PULP! Hugo the rat.

Nothing really from me today, mainly because I saw this excellent post by Nathan over at Castalia House. It’s a fascinating read, and well worth ten minutes of anyone’s life to read.
Enjoy!

Hugo the Rat

Red Shadows, By Robert E Howard

Robert E Howard. Best known as the guy who created Conan, Howard was incredibly prolific as a writer, packing more stories into one short lifetime than most creators, myself included can get over in the full 3 score and 10. The man was a storyteller of the first rank, filling his tales with two-fisted heroes that always make for an enjoyable tale.
Now I, like the majority of Howards fans I’d guess am a die-hard Conan fan. It’s what I came to first and have always enjoyed the most, and I’ll make no apologies for that thank you very much. Coming up a close second is the dour ‘more John Wick than John Wick’ Soloman Kane. There’s just something about a revenge tale done right that is so damn satisfying, and Red Shadows delivers, in spades.
The one element in Shadows that really stands out for me is the genius use of the zombie, unlike anything that I’ve seen elsewhere. Howard has his Juju-man reanimate a corpse by leaving his own body and entering it, wearing the man’s skin like a puppeteer. Said zombie then kills a despot, winning freedom for himself and Kane. The description is tight, the atmosphere is contagious and the outcome … so satisfying.
Absolute genius.

Now the corpse was upright, swaying on stiltlike legs, body tilting far back until the sightless eyes seemed to stare straight into the red moon that was just rising over the black jungle. The thing tottered uncertainly in a wide, erratic half-circle, arms flung out grotesquely as if in balance, then swayed about to face the two thrones—and the Black God. A burning twig at Kane’s feet cracked like the crash of a cannon in the tense silence. The horror thrust forth a black foot—it took a wavering step— another. Then with stiff, jerky and automatonlike steps, legs straddled far apart, the dead man came toward the two who sat in speechless horror to each side of the Black God. “Ah-h-h!” from somewhere came the explosive sigh, from that shadowy semicircle where crouched the terror-fascinated worshipers. Straight on stalked the grim specter. Now it was within three strides of the thrones, and Le Loup, faced by fear for the first time in his bloody life, cringed back in his chair; while Songa, with a superhuman effort breaking the chains of horror that held him helpless, shattered the night with a wild scream and, springing to his feet, lifted a spear, shrieking and gibbering in wild menace. Then as the ghastly thing halted not its frightful advance, he hurled the spear with all the power of his great, black muscles, and the spear tore through the dead man’s breast with a rending of flesh and bone. Not an instant halted the thing —for the dead die not—and Songa the king stood frozen, arms outstretched as if to fend off the terror.
An instant they stood so, leaping firelight and eery moonlight etching the scene forever in the minds of the beholders. The changeless staring eyes of the corpse looked full into the bulging eyes of Songa, where were reflected all the hells of horror. Then with a jerky motion the arms of the thing went out and up. The dead hands fell on Songa’s shoulders. At the first touch, the king seemed to shrink and shrivel, and with a scream that was to haunt the dreams of every watcher through all the rest of time, Songa crumpled and fell, and the dead man reeled stiffly and fell with him. Motionless lay the two at the feet of the Black God, and to Kane’s dazed mind it seemed that the idol’s great, inhuman eyes were fixed upon them with terrible, still laughter.

Howard, Robert E Red Shadows

Motivation-Reaction Units done right, featuring Randy Ingermanson and Schuyler Hernstrom.

RIVKA MEYERS KNEW SOMETHING WAS wrong when she bumped into a wall that wasn’t there. “Ow!” She tugged at the virtual reality headset she had worn for the past half hour. “Dr. West?” she said. “How do I get this thing off?” No response. She fumbled with the straps at her chin. “Dr. West? Are you there? Hello?” The buckle popped loose in her hand. She pulled off the headset and blinked. The lab was much darker than she remembered, and it smelled musty. Why hadn’t she noticed that before? The game had defocused her vision. While she waited for her eyes to adjust, she put her hand against the wall. It felt rough, stony. Like limestone, said something deep inside her archaeologist’s brain.

