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To kick things off, I present the first part of a Blackwell novella I was working on to tide us over. I want to return to Flash Pulps and I want to do BETs, but at least I have a reservoir of work to post.

I present: Blackwell & The Amulet of the Naga Part One. Hope you enjoy.

https://files.catbox.moe/xn87z1.pdf
https://files.catbox.moe/gcb4ny.epub

>>23929919
I'm partial to FirstName LastName. Too many try to be the next George R.R. Martin or J.R.R. Tolkien.

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>>23930141
That's what I went with for Blackwell. I considered initials less so to resemble Georgie-boy or Tolkein, but more for similar reasons why women often used initials so that people might assume that they might be men. C.L. Moore, V.C. Andrews, etc. Then I realized what I was thinking and decided to play it loud and proud and keep it simple with FirstName LastName.

Thus, the birth of Victor Jackson, who will be the author of Blackwell, Balls Aldrin, The Skull, and more going forward.

There are two more formats that I want to look into figuring out for the sake of templates. The first would be the paperbacks that pulp storytelling migrated to starting in the 1950s. The second are those Robert E. Howard books from Del Rey. I like the layout and composition of the pages.

How do I start writing sword & sorcery in the pulp tradition? Top down (world building first etc) or just create a character and let that shit come through the subsequent stories?

Best stories about ape-men?

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>>23930974
"The Lurking Fear" by H.P. Lovecraft

>>23930937
Pulp is about story first. Focus on your hero and his or her adventures first. Each one may bring something new to the world, but don't get caught up in worldbuilding. Can you imagine a pulp writer like Robert E. Howard agonizing over the details of the Hyborian Age when he's trying to put food on the table and keep a roof over his head?

>>23930986
To be fair, he did write an entire essay about the Hyborian Age. Not as much as modern fantasy authors, but still kind of in depth.

>>23931023
When did he write it relative to his work though? I have it in a Conan collection but I'm not home to check ATM. I bet he had a few sketchy notes when he first started and then he developed them as he wrote story after story.

The main point really is that modern writers trap themselves into trying to build an iceberg before making one story. Their problem is twofold. One: if you want to write pulp, you have to produce. Write like you will starve or be kicked out into the streets if you don't. Two: icebergs break off of glaciers; glaciers are formed snowflake upon snowflake over time. Writers, especially pulp writers, should adopt a bottom-up approach to worldbuilding and they should also be comfortable with letting their stories have mystery. How does magic work? We might never know. What is Conan's tax policy? What riveting story will you tell that needs to know that?

>>23930982
Have some Wayne June narration.
https://youtu.be/JAsk-BGRuFk?si=ixNuTvMQlwMHWcUq

Are there many good sword and sorcery stories (aside from CAS) where we follow an evil Sorcerer as the protag?

>>23932543
The Mask of the Sorcerer, sort of.

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Going to try my best to post the next part of Blackwell tomorrow night and maybe, just maybe, I'll crank out a horror Flash Pulp in time for Halloween.

>>23930100
Glad to see the Torch is still alive. Ill try and contribute something soon.

In your opinion, how important is it for a recurring male S&S character--like Conan or Fafhrd/The Grey Mouser--to "get the girl"? Obviously they shouldn't have a new girl every story, but surely having a manly man hook up with a babe occasionally is a staple of the genre, isn't it?

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>>23933794
They certainly can hook up with a new girl in every story, but not every story needs to be about ending up with a girl at all. It's a staple, but not a requirement.

>>23933897
That's kinda what I was thinking, that some action is okay (these characters tend to be hyper masculine, after all), but it shouldn't get in the way of the story or character themself.

Feel like discussing the pulp you're writing in a more focused setting? Join us on the /pg/ discord!
https://discord.gg/QPYcgdwS

Any reckommendations are where to start? Is The Shadow and Doc Savage good?

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>>23934026
They are good starts if you want to get into hero pulps. When you read them, you will get to see where superheroes came from and in some ways, how they fell off from what worked.

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>>23934026
As far as continuity goes, you only really "need" to read "The Man of Bronze" first for Doc Savage as that is as close as it gets to an origin story for him. After that, it really does not matter which novel you read. The Shadow, on the other hand, has a bit more continuity as Walter B. Gibson - the author - kept notes on the world and history of The Shadow as he wrote the stories. That said, most of the time you will get by just fine reading any given novel, especially once you hit double digits.

>>23930114
Based

>>23932959
If you're taking recommendations for horror pulps, I personally would like to read more about "The Skull"

>>23934226
>>23934232
Sounds good. Thanks. And yes, I want to read the hero genre, seems really pulpy too me haha

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>>23934026
Finally, as far as Doc Savage, The Shadow, or any other hero pulps being "good," do realize that both were written to be cheap, disposable fiction for working class people nearly a century ago. There was no illusion of them being high literature, but the authors seemed to have fun writing them. Hopefully that rubs off on you.


Pulp storytelling does not dilly-dally. You bought The Shadow to see a lurid criminal operation be stopped by The Shadow and his crimefighting operation and the plot gets to it almost immediately and does not let up until the final page or two. You bought a Doc Savage novel to read about him and his Band of Iron getting into all kinds of trouble as they throw fists, shoot mercy bullets, and use gadgets in order to stop evildoers across the world and Lester Dent delivers that novel after novel. Pulp is not about foreplay, but it does catch its breath here and there, especially if it's a novel (i.e. 50-60k words).

Doc Savage novels are a bit more juvenile than The Shadow. Doc and his men throw fists and shoot "mercy bullets" rather than kill. The bad guys tend to be arrested more often than they die. In The Shadow though, death is most certainly on the line. The Shadow is a killer. No need for a lot of gadgets when he can just shoot you.

Doc Savage has more of that "golly gee!" energy that the uninitiated think that all pulps and golden age comics were like. The Shadow is more straight-laced and feels like its for slightly older readers. I do not know what you are into, but I think that The Shadow would be a better line for your absolute first exposure to pulps. Try Doc Savage second.

>>23934244
Then a Skull FP it will be.

>>23934026
They are both good. If you can find it, read The Spider (my favorite of the hero genre). Its like Charles Bronson became Batman and just started blasting criminals. Real hardcore at times.

>>23934256
If you can, please also include a raven or a crow somewhere in the story. I think it would go well with the Skull.

>>23934252
>>23934269
Thanks for the info bros.

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>>23934269
Hell yes to The Spider. He's also my favorite. Good description. Some of the things that happen in his novels are positively nuts.

>>23934285
I shall look into finding a good spot for that. He's definitely supposed to be a gothic kind of hero/vigilante.

>>23934360
Its brutal sometimes. There was a scene in the first novel (i think) where The Spider needs to get info from some gang member, so he strips him naked, ties him up with wire, and whips him with his belt until blood sprays everywhere. And if I remember correctly, after he gets the info from the guy, he just shoots him, because he is a criminal and deserves death. When I think of it, I could describe the character as Charles Bronson playing Jack Bauer.

>>23932959
I have a vague idea for a Halloween flash pulp. I'll try to get it out by the evening of the 31st.

https://files.catbox.moe/gzdgyz.pdf
I'm posting this again since it didn't get much traction last time. I hope no one minds. Once again, any criticism would be appreciated

I'm thinking of writing a second Pulp in vien of those old Victorian adventure stories with a bit of flashman thrown in. The twist would be that it takes place during the Cold War rather than the usual 19th century setting

>>23934509
the action sequencing is fast and fun, with some cool beats, but the story is completely lacking in character motivation. Can't assume your reader will be ready to cheer for your hero's victory when they don't know the stakes. Who is Le Lupe, and why was Cormac hunting him? This is what the reader is left wondering

also you often left spaces in between what would typically be compound or hyphenated words (fire arms, mount less) - I would consider it a stylistic choice were it not for other small errors, like the two different spellings of Le Loup and the missing period at the very end

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>>23934434
Hot damn. My first Spider novel was pic related. It hits the ground running with The Spider on the beat ready to gun down criminals like a psycho. Before lone, robots show up and are depicted as ripping people limb from limb. It changed what I thought I knew about the content of pulp stories. Probably the craziest part was when Nita (his girlfriend) thinks that The Spider is too beat and exhausted to continue and that he needs his rest. He refuses to stop, so she literally drugs him, puts on the getup, and tags herself in to continue his work while he recuperates.

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Got "Blackwell & The Amulet of the Naga" Part Two ready. I will post it tomorrow. In the meantime, I will work on the next Skull story. Hm...

Where to start with weird/occult detective stories?

>>23935290
Get the collection "Lonely Vigils" by Manly Wade Wellman

>>23935290
>>23935322
I'll add Carnacki.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnacki

>>23933794
Changing the girl every story is not necessary anymore. It was a fad born to fit the serialization format of the pulp stories. Only the best could make it work. But is rather distasteful: the hero getting a girl is cool, but changing the girl every story makes them feel unimportant and interchangeable.

