I usually post about the often overlooked good points of the pulps, but there’s no excusing some of their worst excesses, pointed out by a copy editor who spent time cleaning up their messes.
GRINDING TO A PULP
By KENNETH A. FOWLER
Mr. Fowler was formerly a copy editor with street & Smith Publications. Consequently, the chances against pulp writers in general, contained in the article herewith, while caustic, are based on experience and should prove helpful to those who wish to improve their product.
TO me, the amazing thing about pulp writers is not the quantity of their output, which is prodigious, but the quality, which is poor. Even after handling hundreds of their yarns as a copy editor 1 have not ceased to be amazed by that poorness, nor, I might add, have editors ceased to be annoyed by it.
Now obviously, it isn’t wise to annoy editors unnecessarily; even they can be goaded too far. and indeed, the best plan is not to annoy them at all. They have enough annoyances without adding you to their list, and the less you bother them, the better they’ll like you. And one of the ways you can earn that liking—one of the surest ways I know—is to give them better stories, not just better plotted stories, but better written ones.
Let me give you a few tips from the copy editor’s angle. But first let me re-emphasize that most all writers and would-be writers who are grinding it out to a pulp market possess the common weakness. They may have a good yarn to spin, may have colorful and exciting characters, may have a vivid and exotic background for their stories—but, (soft, sad music, Professor!) they can’t write. That is, can’t or won’t. They are carpenters, not cabinetmakers; they can saw and plane and drive nails, but they can’t be bothered with the delicate mortising of a joint, or the toilsome buffing that would give a fine, high luster to the finished product. Such exactions are too fatiguing; yet they call themselves writers—these lazy apprentices who are unwilling to perform the drudgery that would make them finished journeymen and worthy exemplars of their craft.
A writer, to my mind, is one who can turn his hand to any particular kind of writing job and turn out copy that has style and sinew in it. And few pulp-grinders are writers, by that definition, because of an almost total inability to infuse their yarns with a certain rare quality of smoothness which pulp book editors sometimes refer to as “flow.” They may produce the sinew, but more often than not the style eludes them like some perverse will-o’-the-wisp.
What makes the great majority of pulp writers so woefully inept when it comes to stringing sentences together in smooth and orderly patterns? One reason, of course, is the obvious one: they write too rapidly to pay much attention to editorial styling or the niceties of grammar and punctuation. The second reason is less obvious but equally true: they have been too busy writing the wrong way ever to learn the right.
What is this “flow,” then, that the editors talk about? Stated simply, it is the elimination of choppy and awkward sentence construction, the weeding out of the obtrusive phrase, the clumsy or jerky line—anything, in short, that impedes the smooth, easy current of narration. Sometimes the use of connectives — “and,” “but,” “although,” “yet,” “or”—helps to relieve this bumpy writing. Too many commas, particularly when doubtfully placed, also can hinder the narrative flow, and one editor of my acquaintance draws the line at semicolons, contending that they act as a check and break up the smoothness of a sentence. I don’t entirely subscribe to that belief; semicolons have their place, but doubtless can be used to excess, like every other device of punctuation. Too many exclamation points, for example, are a sign of weakness, for the writer is trying to obtain by mere punctuation an effect which he should have gained by painstaking writing.
I know of one Western pulp author who, when his characters are talking, ends nearly every other sentence with an exclamation point. This is not only a source of irritation to the weary copy editor who must edit them out, but an annoyance to the reader, also, if too many of these superfluous punctuative appendages are permitted to remain. For instance, it is absurd to tack an exclamation mark to the end of a sentence such as, “I’ll see you tomorrow!” for it serves only to confuse the reader by attracting undue attention to an ordinary and matter-of-fact statement.
As a copy editor for one of the oldest pulp- paper plants in the business, I worked over pulp yarns by the hundreds—mending, amending, cutting, sewing up, reshaping and rewriting— and of this endless editorial influx, I should say that better than fifty per cent of the stories that came to my operating table were in dire need of the knife.
These yarns had sold because they had told a story, but certainly not because they had fulfilled that other important function of the story-teller’s art—telling it well. It was the copy editor’s task to inoculate these stiff, often lifeless narratives with the saving elixir of fluency, giving them not only the editorially desirable flow, but also, where possible, some faint vestige of verisimilitude.
The point I make is this: how much more certain would be the sales of these bungling writers, how much more interest would editors take in their wares, how much greater would be their chance for higher word rates, if only they would show some evidence of care and solicitude in the simple task of framing their sentences and choosing their words. I grant that it isn’t always easy to find the mot juste, the word that conveys precisely and accurately the intended meaning, the word that is fresh, crisp and exactly right! But it is worth hunting for, and trying to get, if only for the thrill of finally discovering it and doing a writing job as nearly perfect as you can make it.
