{"id":1115,"date":"2006-11-28T14:45:03","date_gmt":"2006-11-28T13:45:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dianeduane.com\/outofambit\/2006\/11\/28\/i-love-this-kind-of-stuff\/"},"modified":"2006-11-28T14:45:03","modified_gmt":"2006-11-28T13:45:03","slug":"i-love-this-kind-of-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dianeduane.com\/outofambit\/2006\/11\/28\/i-love-this-kind-of-stuff\/","title":{"rendered":"I love this kind of stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lester Dent’s Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot<\/a><\/p>\n

(…The challenge now being to adapt it for novel use, and to find out whether it works. Certainly a lot of the advice seems sound…)<\/p>\n

The business of building stories seems not much different from the business of building anything else.<\/p>\n

It sometimes saves embarrassment to know nearly as much about the locale as the editor, or enough to fool him.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Shovel the difficulties more thickly upon the hero.<\/p>\n

THE SECRET OF ALL WRITING IS TO MAKE EVERY WORD COUNT.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And equally useful for a writer spending some time in the 1940’s:<\/p>\n

Twists, Slugs and Roscoes<\/a> (A useful dictionary of ’40’s detective slang)<\/p>\n

Why get in a car when you can hop in a boiler? Why tell someone to shut up when you can tell them to close their head? Why threaten to discharge a firearm when you can say, “Dust, pal, or I pump lead!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why indeed…<\/p>\n

[tags]Doc Savage, writing, pulp, 1940s[\/tags]<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lester Dent’s Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot (…The challenge now being to adapt it for novel use, and to find out whether it works. Certainly a lot of the advice…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"yoast_head":"\nI love this kind of stuff - Out of Ambit<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dianeduane.com\/outofambit\/2006\/11\/28\/i-love-this-kind-of-stuff\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I love this kind of stuff - Out of Ambit\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Lester Dent’s Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot (…The challenge now being to adapt it for novel use, and to find out whether it works. 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