>>23935147
Very good, anticipating both stories

>>23936056
What if they are unimportant and interchangeable? What if they are all meant to be interesting and exotic like Bond girls?

>>23936871
I'd imagine that it depends on the genre and story you're telling. A character like Bond is a good fit for a new girl every story because he's in vastly different locales every story. Meanwhile, a detective or hero character solving crimes in a single city is more likely to have a consistent love interest. Conan or most other S&S protags are a bit of a tough call, because the focus is more on the adventure itself, but that tends to land them in exotic situations and fantasy nations, so the same logic from Bond can apply there.

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>>23934026
The best Shadow pulps read like the best episodes of BTAS (and then some). If you're a fan of that style of Batman it will seem familiar to you.

>>23936871
>interesting and exotic like Bond girls
Most of these girls are neither of these two things. That's why you call them generically "Bond girls", you don't know their names even. They could be random hoes for all you care. Most people today prefer a diverse but strong cast of characters. Some people would come to a story only to see if their favourite side character got his/her time. For using weeb terms you want a set of waifus, but not random hoes.

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>>23937283
They're called Bond Girls because it's a trope and a tradition. Just about the only things they have in common are that they are women who James Bond encounters in the line of duty. They are quite diverse in characterization and characteristics. Part of the point of them is the role they play in the story outside of their romantic or sexual trysts with Bond. Pussy Galore leads a band of pilot women, Xenia Onatopp is a sadist who kills during sex, Mayday is a genetic super soldier kween, Domino is a tarot card reader who can divine the future, Christmas Jones is a nuclear scientist, and so on. Much more of them *are* "waifus" than you probably think.

Any pulp character can replicate that trope (though not every one needs to). Bond himself was paperback era pulp. A S&S character absolutely could put that trope to use by having a different female element in every story. The women themselves can be the sword or the sorcery or even both. One could be a scheming enchantress, another story our hero is joined by a plucky tomboy thief, and in yet another he meets a hedge witch who heals his wounds. The idea is that one by one these women characters build upon the legacy and history of the central hero as he has episodic adventures in the pulp tradition.

>>23937363
You're not wrong but you're missing the point here. These female characters existed because of the format of the stories, but is not necessary today to change the girl every issue. Most people are looking for identificable or likable characters for them to engage with. Not for throwaways.

Since pulp is mainly a male dominated space, I figured this video might be slightly relevant. How do we tackle this issue? I, for one, believe that we should be more directly marketing our works to each other and other male authors, screw traditional publishing if it doesn't want to pay attention to us. We'll do it ourselves, I guess. Maybe one of us will win the lottery someday and start a male-centric pulp magazine.

https://youtu.be/DvRNnRqbYpI?si=gPjz_ACtJwwMOFtt

>>23937757
A hub might be a better idea than a magazine. We've been looking into online platforms but we're not sure yet.

>>23937876
Well, whether we settle on a physical magazine, a digital magazine, or an online hub of some sort, I think we should definitely make a decision sooner rather than later. Hell, we can do an online hub right now and maybe down the road move on to something like a digital magazine. We can always start a Patreon for any costs associated with an online hub if we go that route. Though finding someone who can handle the money and be honest about it might be a difficult task.

>>23935322
Can you suggest a place where to find an ebook?
It's not on the usual sites...

>>23937898
I picture a website that acts as a hub for members who have individual Patreons/Substacks/KDPs/RRs/etc. This way we don't have to trust anyone else with money for our writing. The person running the hub collects donations for the sake of running the website, but everyone involved with the website ultimately has their own accounts so that money goes straight to them.

So how should we start a website in the first place?

>>23938365
Unfortunately you're going to have to shell out actual money until one pops up. I'm not sure why neither of his collections are up on the usual sites either.

The good news is that a few of the stories in said collection are avaialble for free via gothenburg

So I just realized that, with a little fleshing out in certain segments, the S&S short story I thought I'd finished today could easly become a 20k-25k word novella. Not sure if I should pull the trigger though.

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Evening, gentlemen. Since it is technically the 31st, I thought I would take this opportunity to post my spooky Halloween flash pulp:

"The Bounty of Santa Ana".

Be warned, though: it's not for the faint of heart.

https://files.catbox.moe/eqm18u.pdf

>>23939264
NaNoWriMo is in two days. Yeah, the official website is in hot water, but there's no saying you cannot pursue the challenge by yourself. I say go for it.

>>23939339
Bueno. I will read it and add it to the pastebin ASAP.

>>23939408
Much obliged.

Apologies if this is slightly off-topic, but: what are your top 3 Jim Thompson novels? I've just read Killer Inside Me and Pop 1280 and want to read more but the dude wrote books like a motherfucker so I'm spoiled for choice.
Also, are there other writers that write crime/suspense in that gritty, hyperviolent style? I don't read much of this kind of thing.

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>>23937876
>>23937898
>>23938510
>>23937757
Pulp magazines didn’t succeed by being exclusive or boutique. They were sold at newsstands and drug stores—places everyone frequented. They were cheap and easy to get, with eye-catching covers that induced impulse buying. So, if you’re serious about bringing pulp back to the public consciousness, give your story a voice-over, create a clickbaity thumbnail, and publish it on YouTube. You don’t have to look far for examples: HorrorBabble publishes his own original stories alongside the classics, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the creepypasta channels do the same to keep the content mill going.

>>23939923
That's a valid point except for the fact that women don't really read pulps outside of romance pulps, and women make up the majority of readers these days. Making a publication or website targeted at people who might actually be interested in reading the content we're producing is definitely the way to go forward. This isn't the 1940s anymore, the various subgenres that make up the pulp style appeal to a more niche crowd nowadays. Maybe someday there'll be a bigger crowd for this stuff, but right now there isn't.

>>23939923
I have considered the multimedia approach and I am not opposed to it. Far be it from me to point out that the golden age of the pulps coincided with the golden age of radio.

I have the next Skull FP ready to go, but I must get heading to work. I will post it with all due ceremony later.

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Alright, Happy Halloween /pg/! Tonight, I present my first genuine Flash Pulp in weeks in time for the holiday. It's another tale of the new terror of the criminal underworld, the mysterious and sinister vigilante known only as "The Skull" in a Flash Pulp that I call "Blood & Bone."

https://files.catbox.moe/ak5gd4.pdf

Enjoy.

And I think I will post Part 2 of Blackwell & The Amulet of the Naga on Saturday night. Give things some space.

Hm... I might have a new Flash Pulp by tomorrow night. Late for Halloween, but it might work for general autumn/ harvest season storytelling all the same.

Finished a horror novel for Halloween last night and I figured out a piece of the puzzle regarding what pulp is versus what isn't pulp. Pulp does not beat around the bush. It gets to the point and sticks to it. I now wonder if there are pulp novels that are much longer than 60k words.

1st person or 3rd person?

>>23941142
Kino. This character is like a righteous Jason Voorhees lol. I've been wondering if the Ravens and the Kris had any hidden symbolic meaning.

>>23941142
Awesome story, I like the generous use of Ravens. Keep it up!
>>23942223
Ravens are messengers of the netherworld, much like the Skull himself.

>>23942223
>>23942258
I'd be lying if I said Jason and other slashed did not influence the character. The story being a flash pulp, the kris was a touch of the exotic for the sake of flavor.

As for the ravens, those were by suggestion/request so I worked them in. I look at it as exploring the idea of the character by trying different things. The next story I do I hope to experiment some more in order to develop the character further as it approaches something more and more realized and iconic.

>>23942258
Oh, and yes, various mythological aspects regarding ravens also influenced my use of them including their association with the dead and the underworld.

>>23939339
Finally read your story. A welcome Halloween entry for the growing Flash Pulp collection. Nice to see another story set in the Old West.

I noticed that we seemed to have honed in on a certain structure to flash pulps. It's really compressed storytelling with short, brief stage setting, get right into the action, have a mid-story shift into a new direction that is the real heart of the story, and then a quick wrap-up.

>>23942202
Third person. I wrote half a million in third person and regretted it because you'll be fumbling for life experience one way or another if you're particularly young(I say before 40, as a 29). It can be difficult staying in their head and if you're prone to not being in the right headspace yourself in life it can be unhealthy. I think limited third-person simply just works.

>>23943248
>I wrote half a million in third person a
Silly me, I meant first-person. I hate my writing now and it can be frustrating if you ever decide in making an effort to switch to third and your only writing you could compare it to is completely different, or even vice versa. In my case though it was also a challenge writing it in present-tense as well. Two of the biggest blunders I did with my budding writing. Learn from my failures, don't write in present-tense first person. Or do. See what works I suppose.