Not all fiction writers have served journalistic apprenticeships, but training on a daily newspaper is nevertheless invaluable, for it grounds writers in the fundamental art of writing simply and cleanly, without any literary furbelows. Authors who can write or have written verse also have a slight head start on their fellow writers, for the discipline of meter and fixed verse forms will be of unquestionable benefit to those who hope some day to graduate from pulps to slicks.
It is my conviction that there are too many incompetent writers plying the trade of fiction today. It is an astonishing fact—for which I can provide astonishing proof!—that even the established, high-powered pulp-grinder is guilty at times of inexcusable lapses, is prone to the same faults and errors that are committed by his humbler compatriots in the writing game.
For example, I choose this sentence from the work of a writer whose name appears frequently in the better Western pulp books—a sentence lifted from a 20,000-word story bought by the magazine of which I was associate editor: “He acted decisively, exploding sideways, twisting his neck to look both ways at once.” The New Yorker would have liked that for its “Neatest Trick of the Week Department”—if we hadn’t been lucky enough to catch it.
Another writer—without question one of the best-known pulp authors in the country—was guilty of this weird grammatical miscarriage: “They splashed through the mud to a shed beside the blacksmith shop, where the ponies had been sheltered from the storm, howling and singing and wild with drink.” The story didn’t mention where the ponies got the hootch, but I have a feeling that it wasn’t out of a grammar.
And here is a careless sentence by a writer whose work appears not only in numerous pulps, but in Collier’s and other slick magazines: “No woman had the power to make him feel her as Christine did.” I’m afraid the wrong kind of feeling may be implied here, however unintentionally.
Some writers either don’t know the meanings of the words they use, or are inexcusably careless in putting them down. One such author became lyric, not to say slightly dizzy, over the song of a lark. “A lark,” he chanted, “sent high a shaft of melody, expounding his yellow throat with the delight of song.” Another, also ornithological-minded, referred to an “eagle’s aria.” Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary lists four different ways of spelling “aerie,” yet this author had to go operatic on us. Another bright star in our literary firmament saw nothing wrong with the sentence: “But getting away from them this way was helping Conna get back her proper prospectus of things.” What this author needed was a prospectus on a new dictionary, and a somewhat better perspective of etymology.
Occasionally the lapses are too awful to believe, but, believe it or not, this sentence was fished out of a manuscript purchased from a Western-story author noted neither for the particular suavity of his style nor the excellence of his grammar, if any: “In a flash, he remembered all that had happened before his horse drug him to the edge of the ridge above.” We doubt if even Ripley would believe that one, particularly when we mention that the writer of those beautifully chiseled lines was paid for his story at the rate of two cents a word.
An inability to say what he means has been another great difficulty of this blood-and- thunder specialist, and as a result, he very frequently doesn’t mean what he says. Take the sentence: ” ___ ___ had not thought much about what was happening to the owners, particularly the girl; there had been other things too urgent to worry about.” The way this is written it means, paradoxically, that the man’s troubles were so pressing that he didn’t have to worry about them.
The same writer strives so hard for effects that the effect he gets, usually, is mere absurdity. This is a sample: “With a certain wild madness beginning to creep through him, ___ turned his pony and drove back towards the ranch house.” I submit that a high school student with even half an ear for sentence balance would never be guilty of a circumlocution like that.
Many times writers simply do not pause to consider the sound of what they have written. Here, for example, is a remarkable phenomenon —a face that ages in front of your very eyes: “An hour he stood there—two hours—his quick restless hands rolling many cigarettes. As he lit them each match flame revealed a determined face, growing swiftly older as time dragged by.” The poor guy must be as old as the high lama in “Lost Horizon” by this time!
Sometimes it is the highest-paid writer who is the most careless, and this carelessness may prove a boomerang as new and more meticulous craftsmen bid in the pulp marts for editorial favor. A few months ago one of the best- known Western pulp writers, who had been shooting his product exclusively to one house, was lured away by an offer of five and a quarter cents a word from a rival publisher. The rival publisher paid five and a quarter cents each for the following words, part of a 12,000-word novelette, and make what you can of the jumble: “___s men in other sections hustled stolen stuff into these ranches. The cattle were rebranded with registered brands of these outfits stolen from other regions approximated the breed, ages, and all, of the legitimately owned stock of each outfit in the ring; a duplicate of just what the owner’s tally book showed.”
