/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20881732]

Are there any good resources/books/inspiration on writing pulp fiction if I’m interested in doing that?

[Anonymous No.20881773]

>>20881732
You read it and absorb their influence.
That’s it.

[Anonymous No.20881782]

>>20881773
Examples of what to read?

[Anonymous No.20881937]

Bump

[Anonymous No.20881954]

>>20881773
nice kotty

>>20881782
the eye of argon unironically

[Anonymous No.20882820]

>>20881954
>the eye of argon unironically
>It has been described as "one of the genre's most beloved pieces of appalling prose,"[1] the "infamous 'worst fantasy novel ever' published for fans' enjoyment,"[2] and "the apotheosis of bad writing,"[3] and has subsequently been used as part of a common science fiction convention party game.
I started reading the first couple pages of it and it's honestly not as bad as Final Fantasy XIII (a game I actually played in full) which I think has the worst written story I have ever seen.

What is the intention in reading Eye of Argon "unironically"? To internalize a checklist of things "not-to-do"? If so, I might put forward Final Fantasy XIII as a story where literally next to nothing is executed properly, where hardly anything of interest ever happens, where characters do things for no reason, without ever thinking about why it will work, without ever having to think about anything, and still being rewarded in the end, solidifying them never learning anything by the end of the story, thus calling into question if any characters even have any arcs, and calling into question if the characters themselves even meet some minimum criteria in order for them to _be_ characters in any possible sense.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 and XIII-3 are functionally written however. Their stories are still unremarkable, but the amount of relief brought about something as simple as "Characters questioning the improbability of them doing things that might get them killed" is such a seachange that I realized I completely forgot what it was like to experience a story _of any kind_ for my entire 40+ hour run of XIII-1.

In short, XIII-1 makes mistakes in its storytelling I never even knew were possible to be made on projects that cost more than $100k dollars (let alone $200mil projects such as XIII-1). Basic creative writing mistakes and storyboarding problems. Basic lack of lampshading. Japanese media is often criticized for violating "Show Don't Tell" but Final Fantasy XIII was my first experience witnessing a story that violated that rule in a truly innovative way: Neither showing anything nor telling at all. Stuff just happens with no concern the viewer understanding any of it. Characters always getting rewarded for doing any action, regardless of ever thinking about why any of their actions work. David Lynch could have never created a more fragmented dream-like logic as upsetting and incredible as Final Fantasy XIII.

[Anonymous No.20882831]

Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith for fantasy.

[Anonymous No.20882853]

>>20882831
>The Big Three of the Weird Tales
This is a great recommendation. I feel bummed out that I have never given pulp a chance because it was always presented to me as being unremarkable compared to the literary classics.

[Anonymous No.20883276]

>>20881954
>the eye of argon
https://ansible.uk/misc/eyeargon.html
I'm a few pages in and this is honestly impressive since it was written by a 16 year old. I can sense some bizarre choice of words already and I'm expecting some botched character arcs though. Still, I wouldn't have even been ashamed if I wrote this as a 16 year old. You have to fall off and plant into the ground a few times in order to learn how to ride a bicycle. There is no other way.

[Anonymous No.20883915]

>>20882831
How do you feel about Princess of Mars?

[Anonymous No.20884335]

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[Anonymous No.20884479]

>>20881732
Pulp fiction is written to be interesting and enjoyable. The faggots here can't help you as they like books that are tedious and unnecessary.

Learn their takes on literature, and never never never do what they say to do.

[Anonymous No.20884854]

>>20881782
Read The Spider. It's like The Shadow on cocaine.

[Anonymous No.20885564]

>>20881732
Lovecraft

[Anonymous No.20885584]

did u play it op? i beat the first three but i got filtered on that part where you have to go into a dead god's body or someshit what the hell was that

[Anonymous No.20885597]

>>20881732
Read Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, it is great pulp imo.