Ingermanson, R.S.. Transgression: A Time-Travel Suspense Novel (City of God Book 1)

“Who are the greatest enemies of the gods?” asked Mortu, shouting above the rumbling din of the iron steed upon which he rode.
Kyrus sniffed at the question as he sat arms folded, eyes half closed against the wind. Mortu pressed the issue. “Who laid waste to both church and temple so that man would lose his sense of hope and swear fealty to an alien emperor?” Kyrus answered, “The Illilissy, of course.” The big warrior smiled and continued. “And who broke the reign of the Illilissy? Who sent them back to their blue ships and onward to their far home?” Kyrus sighed. After hundreds of leagues on the road, he knew hundreds of variations of this feeble line of attack. Yet the big northerner kept attempting, tenacity beyond reason. The monk picked a nit from the fur on his thigh and replied.

Hernstrom, Schuyler. Mortu and Kyrus in the White City

Two openings, both making extensive use of motivation-reaction units. Ingermanson’s is in your face, this happened, then this happened which led to this happening. It’s a thriller, so it works, the reader expects the action to begin right from the start and to not let up. ‘Bumped into a wall’ leads to ‘ow’ leads to taking ‘VR goggles off’. Action, followed by feeling (implied) leading to speech (stated) which leads to the next MRU which is taking the goggles off. Nice, neat and reads like an ice-cold lager on a hot day.

Hernstrom meanwhile writes what I believe to be literary science-fiction (and he’s bloody good at it too!) and so the MRU’s are less in your face, are subtle, but they are, without any doubt, there. The motivator requiring reaction is the machine they are riding on, the steel hog, and the wind that is created by riding at speed. It causes Mortu to shout, while Kyrus has to half close his eyes to keep the wind out of them, but as it’s an ongoing scene, in that it started before we began reading, his talking before this was stated makes perfect sense, as the motivator against which he is primarily acting is his companion’s question. It’s clever, works beautifully to draw you in and lets you know that the rest of the story will be of a similar quality.

Two books, two great stories, I’m happy to recommend both of them. Read them with an eye towards MRU’s and you’ll see how fantastically both writers handle them.

PULP! Inspiration, by William Wallace Cook.

There’s a lot of “fiddle-faddle” wrapped up in that word “inspiration.” It is the last resort of the lazy writer, of the man who would rather sit and dream than be up and doing. If the majority of writers who depend upon fiction for a livelihood were to wait for the spirit of inspiration to move them, the sheriff would happen along and tack a notice on the front door— while the writers were still waiting.
William Wallace Cook. The Fiction Factory

I used to be a bugger where inspiration was concerned, sitting in front of my screen waiting for something to hit me like a bolt out of the blue. After 10 minutes of this, I’d get bored and start to play a little Magic, or perhaps Plants v Zombies. Surprisingly enough the lightning rod of inspiration never struck. While my mind was fully occupied with the games inspiration doubtlessly came and went again, unable to get through while I was completely focused on a pointless endeavor.
It wasn’t until I started reading heavily again that inspiration came to perch on my shoulder, and this time I was ready. I had a notebook at my side at all time, a ready supply of pens, and no matter how daft the idea, I always put them in the book. Ideas breed other ideas, reading helps to see how these ideas can be connected, developed and released back into the wild.
Take it from me, if you’re lacking inspiration, don’t look for it in any place that demands you use the analytical. Instead, allow your mind to seek out new avenues among the imagination of others. Inspiration will strike, I guarantee it.

 

A Code of Morals, by Rudyard Kipling.

I do so love a bit of Kipling!

It’s been both a long and a short week here at Chez McSmith. Lil Buddy went back to school, into Year One no less, and not without a few tears I might add and only some of them were from her! Getting my writing time back has been wonderful, but the truth is I miss her, and the best time of the day is always when she gets back. It’s very nice to be missed, isn’t it?
The poem though. If, is a very serious poem, containing the kind of advice that can make a real difference in a chaps life. A Code of Morals sounds like it should offer something similar, and yet nothing could be further from the truth. Of course, there is a serious theme underlying the words, this is Kipling after all, but the intention here is to amuse, provoke a wry smile and even if you’re so inclined a bit of a titter.
Enjoy!

