks Jornegan to hide-out. Complication. Finds Jornegan dead, killer’s gun lying across room with Jornegan’s fingerprints on it! (Whew! This one came off the top of my mind. I wonder whodunit?)
Hero admires movie idol, wangles introduction, succeeds in making him veddy, veddy interested. Soft odor of orange blossoms in distance, and then-complication! Learns his contract has a nix-wedding-bells clause.
Hero, Foreign Legion lieutenant, besieged by a mob of howling Bedouins. Must carry news of uprising to post. Remembers cache of ammunition in desert. Finds it. Complication. Bullets are for different rifle!
In short, then, this complication is generally something he did not nor could have possibly expected; it may even be a break the villain himself did not count on. But it makes a helluva situation for Our Hero.
Fourth 1000 words. Ends on Page 17–19.
Herein, two things happen. The Hero, finds, thinks, or fights his way out of the complication. This consumes almost all of the fourth phase. And when we’ve suffered with him, bled him into open country again-
Up pops the Villain with his deepest, most dastardly plot, unfolded, finally, in all its dire ramifications!
This is the trouble! Ossa on Pelion, if youse lugs know what I mean. This is the spot wherein (in the ancient mellerdramers) Nick Carter used to get two busted legs and a broken back, while a horde of savages armed with scythes and swords and Stuka bumbers swarmed in on him.
That won’t go today-thank heaven! I’ve heard too much poppycock and balderdash about how “the pulps demand an excess of emotion.” Action, yes! True emotion, yes! But in my opinion, they neither want, nor will buy, blatantly overwritten mellerdrama.
Anyway, that’s a good rule to go buy. Figure it this way and you can’t go far wrong-the only reason pulps print hokey stuff is that sometimes they can’t get the smooth kind of writing they’ll grab when it’s offered to them. Let a man learn his trade, and he’ll be snatched up by the slicks in a split-second. I think none of the following ex-pulpateers will object if I mention their names in passing: William R. Cox, who has parlayed his Dime Sport muscle men into American, Liberty, et al. Ernest Haycox, who sells super-Westerns to every top-ranking magazine and to Hollywood. Richard Sale . . . Jacland Marmur . . . William Fay . . . but why go on? Their stories had what it takes; they’ve moved up (Yeah, yeah, I know, they still sell some to the pulps!) and others can profit by studying their techniques.
Some digression. We were in Phase Four, where Our Hero is up to his neck in Trouble. And the Villain is on the bank, heaving rocks at his head.
How to get him out? That’s your problem, pal! If I knew, I’d write the story, not donate the outline. But there are several sturdy, tried-and-true methods. By his superior knowledge. By a quirk of chance carefully planted in the earlier part of the story (none of that long arm of coincidence stuff)! By sheer fighting ability.
And he accomplishes this in–
The Fifth 1000 words. Ends on Page 21–25.
This is the phase of the solution, of final explanation, of denouement. In the detective story, here’s where your cop or shamus explains whodunit, why, and how he figured it out. In the western, science, sport or action story, this is where Our Hero fights free and, tying up loose ends, explains to his public how he knew just what to do.
The fifth phase of begins with violent action, tears along swiftly, leading to a swift, decisive conclusion-and ends happily.
Watch your timing here! Pace your final conflict so that the action of it consumes approximately 500 words or more. Previous action may have been truncated to move the story along-but not this final scene. Your readers have suffered with the Hero for 4,000 words. Give ’em a blow-by-blow description of the Last Stand, let their empathies jump with glee as the Villain flinches, cowers, and dies.
I could mention a half dozen writing “tricks” that arouse this emphatic feeling, but there’s no time to do so in this article. Nor is this the proper place to do it. This is simply a blueprint, a method of mechanically plotting the short story, that has worked for me-and it will work for you, if you’ll give it a trial.
If you’ll hew to the page-markers set forth here, I think you’ll have no more trouble with tedious openings, long, drowsy middle sections, stories that refuse to end. Because writing-like that confounded golf swing I cannot master-is all a matter of timing.
Oh, I said that before, didn’t I? Well-it still goes!