[Anonymous No.20885984]

>>20881732
Some things to consider when writing pulp. First off, modern genre fiction is the direct descendant of the pulp era. Pulp was the anime/manga of its day. It was a hotbed of creativity, mostly shallow and paid by the word, but there was still cream within that crop.

If you're going to write pulp in the spirit of the actual pulp era then focus on writing stories which are ~60k words or less. Keep your ideas simple and to the point. Don't divert focus from the main idea for longer than necessary. Pick a genre and a high concept or two and run with it.

> Example: Globetrotting Adventure in which an ancient Egyptian tomb is unearthed and an ancient evil is unleashed that your adventurers must stop.

Aha! Here's an invaluable resource from Lester Dent, writer of Doc Savage: https://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/dent.html

[Anonymous No.20886030]

>>20885597
>Read Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser
seconded, with the caveat that it’s to some extent a satire of earlier pulp fantasy and so you’ll appreciate it more after you have read a few of those
>>20882831
Conan, Tarzan, Riders of the Purple Sage, Biggles, Sherlock Holmes, The Big Sleep, HG Wells, Wizard of Oz, Telltale Heart, Purloined Letter. You might not consider all of these pulp but it’s a general sampler of big influences on the pulp era

[Anonymous No.20886041]

>>20881732
Almost exclusively write pulp too anon. And I’m reading DragonLance. I actually find the best way to look for inspiration is to just read the greats like Howard, and try and look for things in the genre you’re writing in that inspire you. I want to write westerns so I get inspiration from Spaghetti Westerns.

[Anonymous No.20886644]

>>20886041
Do you write as a hobby or are we talking for publication?

[Anonymous No.20887055]

>>20886041
>read the greats like Howard
Good to know. I'll get to Conan after I finish Princess of Mars. If you're comfortable sharing pulp you read, I'd be eager to read it for inspiration. I won't pass judgement either since I don't believe in giving unsolicited critiques.

[Anonymous No.20887823]

>>20885984
This is a fantastic post anon.

>If you're going to write pulp in the spirit of the actual pulp era then focus on writing stories which are ~60k words or less. Keep your ideas simple and to the point. Don't divert focus from the main idea for longer than necessary. Pick a genre and a high concept or two and run with it.
The /lit/ Writing General thread encourages people to stay at or below 100 pages for your first few works and I feel in agreement with that. 60k words is actually quite enormous lol, I just stay within 35k-45k works. Though I have a lot of 10k short stories that depict four major scenes which end up getting woven/rolled into 35k short stories.

But yes. The insistence on the high concept. Focusing more on characters being developed and then placed on a set and expected to just "act like they normally do". Almost as if you had a miniature Achilles and a miniature Joan of Arc, seated them together at a cafe, and just observed what happens.

This is how I write. I delude myself into believing my characters really are real people and I just try to observe them doing things without my intervention (unless it's necessary to prevent boring stories, Rule #1 is that a story must not be boring). I'm often as puzzled writing out why they do the things they do as a reader would be. Sometimes I think the characters themselves don't even realize the reasons why they do things. Like real people.

[Anonymous No.20889192]

>>20887823
Almost all of my creativity goes towards my /tg/ hobby. I wish I could take a fraction of that creativity and use it to write.

[Anonymous No.20890573]

Bump

[Anonymous No.20890607]

>>20882820
>Basic lack of lampshading.
Aaand you lost me. Making every character super self-aware about the genre they're in is a cancer on writing.

[Anonymous No.20891683]

>>20885597
Yeah it's fucking sweet

[Anonymous No.20892177]

>>20890607
>self-aware about the genre they're in
I am misusing the term "lampshading". The situation I am meaning to describe is not necessarily a self-awareness of how weird the universe is to the character from the standpoint of the audience in the current real world. It is more along the lines of the character not raising basic questions about their approach to certain difficult problems being improbable or the characters pulling through a difficult situation with a solution the audience is incapable of believing the character knew was possible.