This is simply a case of careless, slipshod writing, but the same author can be guilty of such a curious-sounding sentence as: “He was anxious, but not too anxious to start going somewhere before he knew where he was going.” If it sounds funny, all I can say is, it wasn’t meant to. And to me, the funniest part of it all is that a publishing house will pay five and a quarter cents a word for gibberish.
Even pulp writers should bear in mind that good taste is still de rigueur, notwithstanding the blood and thunder. The sentence, “Bill saw something in his sister’s eyes that made his guts ball up,” is not only obtrusively physiological, but sounds awkward as well. It would have been better if the writer had taken a little more time to think that one over; what Bill saw in those sisterly orbs could be stated just as emphatically in more refined terms
In many cases a phrase or sentence will be found to be merely inept or awkward, and not necessarily incorrect grammatically. For instance, ” ‘My dear Morgan,’ one of them, obviously the leader, said,” is just clumsy arrangement of a sentence, and was changed to, ” ‘My dear Morgan,’ said the obvious leader of the group.” The same author wrote: “He wished he could shake off his love of Alice.” Now I contend that you may shake off fear, if you will, but not love. “He wished he could forget his love of Alice” was all that was needed to tune up this sentence. “She looked as if she had died, but not yet fallen,” (same author) is yet another example of grammatical ineptitude—the lazy writer’s way of avoiding the hard work of being original and striking. The above is striking, perhaps—strikingly bad—and it is also cumbersome, poorly expressed, and very close to absurdity.
Many large publishing houses, including some of the more prominent pulp publishers, hive style books for the guidance of their editors and compositors, and an author earnestly desirous of being cooperative (it pays) might wisely call at the editorial office and request a copy of the booklet. It would, I think, gladly be given.
Such style guides will not, however, teach an author to write well, but will merely furnish him with assistance and information in matters pertaining to punctuation, capitalization, paragraphing and kindred subjects. At the house with which I was connected, Webster’s Dictionary was the office authority for any information not contained in the style book, and patently an author can’t go far wrong if he follows Webster or some equally outstanding authority.
Embryonic authors are unaware, I imagine, how rigorously some pulp books are edited. I venture to say that the one with which I was identified was edited as closely as The New York Times, and I have rewritten by typewriter as many as four complete pages of a short-story, not to mention turning in manuscript pages that, after editing, resembled nothing so much as a block of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Besides the taboos marked down explicitly in style books, most editors have a flock of private taboos, and it is advisable to discover what these are and eschew them as you would a witch’s curse. Some editors object rather violently to verbs such as “grunt, laugh, smile” used as substitutes for good old “said.” “’O, la,’ she laughed,” is, you know, a linguistic feat beyond the power of the human tongue, and many publishing houses insist on: ” ‘Oh, la,’ she said laughing,” or, ” ‘Oh, la,’ she said with a laugh.” Or you can write it this way: ” ‘O, la.’ She laughed.” But don’t have her laugh the “Oh, la.” It can’t be done, and in the more select editorial circles, it isn’t.
Another private hate of some editors is use of an adverb at the end of a quotation, without subject or predicate. An example of this is: “Is that so?’ surlily.” These editors want you to write it, ” ‘Is that so?’ he said surlily.”
One editor with whom I have worked insisted on absolute deletion of the word “rasped” from all stories, and “he grated” and “he ground”
also gave him a moderately severe pain in the neck. It is a good plan to learn as quickly as you can whether the magazine toward which you intend slanting your yarns permits the use of swear words. For years no oath or cuss word ever sullied the pristine pages of Street & Smith’s Western Story Magazine, although in recent months “damns” and “hells” have been allowed to creep in, in a sort of literary “modernization movement.”
To sum up, writers who wish to make a favorable impression on editors—particularly on editors who represent new markets they are trying to crack—will do well to adhere to the following rules:
- Write smoothly and preferably simply, observing the elementary requirements of correct grammar, spelling and punctuation. The extra time taken in turning out a good writing job will be time well spent, for, aside from the fact that editors appreciate good writing and can’t get too much of it (they get darned little!) clean copy gives their copy editors time to help with manuscript reading or other pressing editorial duties.
- Don’t overwrite. It is easy to fall into awkward and clumsy phraseology merely by trying too hard to say a thing with originality. Avoid verbs such as “grated,” “clipped,” “jabbed,” as substitutes for “said,” and remember that the words of Phidias, “The simplest thing is the most beautiful,” may be applied to prose as well as sculpture.
- Compare your story as published with the carbon copy draft in your files. Study the changes that have been made in it, and in this way you will get an accurate slant on the editor’s stylistic prejudices.