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Started pic related tonight. On classic pulp tradition it ways no time and gets into the thick of it. Dick and Nita are on a cruise ship. Some exotic, Egyptian beauty seems to be whispering something into people's ears which causes them to attempt suicide by jumping overboard. The Spider leaps into action, and over if his temporary solutions is to fire his guns into the air in order to startle the suicidal people into compliance. It works well enough to corral them and lock them up in rooms.

I'm now at a part where he's questioning Egyptian guests and he casually considers that telepathy might be involved in causing this hysteria.

I love The Spider.

Next part is up! Enjoy.
https://files.catbox.moe/ttb9k0.pdf
https://files.catbox.moe/9rtjeh.epub

>>23943775
Fuck The Spider is kino. I'm reading Empire of Doom. The Green Hand, a mysterious villain, is gassing major cities as a ransom plot. Will The Spider solve this mystery? Ohhhh I dont know

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there is so much space opera in the pulp days from the 1930's and 40's alone you could keep reading this shit for possibly YEARS and not run out.

>>23944999
There are so many great books waiting to be discovered it is unreal. Like you say, there are enough great pulps that a person could spend their life reading them and not run out. The Shadow has like 300 novels. One a week, that is 6 years of reading lol

>>23945041
What's also crazy is that at its peak The Shadow came out almost as quickly on a bimonthly schedule.

>>23945246
That is incredible when you think about it.

>>23945386
Walter B. Gibson was one of the titans of the pulp era not just for being the primary writer of the Shadow pulps, but also for his insane output. He's right up there with Max Brand.

50-60k words every two weeks. That's ~3,500-4,300 words per day. Forget NaNoWriMo. 50k in 30 days (1,667 words per day) is Mickey Mouse shit by comparison.

>>23945486
he needed two typewriters because his fingers would bleed all over one of them so the story goes

>>23945486
And the surprising thing is, from The Shadow novels I have read, they are good quality.

As an aside, it kind of reminds me of the quote from Noel Gallagher, that his songs took as long to write as as it does to play them.

>>23930100
I like to find episodes of the twilight zone which were based on short stories, watch the episode and read the short story. Many of those were originally published in pulp magazines.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Twilight_Zone_(1985_TV_series)_episodes

>>23945896
Wow, what a great find

>>23945898
You're welcome. The 80s episodes are on youtube but I don't know where you can watch the 60s episodes for free.

>>23944407
Nice. I like the tone of these stories. They remind me of a more hardcore Doc Savage. Keep em coming! We need more Manny!

>>23945881
They really are rather good from the two dozen or so that I have read. The novels even have some continuity to them because Gibson kept notes as he wrote each one. It's a little odd reconciling the Shadow of the novels with the Shadow of the radio series, but the novels offer a richer experience on the whole and in the long run.

I wish that Conde Nast had not nixed the publication of Nostalgia Ventures reprints. They never even became digital! So many Shadow novels to read, and I just cannot bring myself to read plain text.

>>23946105
Thanks. I plan to post the next part on Monday or Tuesday. I'm chopping up the original manuscript which was >30k words as of the first draft but I was working on trimming it down up until work got in the way two months ago.

>>23945896
Hey that's actually really neat. Good post.

>>23946702
Understandable, work can be a bitch. Take your time and don't feel compelled to post it until you've proofread it a sufficient number of times first. I always have to comb through my stories at least a dozen times and I always find little mistakes every time before posting them.

>>23946961
It will not be much longer before I am finally free and unleashed. Last year I did NaNoWriMo and not only reached 50k, but I needed another another 50k to tell the whole story (first draft anyway) and managed to do that much as well. This Blackwell story I am serializing was even more worrying that I was able to produce after that from the same momentum. Then work got in the way...

>>23943775
Update: the titular "death madness" was traced toast "Suicide League" whose members worship Anubis. They use an exotic drug which makes people suggestive in order to whisper in their ears to kill themselves. So far, they managed to dump tons of this drug into the city water supply, so they can cause mass suicides with a few whispers.

>>23947512
Godspeed, Victor. We're all gonna make it one day.

Can anyone recommend a story where the female MC is dressed in skimpy clothing for most of the story (bikini armor, courtesan dress, etc)

Is there much pulp fiction inspired by the concept of Sant Sipahi ('saint-soldier' in the Sikh religion), or more broadly by Indian mythology in general?

>>23948417
Not that I know. Not directly anyway. However, Indian culture, or at least certain 1930s understandings or interpretations of it are abound as India was one of many exotic, foreign lands which added intrigue to stories.

>>23947906
Update: This is the second Spider novel I have read in which Dick Wentworth becomes exhausted and fatigued from pursuing the story so he is forced to rest and his fiancé Nita Van Sloan assumes the mantle as The Spider's Mate. You see, where other, lamer heroes have to worry about what happens to their girlfriends and how to reconcile that with their Heroic identities, The Spider trained Nita how to shoot, fence, and use jiu-jutsu, among other skills, to make her able to not only defend herself but to even tag in, which she died with relish out of devotion to Dick and his mission.

So there comes a point in which Nita storms the bad guys and we come to the obligatory cat fight. Nita is disguised as The Spider and her opponent is this beautiful "Egyptienne" woman who also can fight and can throw knives. So, again, where other, lamer heroes would make it a quick, bog standard cat fight with maybe a little bit of two-fisted moves, this novel treats you to an oddly technical and tactical action scene involving two hot women trying to kill each other with guns, knives, and jiu-jitsu.

And if that makes you roll your eyes, well, the author brings things to another turn. The fight exhausts Nita to the point that she gets captured from behind and her jiu-jitsu is not enough, thus ensuring that Dick Wentworth still must save the day in the end.

>>23948657
* does with relish

Also, a cop mentions "garlic bullets." So tonight I learned that there was an old urban legend that garlic oil was lethally toxic when it contacted a target's blood, so criminals would coat their bullets with garlic oil under the belief that it would make the bullets deadlier.

>>23941142
>spends days writing kino
>only 2 replies
You guys are ungrateful cunts.

>>23948797
well now no one is going to read your dog shit, faggot.

>>23930100
>WRITE PULP!
>>23948797
Pulp is not a genre. It was just a cheap way to buy fiction. Most of the great sci-fi authors published some of their works in pulp magazines.

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>>23948988
Wasn't me. I just write the stuff and if people like it enough to comment then they will. I appreciate that >>23948797
likes my work, but let's please not bicker like that.

>>23948995
Pulp is more of a style than a genre. That style resulted from the format and market forces. A story with similar structure or sensibilities can be described as pulpy.

>>23949174
nice try to save with photoshop, hack

>>23949253
Whatever. I'm moving on. Have a nice day.

>>23930937
How much S&S have you read in the first place?

Do you think pulp horror needs a twist ending, or a dark ending? Can the "good guys" win in a satisfying way, or should the dark forces win, so that the horrific aspects are driven home? Keep in mind that this is not a story with a recurring character, so even the main character can die.

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>>23949473
It depends how you spin it. If the good guy wins it should display a triumph of moral conviction that overcomes all odds and elicits hope in the heart of the reader. If evil wins, it should be done in an interesting way that puts into question the very concept of morality and makes the reader think about who the true "good guys" even are.

>>23949524
I think you might be overthinking this, for one reason. Cosmic horror. The good guys almost never win, and when they do, it's almost entirely and meaningless victory. They never outright defeat the evil, they just stave off it's inevitable victory. There's no hope granted by those endings and conclusions, as a matter of fact, it does the opposite. We see the heroes realize that, though they have won the battle, the war is far from over and the winner has already been determined. I think it varies by genre, but horror stories in general, whether they're pulp or not, work very well with a "bad ending".

>>23949649
You're right, I was just trying to add an ethos to the story arc. When it comes to "Cosmic Horror", the interesting aspect is contemplating Man's smallness in such a vast universe, where our concepts of right and wrong are ultimately meaningless in the face of a yawning astral abyss.

As long as you somehow make it thought provoking, it can work. Just having a two dimensional bad guy win for no reason can be boring if not done properly.

>>23949211
Nope

>>23949820
Yeah, sure. You're right.

>>23949473
Plenty of pulp horror ends more or less well for the heroes/survivors without a hitch. A concluding twist is not inherently necessary. Just use one if it really will add to the horror.

Also, an ending twist to a horror story does not necessarily mean that the heroes win or the villain lost. It could be an after-the-fact realization that adds a sudden new, horrifying truth to the story or a tease that the horror is not gone even though the heroes are through with it. Et cetera.

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>>23944999
With the current destruction of both Star Wars and Star Trek, everyone should go back and read Lensman.

Any decent books or guides on how to start writing pulp fiction? Particularly interested in fantasy and horror

>>23950230
I don't know about books or guides, but we have a discord for pulp writers.