An example I would give, spoilers if anyone cares:

There's a situation at the end of the game where the villain points out that if he dies, he will cause the world that humans live on (Cocoon) to fall to the surface of a planet. Killing an enormous amount of humans that will cause some god to be summonsed through the mass sacrifice of souls. However, because of a plot device, the villain is incapable of simply killing himself (because his status as a demi-god in this universe means he does not have free will, only humans do) and needs to have a human do it (again because they have free will).

At no point does Lightning ask the question: "If he doesn't have free will, how is he asking me to kill him?" or something basic like "What is the limit of his lack of free will? Can I just simply walk away from him and have him live indefinitely as long as I prevent any other humans from killing him?" Instead, Lightning, without announcing what her plan is at all, utters something out loud to the effect of "We as humans have hope!", "We choose our destinies.", "We make the impossible _possible_, that's what we do!" Then Lightning and her group attack and kill the villain at full force which causes Cocoon to predictably begin to fall to the surface of another planet.

A brand new character named Ragnarok (which was formed through the fusion of two other characters) that Lightning has never seen until 10 seconds ago flies out from where they are, strikes a portion of the planet near a volcano with such force it releases a gigantic jetstream of lava which Ragnarok somehow also cools simultaneously so that it becomes a crystal pillar with such structural integrity it can literally suspend the entirety of a small planetoid (Cocoon) from crashing into the surface of another planet.

Lightning and the audience both had no knowledge that Ragnarok could use this method of forming a giant crystal pillar to stop Cocoon from crashing into the other planet. Lightning blindly attacked the villain without ever having asked the question "Maybe we need to have a plan of some sort when Cocoon falls before we try to kill this villain and endanger all humans?" Instead, she picks the first and most base of options, to blindly kill the villain while uttering some platitudes and somehow everything works out because a character Lightning has never seen before uses an ability no one knew was possible.

[Anonymous No.20892202]

>>20890607
Continuing >>20892177:
Throughout the course of the entire game, this sort of situation where Lightning picks the first option and has it magically work out for her every time (without her or the audience knowing it could even work out in any way at all) is a constantly recurring feature in Final Fantasy XIII. This is what I meant to say "lampshading" (maybe there's a different word to describe my problem). It's not that Lightning doesn't raise real-world comparison questions about characters having magic spells or some other characters being able to fly or what-not, it's that Lightning never raises questions about how solve a difficult problem and yet always has it solved (by her or some other force) in a way the audience couldn't have known Lightning was aware of.

The implication of this problem is a lot worse than the audience not believing Lightning could have probabilistically solved her problems. By Lightning always succeeding with whatever choice she makes, we never get to even see Lightning have an arc of any sort. As a result of every choice she chooses always working out, we never see her raise questions about the way the world reacts to her choices because they always work without any sort of error. We never see Lightning Learn from anything she does because the world seemingly never reacts to the input that Lightning gives it. It's almost as if Lightning isn't even a character whatsoever in the game at all (despite being the main character) because from a functional standpoint, the world never gives her feedback on her choices. Thus we never see any growth in her character, and at the end of the game she is absolutely no different than at the beginning of the game because nothing ever required her to change anything about herself or her approaches to anything.

The only analogy I could give is if you had a scene where James Bond was gambling at a casino and needed to win in order for some plot to advance. At the very moment Bond needs some crucial outcome during a blackjack game, it becomes obvious to the audience he needs to exercise caution or think about his approach. Instead, he changes nothing about his approach, a character which Bond nor the audience has never seen before uses a magical power to mind-control the dealer into staying at a low number in blackjack in order for Bond to win. This character never again interacts with James Bond. It is never explained how he had this magic power. Bond also has the ability to simply walk away from the table at any moment, there is no urgency prompting him to make reckless moves. Yet for whatever reason, bets all his money with no knowledge it could have worked out, and then it works out in a manner no one could have conceived.