Now Jones had left his new-wed bride to keep his house in order,
And hied away to the Hurrum Hills above the Afghan border,
To sit on a rock with a heliograph; but ere he left he taught
His wife the working of the Code that sets the miles at naught.

And Love had made him very sage, as Nature made her fair;
So Cupid and Apollo linked , per heliograph, the pair.
At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise —
At e’en, the dying sunset bore her husband’s homilies.

He warned her ‘gainst seductive youths in scarlet clad and gold,
As much as ‘gainst the blandishments paternal of the old;
But kept his gravest warnings for (hereby the ditty hangs)
That snowy-haired Lothario, Lieutenant-General Bangs.

‘Twas General Bangs, with Aide and Staff, who tittupped on the way,
When they beheld a heliograph tempestuously at play.
They thought of Border risings, and of stations sacked and burnt —
So stopped to take the message down — and this is whay they learnt —

“Dash dot dot, dot, dot dash, dot dash dot” twice. The General swore.
“Was ever General Officer addressed as ‘dear’ before?
“‘My Love,’ i’ faith! ‘My Duck,’ Gadzooks! ‘My darling popsy-wop!’
“Spirit of great Lord Wolseley, who is on that mountaintop?”

The artless Aide-de-camp was mute; the gilded Staff were still,
As, dumb with pent-up mirth, they booked that message from the hill;
For clear as summer lightning-flare, the husband’s warning ran: —
“Don’t dance or ride with General Bangs — a most immoral man.”

[At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise —
But, howsoever Love be blind, the world at large hath eyes.]
With damnatory dot and dash he heliographed his wife
Some interesting details of the General’s private life.

The artless Aide-de-camp was mute, the shining Staff were still,
And red and ever redder grew the General’s shaven gill.
And this is what he said at last (his feelings matter not): —
“I think we’ve tapped a private line. Hi! Threes about there! Trot!”

All honour unto Bangs, for ne’er did Jones thereafter know
By word or act official who read off that helio.
But the tale is on the Frontier, and from Michni to Mooltan
They know the worthy General as “that most immoral man.”

Purple Prose, by Ian Thomas Healy

There are always holes in a writers skill set, and writing action sequences was definitely one of mine. I’d get cold sweats at the thought of writing the damned things, and they always came out in a horrid porridge-like mess. It was like my protagonists were walking through molasses, and although swords were swung and guns were fired there was no snap, no fizz of a good rollicking fight scene.
Which is where Ian Thomas Healy and his excellent book Action! came in. It didn’t solve all my problems, let’s face it, no book ever will, but it did provide some answers, and at the end of the day that’s all you can really ask for isn’t it? Below are his thoughts on the dreaded Purple Prose, and yes, this is a terrible sin of mine, and I make no bones about it!

PURPLE PROSE
We’re all writers, and we love words. It can be tempting to reach into one’s thesaurus to come up with beautiful and unusual words to perfectly capture the essence of our intent. Unfortunately, there’s no place for this in an action scene. Overwriting drags the pace of a scene down to a crawl as the reader has to try to follow the flow of action through a muddle of rich language. Along the same lines is the problem of the odd word choice. You may love the word conflagration, but a typical reader may not know it also means fire. I’m not saying don’t use rich language at all, but if a reader doesn’t know a word, it’s like hitting a roadblock as they look at it, go “Huh?” and have to deduce its meaning from the language around it.

Healy, Ian Thomas. Action! Writing Better Action Using Cinematic Techniques

THE NAMELESS OFFSPRING, by Clark Ashton Smith

The Cthulhu Mythos is a very broad church, and many great writers have dipped their toes in it. Clark Ashton Smith jumped in, swam a few lengths and declared the pool his own. He had the same faculty with language, with far greater control (let’s be honest here, Lovecraft could have benefitted on occasion from an editor with a greater grasp on the red pencil) where every word works at moving the story forward.
Here’s a paragraph from my own personal favorite from his Mythos stories, The Nameless Offspring. It’s a tale that creeps up on you, slowly making you comfortable before springing on you like a cat that’s missed its meal. The following paragraph sets the table, preparing the diner for the horror that’s to come, describing a single moment.
Enjoy!

