Author Kurt Vonnegut lamented that the quality of pulp stories (and thus the reputation of certain authors) was often lessened by the writer’s knowledge that editors would be as likely to accept their first draft as their eighth, and there was little reward for developing an idea that already had a story in it. Pulp magazines were publications in which you’d find a range of stories that tackled wild ideas as penned by some of the most skilled and imaginative writers of the time, but they were also a business. Tennessee Williams all saw print in pulp magazines. Scottįitzgerald, Dashiell Hammett, Isaac Asimov, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, Henry, Agatha Christie, Joseph Conrad, F. Pulp characters include Flash Gordon, Zorro, Conan theīarbarian, Buck Rogers, and John Carter of Mars, while writers as illustriousĪs Arthur C. Media such as comics, paperback novels, and television, the pulps were vastly Though eventually killed off by rising costs and competitive With its legacy most defined by lurid horror, crime, war, sci-fi, fantasy, and Pulp writing was usually some form of short genre fiction, Though such magazines were a fixture of popular culture for around sixty years – with the height of their popularity coming in the 1920s and 30s – they were deliberately disposable, printed en masse and sold at low cost to a gluttonous reading public.
Pulp writing takes its name from the pulp magazines in which it appeared, and those magazines take their name from the cheap wood pulp paper on which they were printed. That being the case, let’s take a look at what pulp writing can teach modern authors. Happily, it’s an approach that has a lot to teach modern authors, and if you can adjust to the pulp way of thinking, you’ll have the tools to combat some of the biggest challenges writers face in finishing their work and distributing it to an appreciative audience. Yes, it once had stylistic and even aesthetic boundaries, but the sensibilities behind those boundaries have outlived them by decades, and pulp is now more an approach to storytelling than anything else.
Pulp writing isn’t quite a subgenre and it isn’t quite a medium. As an Amazon Affiliate we earn from qualifying purchases. This article may contain affiliate links and we may earn a small commission when you click on the links at no additional cost to you.
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