[Anonymous No.20892241]

>In 1931, my wife and I used to cruise up and down the Pacific Coast, in a very leisurely way, and at night, just to have something to read, I would pick a pulp magazine off a rack. It suddenly struck me that I might be able to do this stuff and get paid while I was learning. I spent five months on my first novelette, but I did something I have never been able to persuade any other writer to do. I made a detailed synopsis of some story – say by Gardner, he was one of them, and he is a good friend of mine – and then tried to write the story. Then I compared it with professional work and saw where I had failed to make an effect, or had the pace wrong, or some other mistake. Then I did it over and over again. But the boys who want you to show them how to write won't do that.
t. chandler

his collected papers have bits of creative advice here and there

[Anonymous No.20892245]

If you need supplementary material read Lovecraft and Howard's letters and not just the ones they wrote to each other but the ones each wrote to other writers but other than that
>>20881773
This is the best answer

[Anonymous No.20892284]

>>20890607
Continuing >>20892202:
In a more charitable comparison, the game Lightning Returns (Final Fantasy XIII-3) has substantially improved writing (though it's still not particularly great literature).

The premise for the game is that Lightning is now in a completely different world and has essentially become a Valkyrie for a god (Lightning Returns was actually intended to be Valkyrie Profile 3). The gimmick with the game's plot is that the world will end in 13 days when God (the game uses capital 'G') wakes up to remake the world because the world has become too evil for his liking (basically if Sodom and Gomorrah was the entire Earth). However, God wants Lightning to save as many good people as she can in order to populate the new world when God remakes it.

However, in addition to this 13 day time limit, there is a _second ticking clock_. "Chaos" is some evil magical force that was unleashed prior to the events of Lightning Returns (which is the precondition for why the world has become so evil in the first place). However, "Chaos" magic is still corroding the world rapidly and will destroy the planet unless Lightning sacrifices part of her soul in order to keep the planet alive for the full 13 days.

Amazingly, Lightning for the first time ever in the series asks the question: "Why don't I just keep my soul unharmed and let the planet die since the world will end anyways in 13 days?" and another character explains "Because it will signal to God that you didn't try hard enough to save the souls of good people and he will not save your sister's soul as a consequence".

Lightning throughout Lightning Returns regularly asks these sorts of questions and even retreats from a dangerous threat at the beginning of the game because she determines it's not probable for her just to bluster through the situation like she did in earlier games. Something as basic and simple as this makes Lightning Returns infinitely more enjoyable than XIII-1 because it actually feels like the minimum criteria for a story is now met. That the world gives feedback to Lightning on her choices and she reacts to that feedback (although in a basic capacity) and thus now actually feels like a character populating the world. Lightning Returns finally feels like it has a story with actual characters in it as opposed to XIII-1 which just feels like a series of events that happen to people somewhere.

[Anonymous No.20892291]

>>20890607
So yeah, if there's a different word (other than lampshading) to describe what I outlined, it would be helpful for me to know so I don't repeat this same mistake. Thanks for the feedback Anon.

[Anonymous No.20892309]

>>20892241
>I made a detailed synopsis of some story – say by Gardner, he was one of them, and he is a good friend of mine – and then tried to write the story. Then I compared it with professional work and saw where I had failed to make an effect, or had the pace wrong, or some other mistake. Then I did it over and over again. But the boys who want you to show them how to write won't do that.
This is probably the most brilliant piece of advice I've come across if I'm interpreting it correctly. My comprehension is:
Essentially write out a detailed synopsis for some already existing story, say, Star Wars. E.g. a group of spacefaring subjects decide to band together with various powers and rebel against a corrupt empire. Then to flesh that out as a story of my own and then diff it against the actual story (or script in this case) to compare and contrast my writing against theirs?

[Anonymous No.20892402]

>>20892291
I am reluctant to calling this problem "Deus ex Machina" because I associate DEM with some object or entity that doesn't prevent the main character from receiving feedback about the world. E.g., main characters marooned on a zombie island are saved at the end of the story when a naval fleet conveniently arrives to kill the zombies and save our characters. That more seems like DEM to me because it seems to make sense within the continuity of the story (that the navy probably exists and we the audience understand the navy would probably kill zombies) and the characters aren't prevent from having learned anything about their situation (they knew they would have died based on the choices they made which got them marooned in the first place).