>>23950230
Read lots of fantasy and horror pulps then try to create something similar. Don't worry about being derivative, just have fun with it.

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>>23950230
There is a link in the OP to Lester Dent's 6k word story formula. Beyond that, pic related is a short read that invigorates me to write pulp.

>>23950148
Nice artwork there. Is that the cover to any of the books?

As a Green Lantern fan I have heard about Lensmen for years but I never got around to reading it. Maybe the time is right for the reason you said.

Reminds me of how Doctor Who went to shit and sometimes I thought of "Orvilling" it, but putting an American spin on all of it somehow.

Presenting the next chapter in Blackwell & The Amulet of the Naga. I hope you enjoy.

https://files.catbox.moe/fohs83.pdf

Any good penny dreadfuls or paperback weeklies still in existence in the anglosphere? I'm more familiar with the german publications.

>>23951011
*Still* in publication? *Anglosphere*? I could not even begin to tell you where to look. Anything resembling penny dreadfuls or pulp fiction format is relegated to online publication and even that is a matter of interpretation.

>>23951063
Online I'm more familiar with weblovel, scribblehub and royal road aside from fanfic sites. You know any good sites?

>>23951077
You listed what I would think of. I heard of another called HoneyFeed over in /wg/, more of the same.

https://www.honeyfeed.fm/novels

>>23951110
Oh, and I do not actually know the quality there. Just mentioning it.

I wonder if making a similar hub is what should be done, but for pulp storytelling. It would almost certainly need a modern spin though.

>>23950148
This cover has definitely strangled my attention just by a glimpse. Noriyoshi Ohrai... I'm 60% done with GEoD so I might consider Lensman after Heretic/Chapterhouse but to repeat the other anon's; please tell me which book cover this is for because god damn that's one badass cover to have on my spartan modest bookshelf.

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>>23951841
>>23951841
It was for Galactic Patrol, but he did the other covers for the other books. This is the JP release only though, from Tokyo Sogensha. The English releases on ebook are the worst kind of bottom of the barrel early 2000's 3D public domain slop.

God damn writing this story is harder than I thought. I find it so much easier to do long fiction. I feel like I spill autism all over the story.

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>>23951944
there is far too much injustice in this hell.

any recommendations for good juvenile delinquent pulps? high school confidential, h is for heroin etc.

>>23952017
Keep the autism, my dude, and make it weird.

>>23952263
It’s more autism in the sense of “lots of backstory described and every action the character takes, mostly walking, is described.”

>>23950756
Nice. The storyline is coming along well. Looking forward to the next chapter!

>>23948657
Finished the novel. A man cosplays as Anubis and he somehow leads masses of people from NYC into the desert as sacrificial slaves to Anubis. The Spider infiltrates them with a disguise of his own. It turns out that alkaline chemicals neutralize the drug, and once dispelled, the people surround the main villain and tear his throat apart. The Egyptian chick dies when a fat man from earlier in the story falls on her, crushing her to death. In classic pulp fashion, the story wraps up in less than one page. That's all folks.

Having finished the novel, there are still a couple of short stories after it. I will report back on them as well.

>>23949649
Stop making shit up. Plenty of Cosmic Horror stories have good endings. The whole "cosmic horror must have muh bad ending" is a modern fabrication made up by hacks and mediocre writers that couldn't come up with anything good for an ending.

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Backup story #1. ~6k word story about a detective hired by the police to investigate a string of bank robberies. He tracks down the robbers, infiltrates them, and a botched heist with lots of gunfire and car action ensues. It even ends with the detective blowing away the mastermind behind the operation when the guy pulls a gun on him. Total action movie stuff.

>>23953881
Care to list some examples? Because a good 95% of Lovecraft's work has varying degrees of "bad endings" and much of his contemporaries are the same way. Now, mind you, I'm not saying they all involve horrific endings like the end of the world or the destruction of entire cities, but, at best, a lot of the endings involve realizations that mankind is utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of things, or that whatever elder god they stopped in the story will come back later on because they can't truly be defeated. That's what I mean when I say "bad ending". Even "The Fisherman", which is considered by many to be a modern cosmic horror masterpiece, has what would be considered a "bad ending" in the sense that the monstrosities will continue to populate their world.

>>23954554
>Total action movie stuff
This makes me think, does pulp benefit from the so-called cinematic camera and storytelling? Were the action follows a logical chain of events and takes place chronologically, rather than a slightly more abstract telling?

>>23949473
>>23949524
>>23949649
Plenty of Conan's stories are horror and they always have a relatively good ending of Conan surviving and all of the villains/monsters/gods being dead or otherwise gone.

>>23954660
Conan isn't straight up horror though, those stories are sword & sorcery fantasy at heart, with a larger than life protagonist capable of tackling any obstacle. There might be horror elements, but it's a bit silly to call those stories horror. Doing so is akin to calling a meal Chinese for the sole reason that it was cooked in a wok with onions sauce.

>>23954683
>onions sauce
I hate this place sometimes.

Is it worth it to get the origin of your pulp hero on the page?

>>23954649
Generally, yes. Most pulp stories are not out to be creative or artistic with structure. That is more the realm of literature. There is no pulp equivalent to Ulysses for example.

However, there are plenty of pulp stories that use flashbacks. I mean, that is pretty much all that *The Call of Cthulhu* is is flashbacks.

>>23954753
Only enough to allude to it unless the origin story really is that exciting a story to tell.

For a pulp writer, is it more worth it to focus on short stories that get published for pay, or to focus on short stories/novellas that you write to share?

>>23954863
Pulp writers wrote to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head. In theory, we should aspire to do the same. I think flash pulps make for good fun and samplers as well as practice. If we write longer stories though, I think we ought to look into making money but that's me.

If only I knew how best to do that though.

>>23954863
Write everything for money bro

>>23954863
Anything worth doing is worth doing for money.

Can you all redpill me on best places to try to hawk my short stories?

>>23955088
I don't think any of us knows or else it would be in the OP by now. It's the biggest code to crack. For all I know we will have to create our own platform or hub.

>>23955088
Right now the best we can do is look for places that are actively seeking submissions. The Submission Grinder and Horror Tree are the only two aggregators of such things that I'm aware of. The only problem is, they cater to a much wider group of publishers than just those looking for pulp, so you'll actively have to search for the right fit.

>>23954896
>>23955088
>>23955405
>>23955430
For sub 10K stories, turn them into audiobooks and put them on YouTube.
For longer stories, publish them on Amazon’s KDP.
If you can’t find an audience on two of the largest platforms on the planet, then maybe you still don’t understand what it means to write to market like the pulp writers of yesteryears.

>>23955698
And before anyone mentions how tastes have changed again, yes, time changes, and so do tastes—like how gothic stories gave way to weird fiction, and weird fiction gave way to sci-fi. Pulp is all about identifying what people want and delivering it as quickly as possible. Classic pulp writers would have jumped at the chance to have their own radio station or TV channel for free, like you can today. So don’t waste the opportunity by being nostalgic for how things used to work decades ago. Think about how Lester Dent or Raymond Chandler would have adapted to today’s market with today’s audience. Aim to inherit their creative spirit, not the limitations they had to live by.

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>>23955698
Thoughts on platforms like Substack or Ghost? What about using X, especially for flash pulps?

>>23955755
Whether it’s Ghost, Substack, Amazon, or good old WordPress, you need to funnel in people from other platforms. So you need at least two platforms: one for publishing and one for advertising. I recommended YouTube for advertising because it has the largest audience who are willing to click on random videos, as long as they have eye-catching thumbnails. For publishing, KDP is ideal because everybody already has an Amazon account, so you won’t have to waste time convincing people to sign up for yet another website that will inevitably leak their emails to overseas scammers.

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>>23930100
I'm interested in pulp action/adventure with some sex and sexy stuff sprinkled in. Anyone have any recommendations?

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>>23956099
Look up "Spicy" pulps.

>>23955730
>>23955698
Also the fact that in this wide market there's a market for almost anything. You might struggle to find your niche or how to appeal to it, so don't be afraid to experiment

>>23955430
I would have never known of submission grinder before today without your mention of it.
Maybe that kind of thing would be a good inclusion in the op

>>23956294
OP here. Noted.

Ant recommended texts on writing or tutorials? Or is this more of a get your hands dirty and see what you are made of kind of gig?

>>23956650
Read the OP
>EXTRA! EXTRA!
>So you want to write pulp but don’t know how, say?
- Lester Dent Formula: https://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/dent.html
- Write Compelling Dialogue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpWKp-fnZuU [Open] [Embed]

>>23956249
Thanks. How spicy are we talking here?

