Le Saboteur
10-12-2009, 11:34 PM
Most of us here are familiar with The Man of Bronze (http://homepage.mac.com/cdkalb/the86floor/)! Or, as he's more commonly known, Doc Savage. While I always preferred the Ghost Who Walks (http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/g/ghwhowlk.htm) growing up, I recently found a local used bookstore that has every-single-story ever penned about the good doctor in book format, and began re-reading them starting with titular Man of Bronze. There are 165-novels total, so if you're interested, it's never too early to start!
Here's a cover from the dreadful Millennium Comics released in the early nineties. Savage is wa-ay too big in this drawing, but it's notable because we get to see Pat, Savage's distaff cousin.
http://www.supernaturalcrime.com/Art/999/DocSavageBStel.jpg
But the real reason I wanted to share this: Lester Dent's Master Fiction Plot! I have a lot of time on my hands these days, and while researching the viability of an on-line pulp fiction magazine (Golden Scarab?), I stumbled across this essay from Doc Savage's creator, Lestor 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, hydrocyanic, 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 mosquitos 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 him.
Here's a nifty much used in faking local color. For a story laid in Egypt, say, author finds a book titled "Conversational Egyptian Easily 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:
If you're curious about trying this seemingly sure fire way of writing a pulp story, feel free to read the rest of it here (http://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/dent.html)
Happy reading, Ravenites!
Here's a cover from the dreadful Millennium Comics released in the early nineties. Savage is wa-ay too big in this drawing, but it's notable because we get to see Pat, Savage's distaff cousin.
http://www.supernaturalcrime.com/Art/999/DocSavageBStel.jpg
But the real reason I wanted to share this: Lester Dent's Master Fiction Plot! I have a lot of time on my hands these days, and while researching the viability of an on-line pulp fiction magazine (Golden Scarab?), I stumbled across this essay from Doc Savage's creator, Lestor 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, hydrocyanic, 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 mosquitos 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 him.
Here's a nifty much used in faking local color. For a story laid in Egypt, say, author finds a book titled "Conversational Egyptian Easily 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:
If you're curious about trying this seemingly sure fire way of writing a pulp story, feel free to read the rest of it here (http://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/dent.html)
Happy reading, Ravenites!