Lightning's situation is more... Honestly I'd have to draw out a comic to explain/contrast how outstandingly bizarre it is. I've never encountered a situation like her's where it's sort of like repeated Deus ex Machina for every choice she makes but she somehow remains indifferent to the fact that she is always being saved by miracles and thus just never has to change anything about herself (since she is never punished by the world). Sort of like someone who never has to learn how to balance their weight properly when riding a bicycle because for whatever unexplained reason, they are just never knocked off the bicycle.

[Anonymous No.20892412]

>>20892402
>Deus ex Machina
>It's often used as the solution to what is called "writing yourself into a corner," where the problem is so extreme that nothing in the established setting suggests that there is a logical way for the characters to escape. If a bomb is about to go off, someone finds a convenient bomb-proof bunker in easy reach.
Except in the case of XIII, DEM happens for literally the first major arc all the way until the end for every situation. There is never an impression the writers have been backed into a corner. It just so happens that in XIII every situation (no matter how insignificant) is resolved by DEM for inexplicable reasons.

[Anonymous No.20892427]

>>20892412
Oh, interestingly enough, Tv Tropes actually has an entry in the examples page for Deus ex Machina that literally lists the exact situation I just typed out in >>20892177.

So I suppose FFXIII is just a repeat offender of Deus ex Machina to the highest possible degree since all situations are solved by DEM to the point where no characters ever have to learn anything. I don't think I could have written a story that poorly even if I was asked to which makes me assume this blunder had to have happened as a result of design by committee along with production realities of an overly expensive project.

[Anonymous No.20892670]

>>20892177
>Attractive female always gets everything to go her way without any struggle regardless of having to think about anything or ever be punished by anything. In the end, she knows the same amount of things as she did at the very beginning. Learning nothing yet being rewarded.
I don't know what you're complaining about. It seems like Square Enix knows how to write the most realistic female characters I have ever seen.

[Anonymous No.20893163]

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[Anonymous No.20893273]

>>20881732
One thing to keep in mind is most pulp stories were serialized in magazines one chapter at a time, giving them a faster pace with constant cliffhangers to keep readers coming back. This means they don't tend to be in the three act structure that most stories default to nowadays. If you want to emulate them you can look up the Fichtean Curve, where the story is a series of conflicts the protagonist has to confront one after another.

[Anonymous No.20893294]

>>20893273
>One thing to keep in mind is most pulp stories were serialized in magazines one chapter at a time, giving them a faster pace with constant cliffhangers to keep readers coming back. This means they don't tend to be in the three act structure that most stories default to nowadays.
This is really good to keep in mind.
>Fichtean Curve
>story is a series of conflicts the protagonist has to confront one after another
This sounds useful. I'll give it a look right now.

[Anonymous No.20893867]

>>20892245
>If you need supplementary material read Lovecraft and Howard's letters and not just the ones they wrote to each other but the ones each wrote to other writers but other than that
Does this book contain the letters to the editors?
https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/sources/mf.aspx

[Anonymous No.20894180]

>>20884479
>Pulp fiction is written to be interesting and enjoyable. The faggots here can't help you as they like books that are tedious and unnecessary.
This isn't wrong considering the obsession /lit/ and most incels have with victimhood, soliciting pity, and counterproductive introspection. It's the reason why most /lit/ polls have joyless works whereas they revile pulp, manga, and anime. You are what you eat as much as you are what you read. Joy or joylessness be in thee's hands. Are you alive or are you not alive?

Alive, alive, alive, alive, alive.

[Anonymous No.20894740]

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[Anonymous No.20895189]

>>20889192
>I wish I could take a fraction of that creativity and use it to write.
What's stopping you?

[Anonymous No.20895460]

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[Anonymous No.20896624]

Good thread.

[Anonymous No.20896704]

>>20881732
Stephen King's On Writing is entirely geared toward writing pulp