>>23957092
Never actually read them myself, but from what I understand, they were far more risqué than what you would ever imagine that grandma or grandpa would have read (but they did) when they were young, but not as lewd as the hardcore porn we can find today.

>>23957730
Sounds nice. Sometimes less is more. The modern hardcore stuff is usually way too crass for my tastes anyway.

>>23957766
Pulps are often eye-opening because we like to think that our ancestors read the most boring, milquetoast, safe fiction we can imagine. The truth is that most mainstream genre fiction is more tame and often more boring than the pulps they read back then. About the only thing that ever measures up is anime/manga/light novels which has a similar ethic of churning out content and giving the customer what they want.

>>23958100
While our ancestors were constrained by different things, corpos have come around back to being nearly as censoring as even the most religiously conservative society of the last two hundred years (not Islamic ones, anyway).

>>23958100
That is similar to the discovery I made when I began reading the classics. They are consistently labelled as long and boring, but I soon discovered they are anything but boring. And, as you say, so much modern fiction is very tame.
>>23958137
That's the strange thing about the Victorians. They were more civilized and moral than today, but also more violent.

>>23958137
>>23958342
Could this be the selling point of writing in the pulp tradition? Just show up modern genre fiction by being more visceral, shorter, and to the point?

>>23958641
Yah. One of my favorite things about pulps is they go straight into the action and it does not stop. If I am only reading for 10 minutes, I still know something is going to happen and be exciting.

Thats why old tv shows are better than modern shows. Something happens every episode because something had to happen every episode.

>>23958649
> surfdracula.jpeg

>>23958660
exactly.

>>23958649
Also people studied the classics (even the 'classics' of a medium that wasn't sixty years old for most of its lifespan) in the old days to try to get the good parts out of them, instead of engaging in post-modernism and deconstructions.

>>23959083
>post-modernism and deconstructions
the philosophy of suspicion. pulp readers are doers and have no time for these time wasters

>>23959282
Now, ironically, I think post-modernism can be okay, so long as the person writing it is invested. But deconstructions are primarily shit done by people who are too lazy to just make new things.

>>23959282
It's time you dive into the 50s pulp scifi scene--or don't. Deconstruction is what they spent the whole decade doing. That's why I hate it.

>>23959770
McCarthyism should have continued until everyone who did not show anti-communist tendencies in every aspect of their lives was removed from any position of prominence.

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>>23930100
Now that we're on the subject of scifi. I knew this OP was familair.

What is some ultra-misogynistic pulp fiction?

>>23959809
The stuff I write.

>>23959948
i kneel

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>>23930100
I’m in Pic related

>>23960242
Interesting. I might check that out. Do you know when they next take submissions?

>>23959787
Well well well. Looks like we have the next OP right there.

>>23959282
That's actually a solid way to identify if something is properly pulp. Pulp is modern, not postmodern. What about "reconstruction" though?

Suggestions for pirate-themed pulp? Preferably adventure/S&S stuff, but I'm down with whatever.

>>23961730
Unfortunately I am not well-versed in late stories. All I got is "Queen of the Black Coast" by Robert E. Howard enchantress fits the bill, but it's not set in the golden age of sail in any way.

>>23961932
* in pirate stories

>>23961932
There's also "Blades of the Brotherhood" for a bit of Howard pirate action.

Finally reached my next day off. Time to polish off the next chapter of Blackwell. Maybe I'll write another flash pulp to go with it. Will it be The Skull? Will I return to Balls Aldrin? Will I write a one-shot story? We'll find out!

>>23930100
Black Mask Magazine is way better than other pulps for crime and mystery

>>23961932
It's honestly not that much about piracy. That's more of a backdrop to give Conan a steady woman and an excuse to raid a mystic hidden city. It's great but it's probably not what anon is looking for.

Is it possible to do heroic pirates without fucking up the morality too much?

>>23963052
The Pirates of the Caribbean movies seem to have no trouble establishing heroes and villains within the world of pirates. One Piece as well.

>>23930100
So I tried writing a pulp short story as an exercise a few weeks back and what I ended up writing reads like a fantasy series prologue. It doesn't have much action, just rising tension and a bit of resolution. I dunno if you guys would like to read it just so I could get some feedback and I'll read whatever you guys wrote, as well. I haven't edited my short story either so I'd have to give it a look.

>>23963064
protagonist ≠ hero
antagonist ≠ villain

>>23964066
Yes, but it is a long stretch to suggest that those movies don't have "good guys" or "bad guys." In the first movie for example, Elizabeth and Will are clearly good guys who have been swept up into the world of pirates. Captain Jack Sparrow may be an antihero, but he ultimately is on Elizabeth and Will's side in the overall story. Captain Barbossa and his crew are clearly the bad guys.

Speaking of antiheroes, the whole point of the term is that the character is in the role of the hero but they are defined by lacking various traits of classical heroes. They are still heroes for storytelling purposes though.

To bring this back around to pirate-based pulp stories, one can have heroes and villains, even in the nonclassical sense, even in a rather immoral and unethical world like those of pirates. Again, there is also One Piece to demonstrate an even stronger case than POTC.

>>23963949
Keep in mind that The Tower of the Elephant doesn't have some grand fight to end the story and it's one of the most beloved Conan stories.

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>>23956249
>>23957730
I’m reading pdfs scans of “Spicy” pulp magazines and holy shit, the letters to the editor is eye-opening. These were published way back in the 1930s and these readers are horny as fuck. Men AND women writing in, begging for penpals of the opposite sex, promising to send pics through the mail and shit. These mags also came with tasteful nude pictures and the women writing in to the editor beg for pics of naked men. Our ancestors weren’t puritans at all lmao

>>23963949
Don't feel constrained by the word count. If you have to break up the story into multiple parts, go ahead, just make sure that each segment is self contained within it's own volume. As long as each part has some sort of minor story arc within the overall narrative, it'll fly.

Next chapter of Blackwell is ready to fly. I will post it tomorrow. So far this serialized version of the story is 8,677 words long and we're almost to the halfway point. In the first draft it was 10,041 words to get to the same point. It's been nice to prune the overall story down in creative ways. I'm getting to the point in my first draft where I plan to not so much trim as gut the story. That's the beauty of the first draft. It mines the marble slab for you to revise and chisel away at. And to think, most pulp writers did not have nearly the same luxuries.

Well, my night off is coming to a close and I'm still on the hook. Before I head off to bed, here's the next part in Blackwell & The Amulet of the Naga. Enjoy.

https://files.catbox.moe/3v9mn6.epub
https://files.catbox.moe/g8vhxy.pdf

>>23964117
To be fair, one piece is fighting authoritarian world government so they are good by default

>>23934026
I'm reading them both now. The Shadow has been better consistently for my taste. Hell I even prefer the Shadow over Batman.

>>23965564
That's how simple it is really. Heck, the POTC movies did essentially the same thing in the first two sequels with the DEI company.

>>23930100
Any discords or writing groups i can join?

>>23966795
Yes. There is a /pg/ Writing Discord.

https://discord.gg/3Eae3keC

Is it better to lean into the absurd? Like I am considering having a minotaur gunslinger and I am gonna be honest I am considering giving him an actual hand cannon

>>23965654
The Shadow is the character that so many Batman fans wish Batman was without even knowing it. I am not talking about gadgets, skills, physical prowess here. All of that has evolved over time for Batman without changing who her is when you strip everything away. The Shadow could have evolved just as much had he been given the same chances. I mean attitude, motivation, methods, and ethics.

In anime terms, Batman is a shonen character that fans want so desperately to be a seine character but he just isn't. The Shadow, the one from the pulps, is basically the seinen Batman that they want.

>>23967339
Basically that the Shadow does not condone serial killers by inaction, right?

>>23967321
That sounds more like modern/urban fantasy to me. I suppose it could work as pulp if you're talented enough to write it correctly, but it'll be a bit of an uphill battle.

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>>23967321
Weird yes, absurd no. The main difference is that most pulp was modern and sincere rather than postmodern or ironic. That said, I am unsure how much of pulp was more reserved than, say, comic books, because of writer sensibilities as opposed to paradigm. That is, they did not write the kinds of characters like you described not because they never would, but rather because no one did yet, so no one even imagined such characters.

>>23967555
>>23967743
I will meditate on this, write the story anyway, and see if it sells. Worse come to worst I can put it on youtube and narrate it for like two cents total revenue

>>23967783
Go for it. Fortune favors the bold.

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>>23967392
To name one quality, yes. Across over a hundred novels, The Shadow only had like two villains ever return. The rest were all original. He did not kill to prevent criminals from returning either. He killed them because he deemed it justified in the first place. Other times, many times in fact, the criminals did themselves in through their hubris and complacency.

The Shadow has actual mystique, menace, and lacks the campier qualities of Batman. He dresses fashionably, but none of his iconic look is really a "costume." He works with adults, not children. He uses conventional weapons rather than a bunch of gadgets. He's not insanely overpowered due to writers protecting him.

We don't know who he is or why he does what he does but yet he is here doing it and criminals must deal with that. Modern audiences might think that the lack of empathy for The Shadow is a flaw, but I argue that the reader is just as mystified by The Shadow as characters in-universe are mystified by Batman. It adds to his aura in a way that Batman does not get to have.

> But Batman has all of those cool gadgets and he's such a badass!
Because he got to evolve over the decades. Not that he was not a badass from the beginning, but he accumulated a lot of things he has over time. None of that is unique to him. The Shadow could have developed just as much if he was given the same time.

> Ah, but Batman did get to develop and The Shadow did not, so he's better now anyways.
That is why my central point lies at the core of each character. The parts that cannot be evolved away from all that much without making the character's fundamentally different. If you updated The Shadow to do a lot of the same stuff as Batman including letting him enter the twenty-first century, he could be every bit as "badass" while still being more mysterious and menacing.

A properly updated Shadow or a spiritual successor could attract Batman fans who just plain tired of the character by simple of virtue of being novel again.

>>23968426
>We don't know who he is or why he does what he does

Thank you. I read the Shadow Unmasked. And I believe 100% that it's just another misdirection from the Shadow. That is the beauty of the character you never really truly know.

Got the next chapter of Blackwell & the Amulet of the Naga completed. I will post it later today.

>>23968883
So close to quads.

Anyways, that was my takeaway from it too. It seemed less like The Shadow was revealing himself to be Kent Allard and not Lamont Cranston and more like he could always use another deep cover.

>>23968426
The one shadow copy I was able to find where he fights the five criminals and only gets through to the end with help and a lot of grit makes him human.

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>>23930100
If you haven't read at least 100 pulp stories don't even start trying to write one

>>23969473
Or at least a certain word count of pulp. If Lester Dent's formula is anything to go by, then that's 600k words of pulp. A typical hero pulp novel like those of The Shadow or Doc Savage are ~50-60k words each, so reading 10-12 of them would be the same. Preferably a variety of them rather than one hero.

Me? I've read about two dozen of Doc Savage and The Shadow, and that's just a start on the pulp I've read.

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Presenting Part 5 of "Blackwell & The Amulet of the Naga." Enjoy.

https://files.catbox.moe/aqnu6i.pdf
https://files.catbox.moe/mzb22q.epub

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this is getting delivered tomorrow I'm so excited to read

>>23969054
sounds like the The Five Chameleons.
yeah, that was a good one.
The last one I read was The Crime Master.

>>23969992
Working on Part 6 now. I started a pastebin that collects every part. When I finish the story I will go back and remaster the format of each part for uniformity.

>>23970439
That was it. The five guys who run massive cons together.

>>23970237
>asterisk on the title
?

Looking for opinions - first or third person for swashbuckling pulpy horror?

>>23971107
If the swashbuckling is more important then go for third person. If the horror is more important then you could give first person a try, especially if it's a spooky story being told by someone else.

>>23970882
These are just the stories that were published in Weird Tales magazine back in the day. There are missing stand alone novels.

I'm not sure what the asterisk is about. Any idea? Copyright related? I have no idea..

>>23971117
The main character is a recurring character, a pirate captain. He survives the ordeal, but several of his crew doesn't. If it's first person, it'll be his perspective.

>>23971150
Consider this: how personal is the story to this pirate captain? The less personal it is, the more you should probably write in the third person.

>>23936958
Sometimes I cannot decide if I wish there were animated adaptations of the novels, live action movies, movie-length episodes, or audiobooks that evoke the radio show by having voices, sound effects, and music.

So, didn't Robert E. Howard write boxing stories? Were they any good? Are there any other good boxing pulps?

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>>23968883
>>23968950
It's worth noting that Gibson never intended on answering the mysteries of The Shadow (what or who he really is, or even what his true face looks like). To Gibson, The Shadow was someone strange he was following and recording the adventures of. Even when his "true" identity is revealed to be Kent Allard, it's canon that it's just another identity he plundered.

After all...there's still a body in Kent Allard's plane.

Personally, I've always subscribed to the theory that The Shadow is some type of vampire, fallen angel (or descendant), a robot/cyborg, or possibly a cursed figure (think Cain or the Wandering Jew), but he's not really an evil person who redeemed himself (like what the movie and post-movie comics reinforce). Even as a possibly supernatural "dark" figure, he was ALWAYS good and in control of himself. Being an anomaly, he uses this nature responsibly to cast out the real monsters

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>>23967339
The Shadow is distinct from the Batman because The Shadow is a force of nature, a borderline supernatural creature who may have been a man before, but he isn't one anymore (either literally if you subscribe to the supernatural theory, or figuratively), at the very least not treating himself as such. His roots lie in characters like King Arthur and Dracula, authors like Baum and Dumas, and real life people like Houdini and stories of missing fighter pilots. The Shadow lives and thrives in a modern urban "fairy-tale" where he's the Big Bad Wolf who saves Hansel and Gretel from the evil witch.

Batman is scary because he can break every bone in your body without killing or even crippling you, and can weather any possible injury himself. The Shadow is absolutely horrifying because he can steal your face and name and no one will ever realize you've been replaced. The Shadow can topple entire criminal organizations without a single person dying, and then make you confess to your sins before you kill yourself.

If Batman is Dick Tracy playing the part of Zorro, then The Shadow is Dracula if he decided to fight evil...except very little about Dracula actually changed, only his targets.

>>23972380
Yes he did. Quite few actually. I think his boxing and western stories made him the most money, when he was alive. They mostly star the character sailor Steve Costigan. I like them. But his boxing stories are an acquired taste or that is the impression i got from old forums discussing Robert E. Howard characters.

>find publication looking for nautical themed horror, Nov. 30 deadline
>have an S&S pirate character that could easily translate to horror stuff
>have a good, straightforward story idea
>have about 1,100 words so far
>next to no motivation to finish

>>23973016
Have you tried outlining the story? Maybe you lost motivation to write because you don't have any real ending or climax in mind. Maybe you lack any interesting scene ideas.

How long do you think the story would be? If you have a word count goal, then you can split it up and eat the elephant one bite at a time. Six thousand words sounds like a lot, but if you take two weeks to write it then you only need to write 428 words per day. Use the same logic with any word count.

>>23973449
I honestly think it's my crippling fear of failure. I've basically consigned myself to failure and have convinced myself that's it's a nigh predetermined conclusion to any endeavor I undertake. I know fate isn't real, but sometimes it feels like it is.

>>23973671
Do it for yourself first. Show that you can write a complete first draft.

What are your thoughts on a pulp crime fighter, similar to The Shadow, with actual, legitimate superpowers?

>>23973995
Because I write about The Skull, I have no problem with others writing about supernatural or superpowered heroes and it looks like others might not mind it on general principle either.

I am glad that you brought this up. I have further ideas for outright superhero characters and stories. The way I see it, superheroes evolved from the hero pulps. Some of the earliest superheroes began as outright knockoffs of pulp heroes. I also think that the superhero genre lost its way a long time ago. I hope to show another way that rolls the genre back to its roots a bit. Get it back on the right track.

>>23973995
Remember you have to cut the knife edge of the hero being challenged

>>23974518
What do you mean by that?

>>23970650
And here we have them. The adventure continues.

https://files.catbox.moe/s2l5go.pdf
https://files.catbox.moe/010b3d.epub

So the final chain holding me back from writing has been undone. I think it's about time that I step up to the BET plate. And while I'm at it, how about I deliver a 6k word story about The Skull? Step up my game a bit and deliver something with a bit more meat.

Official BET: 6k word story about The Skull by next Sunday on 11/24/24.

Let's do this.

>>23974716
I think he means that the superhero can't be too overpowered or else there will be no conflict in the story.

>>23974822
Sweet, now I can get caught up.
>>23974829
I bet you WON'T!

>>23975131
> Get caught up.
Speaking of which, here's all six parts (so far) collected into a pastebin.

https://pastebin.com/T4VJEBJM

Can pulp with a female protag work?

>>23976265
Absolutely. Jirel, Dark Agnes, and The Domino Lady are some examples off the top of my head. There are some hurdles to overcome, unless you don't mind your character being a modern girl boss who regularly beats men twice her size and physical combat, and you absolutely should mind them being that, because that trope is horrible. Play up how women are perceived as more agile or lithe, or make them magical somehow.

>>23976295
I gave some excuses for her physicality since she is a dancing acrobat, but a lot of her enemies are going to be far tougher

>>23976312
Don't be afraid to make her a master with a non-conventional weapon, pulp authors in the past did that all the time. Make her a "master whip fighter" or something fun.

>>23976321
> Master whip fighter
Somebody wants to get spicy.

>>23976437
That stuff's not my idea of a good time, but it would have sold like hotcakes during pulp's heyday.

>>23976444
Honestly, just mix Simon Belmont with Lara Croft and Solomon Kane and that sounds like a fun heroine.

>>23976321
Guns also help if they are available.

What are the must read ERB books?
I was reading mars but it kinda fell off after book 3

>>23976444
Sometimes I wonder how much I could make just banging out cheap erotica today. But I want to write about adventure, heroics, thrilling suspense, etc.

>>23977792
I’ve tried that. I have trouble finishing any of my pulp stories but the first erotic one I wrote I completed, I just don’t know how much appeal is has considering the actual “action” stories come after the first one, and in the first one the male protagonist is 16, which might not even be legal

>>23977813
Raise his age until it is legal.

>>23977821
Eh him being older than 16 would alter the plot too much, and also the whole idea of fucking and being taken advantage of by his hotter, older (25) stepmother at such an age leading to him having severe sexual and romantic problems in his 20s and 30s would be removed.

>>23977872
Ah, the Otacon manoeuvre. Did he fuck his step sister, or drive his dad to suicide, as well?

>>23977936
Lol no, he does have a stepsister (who’s like 7 when all this happens) but they have a normal brother-sister relationship. He just gets kicked out of the house and sent to another unit (he’s Imperial Russian Military) in the boonies when everything gets discovered, which leads into the more “action and sex” stories

>>23977442
John Carter and Tarzen. Read until you dislike them I say.

>>23976265
Protagonist means more than being a heroic figure. Plenty of horror, mystery, terror, and weird menace stories have women as the main character.

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>>23930212
Kind of a follow-up on this. I did some research on various formats and dimensions and the like, and I arrived at a possible alternative format to the double column, pulp magazine dimension format I've been using.

Instead, this format would be A6 for a couple of reasons. One, it would be pocket-sized, Two, with 110% line spacing, the average pace would have ~200 words, which is anywhere from 25-50% fewer words per page, which means it would make page turnover more rapid and thus, hopefully, more rewarding to the reader in the long run.

Have a look. I make no promises. Feedback is appreciated.

https://files.catbox.moe/aa6149.pdf

Does anyone here know if the "Nameless Cults" book mentioned in some of Robert E. Howard's work is brought up by any other pulp writer in his time?

I know he collaborated with a bunch of authors. And I would like to read more stories that include that particular book.

>>23979599
Pretty sure that I saw "Unaussprechlichen Kulten" mentioned in a Lovecraft Story. Cannot remember which one though.

>>23975953
I like the direction of this story so far, although Callum seems like a character who is a little out of place. Not that it's a bad thing, it keeps the reader on their toes.

>>23979961
Callum is certainly the weirdest element of the team. He and Rajata both serve as reminders of the weird and strange things that Blackwell encounters on his adventures.

There is a story behind his being there as far as the creative origins of Blackwell go but I'll keep that under wraps for now. Maybe in the future I will divulge the "behind the scenes" facts.

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>>23974829
Finally sat down to outline the story. This sucker might blow up to well over 6k. See what happens though. I still have five days.

One of the things I find charming about pulp action and adventure stories is the presence of weapons and lethal force. I like it because a gun, a knife, or a sword are more relatable and more visceral than an eye beam, a laser pistol, or a ki blast from your hands. When you think about it, many superpowers were mostly substitutes for real weapons. Pulp did not have to deal with that. If Conan wants to kill someone, he grabs a sword. When Doc Savage wants to shoot a guy, he grabs a gun,
but since he was supposed to be more kid-friendly, he shot "mercy bullets." Still shooting bullets out of a gun. No outlandish superpowers. There is something elegant about it.

>>23934026
Depends on what genre you are interested in. The Shadow and Doc Savage are "hero pulps," but even then, Doc Savage is about adventure while The Shadow is about crime.

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>>23981080
you still had this kind of stuff, and it seems to be the pulp era was the real ground zero for psychic and psionic powers that can rend universes asunder coming into fruition

>>23981825
>Doc Savage is about adventure

It's funny you say this. I started reading Doc Savage last year I'm on "The Seven Agate Devils", currently. I tend to find the parts of the story where he is in New York before he goes off to some exotic location the most enjoyable part of the story, more so than the parts of the story that take place in the exotic location.

And I got to say, Death in Silver, which takes place entirely in New York. Is in my opinion one of the best stories so far a solid top 10.

>>23981870
Lest we forget about Lensmen, to say the very least. I wonder what the secret sauce was that made it appealing (to me) in pulp stories versus when comic books do it.

>>23931503
That's real good wisdom, frankly. When I've done writing my biggest success was when I dealt with world needs as they came up. There's a very basic bare minimum of sorting out the world - for hyboria it's pretty much just the map, that's it. You don't need to know the name of a river in West Aquilonia until a character ends up there. You don't need an autistic level of lore for the magic system unless you set it in a magic academy and if you are doing so it's not pulp.

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Here is a sneak preview of the upcoming Skull story.

https://files.catbox.moe/wmn5mk.pdf

>>23981883
It's too bad there aren't more city adventures. On the other hand, something else that I find interesting is how there are quite a number of Doc Savage novels in which he is in the wilderness or out in the country or townships rather than any place we would typically consider to be "exotic." Something there about a healthy respect for non-city slickers back then.

>>23981870
Where does /pg/ fall on the matter of pulp stories involving superpowers? What about superhero pulp stories?

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>>23976265
Sure. Just be mindful of the physical advantages of men over women like the pulp writers did back then. Giving the woman a boost should help though. Consider how Red Sonja is imbued with power by a goddess to make her a powerful warrior. Sure, she's a comic book character, but she's quite downstream from the pulps in the first place.

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>>23983634
As someone who's read a good handful of pulp after being a big fan of capeshit, I can tell you that it's a bit of a strange area - that is, superhero pulp fiction. While sci-fi or magical urban fantasy pulp fiction is no stranger to characters having esoteric or weird powers of the mind or body, it's within a pre-superhero context. The tropes and traits of the superhero (masked identity, civilian and heroic personas, daring adventures fighting crime, etc) exist but without the confines or expectations of what should normally happen in such a capeshit story. I'd argue that manga like Chainsawman are truer to the spirit of pulp hero fiction than most realize for this reason.

>>23981910
Elaborating on this, but the big distinction between capeshit/comic books and pulp hero fiction is that the latter tends to FEEL more "real". Pulp fiction is punchy and very much by-the-seat-of-your-pants. It pulls you in quickly, lays down the pieces, and gets things going. Being weekly made on a chapter by chapter basis further contributes to this. There's little room to make it feel emotionally removed from reality. No time to waste worldbuilding or fleshing out characters excessively or get stuck in an inner monologue, we've things to do and see.

Capeshit/comic books suffer(?) due to being a visual medium with notable limits being both the writing and art, with the latter being the most appealing part of it. You can always rewrite pulp fiction as you're writing it, but once you've laid down the inks for comic art - and depending on how much time you have - you can't undo things without adding more stress and work. There's also the difficulty in increased serialization clashing against the pro-status quo nature of things. More and more things will stick around and must inevitably be detailed in and whoops now your superhero story feels nothing recognizably human.

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>>23984209
In theory, you COULD produce a superhero pulp fiction story but it would have to lean much more closely to the earliest capeshit produced. Very pulpy and quick to the point, less time spent meandering on excessive worldbuilding, have a supporting cast of ordinary folks, set in a real-life war, and so on.

Any good pulp stories with martial arts or fist fighting? Need to learn how to write a good scene with those things

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>>23981080
The outlandish nature of superpowers, I'd argue, is the effect of censorship and the resulting consequences of capeshit comics being deemed exclusively for kids (an attitude that still exists to this day). Superpowers aren't allowed to be "real" in the way that a gun or sword or bomb is (nevermind the matter of required secondary powers). Real life weapons and tools have uses to them, drawbacks, limitations, weaknesses, versatility, and of course a physical effect on a victim. You and I both know what these things can do, either by seeing or reading about it, or even having first-hand experience.

Meanwhile in real life there's no context to draw from when you see a superpower in fiction. You've never seen eye lasers, time stops, or bug control. And even when you see them in fiction, they're censored or dwell within the further fictional reality required so Batman doesn't dislocate his shoulder using a grappling hook, that Superman doesn't accidentally kill people when he catches them, or that the Flash doesn't get set ablaze when he runs.

>>23984218
Try the short stories of Black Mask Magazine.

>>23984209
> First point
That is something which has fascinated me about manga and anime for years. I think that one of the reasons that they have proliferated so much is because they present original story worlds and original characters with familiar power sets. Instead of costumed crimefighters, the superpowered characters might be kung fu fighters, pirates, ninjas, alchemists, etc. That change in premise carries with it all kinds of fresh stories untold. More or less your point about Chainsaw Man, no?

That just might be the way.

>>23984216
In other words, the Golden Age of Comic Books. This was a period where a lot of comics just straight up ripped of pulp characters but put them in a new medium so they were able to take root before the original characters could. Looking at you Superman and Batman.

>>23984218
Earlier this month I read a Spider novel in which his fiance gets into a jiu-jitsu fight with an Egyptian chick. it was oddly technical. The Spider is always full of surprises like that.

>>23984209
Know what's a common pitfall in superhero storytelling? When you see next to no normal people in the course of the story. The emotional resonance of the story is in how the heroes are affected by the conflict rather than how the people who they are supposed to protect are affected by the threat. It's a giant cosplay convention full of drama and flashy effects.

Not that it never happened in the hero pulps, but the last Spider novel I read was about a death cult drugging New York City with a hypnotic chemical which they used to talk masses of people into committing suicide with a few whispers. Comic book superheroes often have stories where you see very little of the common man on the street being affected or even threatened by the latest villain plot. It's nice to see Superman save a falling construction worker or Spider-Man beat up some muggers now and then, but those are little moments rather than the meat of the story.

If I wrote a superhero pulp, I would keep that in mind. Innocent people need to actually be shows being threatened by the villainous plot of the story.

>>23984226
It was only a year into Batman's existence that he stopped using guns and gained Robin in order to make him more palatable to children (read: palatable to their mothers). So, while there was no hard censorship in the early 1940s, there were pressures to tone down violence since it was not abstracted by the written word like in a pulp. The images were being drawn.

You have a point there that superpowers, especially offensive ones, were ultimately substitutes for guns, blades, explosives, etc. It engaged a child's imagination, but it only happened because of pearl-clutching. This is exacerbated once comic books reached deconstruction. Pulp never got that far thank God.

This is also likely part of the appeal of superpowered characters like Deadpool. Sure, he's a quirky costumed antihero who makes metanarrative jokes, but he uses swords and guns and martial arts. No reinventing the wheel. It's a far cry from Superman firing his heat vision. Sure, there's still wish fulfillment, but how many people have ever so much as used a gas cutting torch or a plasma arc torch (I have, but I digress).

Thus, should a pulp writer ask why the hero or villain cannot use conventional weapons and gear to achieve an effect? Once the conventional has been ruled out, is that when superpowers have the most potential?

>>23984209
One of my favorite things about pulp is how "in and out" it is. Very little foreplay and when it's done it's over and out. Whole novels usually wrap up in less than a page. It's otherwise almost all killer no filler from beginning to end. Not that being more evenly paced has no value, but a lot of genre fiction is arbitrarily longer than it needs to be. Pulp exposes those stories. It shows a different way.

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>>23984770
Japan has captured the hearts of audiences worldwide by tapping into the idea of the superpower as a tool: this is known as "universal accessibility". Tokusatsu capeshit like Kamen Rider has a transforming belt, Super Sentai has their heroes use a similar device but on their wrists or in their hands, and of course there's Ultraman as another example. Mecha is no stranger to this, as the earliest Mecha anime/manga were of the "super robot", inspired by Superman but taking the overall concept and turning it into a giant machine that could be given commands or physically operated via remote. Once again, it's the superpower being turned into a tool.

It's similar to why Spider-Man and stories inspired by it (Ben 10, Danny Phantom) are so popular. He's right next to Batman for that reason, evoking the idea of having tools to save the day. Interestingly, Superman is considered this, or at least the idea of wearing a red cape to give you superpowers got associated with him, and that's not even getting into Captain Marvel/Shazam outselling Superman due to what I just talked about (turning the superpowers into a tool: just say the magic word SHAZAM).

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>>23984801
Writers have long since neglected the importance of regular human characters in hero fiction. You want to be The Shadow, but you're meant to emotionally identify with Joe Cardona, Harry Vincent, and the agents and allies we follow, as well as the varied people we meet along the way, good or bad. This is how the hero becomes mythic: they were once ordinary men but now have been uplifted to semi-supernatural status, either by their own hands or through a mysterious third party.

>you're not supposed to want to be Dracula, you're meant to identify with Jonathan Harker, Mina and Lucy, Dr Seward, and Van Helsing

It's worth pointing out that Doc Savage's inspirations included Jesus Christ and Abraham Lincoln (and The Shadow inspired Doc Savage, with The Shadow being inspired by King Arthur and Dracula). The New Testament parallels the pulps in this way: the Apostles as ordinary human men speaking of the legendary Christ and their experiences with him. They are normal, he is not. And you can also see this parallel with the mythologizing of Abraham Lincoln in history.

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>>23984838
I was quite excited when reading this post of yours because Metal Gear Solid feels like the ideal example of tapping into superpowers to further enhance conventional conflict and weaponry. Take Foxhound as an example:

>Liquid: engineered clone of a naturally born borderline super-soldier
>Ocelot: greatest sharpshooter in the world, and has some psychic abilities similar to his father
>Mantis: can fly (but it's limited) and read minds, and possess people
>Raven: uses a Gatling gun as a weapon, and commands ravens using his shamanic powers

Then there's the Cobras
>The Pain commands bees to fetch and control weapons, and even form weapons
>The Fear has super-flexibility and uses prototype stealth camo, perfect for setting traps and shooting arrows
>The End can regenerate and revive via photosynthesis, making sniping a long but inevitable victory for him
>The Sorrow could commune with dead soldiers on the battlefield for info
>The Fury could absorb fire (after dying, interestingly enough), and has nothing but a jetpack, spacesuit, and flamethrower

And then there's Dead Cell:
>Vamp's healing factor, wall crawling, super-speed, walk-on-water
>Fortune's EM machine/luck powers(?) that prevents bullets from landing

>Desperado are all cyborgs of varying degrees, with Armstrong using nanomachines

It's a natural evolution throughout the series, originally starting with villains using conventional weaponry before supplementing/supplanting them with superpowers, yet never forgetting to center them around conventional conflict, hence why it feels quite believable despite being so imaginary.

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>>23984838
JJBA is a wonderful case of superpowers being exploited for their full creative potential: Stands are embodied superpowers acting as the reflection of the user's soul, revolving around Concept/Application rather than Theme found within capeshit. Stand powers are very unique and character-focused, forcing the users to outsmart and out-think the enemy in order to defeat the other. Fights are situational, drawing comparisons to exaggerated high-stakes gambling or chess. You discover the ability, try to solve what it does and how it works, what it can't do, what it is vulnerable to, and then find a way to counter and get around it in order to win. There's a great deal of logic built in.

Take Killer Queen's SHR against Jotaro, Josuke, and Koichi: SHR is an autonomous tiny tank invincible to damage and is a remote bomb that follows the warmest thing in the vicinity. How do you beat it?

>it's autonomous: if a warmer person or object shows up, it will not target the intended victim and switch targets (so you set a fire and get the hell out of there)
>furthermore, it won't deactivate if it doesn't reach the intended target: so the user must risk discovery should they return to pick it up and regain Killer Queen's bomb abilities (which means you can set a fire and then wait until the user comes out of hiding)
>it's still dependent on gravity: either sink that fucker into the ground and it's stuck, or fling it miles into the air or toss it in the ocean
>it's linked to the hand of the user: so put it back together (which is what Josuke did) and then follow it back

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>>23985962
>>23985854
I can't believe I forgot to mention how Araki has spoken of Jesus Christ as an influence on how he writes his heroes, not to mention how Araki studied at a Christian school when he was younger or even how Jesus shows up in Part 7.

Maybe I should read the Bible again. It's been a good while.

>>23985839
First, I took the tokupill a couple of years ago and it really opened my eyes. Second, I quite like this notion. Writing "superpowers as tools" down for later.

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>>23984770
Forgot to mention that Chainsawman has a lot of pulp baked into it by nature of what influenced it:

>Spider-Man (red and black colored hero grappling with interpersonal conflict and opposing desires)
>Evil Dead (hero as a slacker with a chainsaw fighting demons - don't forget that Raimi created Darkman)
>Hellboy (the movie particularly: the hero as a devil going on pulpy action-adventures)
>Kamen Rider (a transforming hero who uses the powers of evil but for good, complete with bike, other transforming villains or monsters to fight against and a female counterpart)
>Devilman (boy with the powers of a devil fighting against other devils to protect mankind)
>Berserk (Denji is a modern urban Guts, who himself is a Japanese Conan the Barbarian but with aspects of Elric the Eternal Champion)

Fuck it. I'll respond to a number of posts to kick off the next thread.

NEW THREAD: >>23986453
NEW THREAD: >>23986453
NEW THREAD: >>23986453