Without even glancing at the door, my host went on, carrying a taper that scarcely shook in his feeble fingers. My curious reflections, as I followed him, were interrupted with nerve-shattering suddenness by a loud cry that seemed to issue from the barred room. The sound was a long, ever-mounting ululation, infra-bass at first like the tomb-muffled voice of a demon, and rising through abominable degrees to a shrill, ravenous fury, as if the demon had emerged by a series of underground steps to the open air. It was neither human nor bestial, it was wholly preternatural, hellish, macabre; and I shuddered with an insupportable eeriness, that still persisted when the demon voice, after reaching its culmination, had returned by reverse degrees to a profound sepulchral silence.

 

Motivation-Reaction Units, by Dwight Swain.

I love Twitter, it’s the greatest timewaster on the whole of the internet, no doubt about it.  You can find the whole range of human experience on the site, and sometimes you see a question that really makes you think. Take yesterday (Please, it sucked!) a random user asked ‘have you ever thrown a book in the bin?’
Yes, yes I have.
Sometimes it’s the big things, a character that hurts children? That’ll get your book thrown out of a window. More often though it’s a bunch of little things, and constantly getting your motivation-reaction units wrong will do it for me. What do I mean by this? Well I could tell you, or I could let Dwight Swain do the heavy lifting, and as he’s sold many millions of books more than I have it’s only fair that he gets the glory. The piece below is taken from his great book Techniques of the Selling Writer.

Here illustrated we have a specialized type of cause-effect pattern which we term motivation-reaction. It is cause and effect applied to people. Cause becomes motivating stimulus … effect, character reaction. What is a motivating stimulus?
Anything outside your focal character to which he reacts. What is a character reaction?
Anything your focal character does in consequence of the motivating stimuli that impinge upon him. More specifically?
A character may react to anything … from the world coming to an end to a puppy’s snuffling; from a breath of fresh air to the thunder of jet bombers overhead. He may react by anything … from dropping dead of shock to feeling a momentary pang of doubt; from smiling, ever so slightly, in his sleep to signing the order that sends a million Jews to the gas chamber.
A motivating stimulus may come to you on a level at which you aren’t even consciously aware of it . . . at night, for example, when the temperature drops unexpectedly, chilling you in your sleep because your covers are too light. You may react just as unconsciously, without waking, by huddling into a cramped foetal ball in an effort to defeat the cold.

And so it goes. Someone pulls a gun; you stop short. A girl casts a side-wise glance; you start forward. The clock strikes; you get up. The music ends; you sit down. There’s a whiff of perfume; you straighten your shoulders. A skunk blasts at you from beneath the porch; you cringe into your coat. Each time, one motivating stimulus; one character reaction.

Together, they constitute a motivation-reaction unit. Each unit indicates some change, however small—change in state of affairs; change in state of mind.
Properly selected and presented, each one moves your story a step forward. Link unit to unit, one after another, and your prose picks up momentum. Strength and impact build. Before you know it, the sentences race down the page like a fast freight hurtling through the night. The situation cannot but develop!
That is, it cannot if you also understand such technicalities as . . .

The pattern of emotion:
On this particular night the house is dark when you get home. A note on the hall table tells you that your wife has left you for another man.
You stare at the message stupidly at first, numb with disbelief. Then, in intermingling waves, shock washes through you, and horror, and pain, and rage, and grief. Falling into the nearest chair, you curse aloud. Only then, in spite of all your efforts to control yourself, the curses change to a strange sort of laughter. And even while you laugh, you find, tears somehow are coursing down your cheeks.
What has happened?
You have received a motivating stimulus. This is the note. It points up a change in your state of affairs, your situation. This change in state of affairs causes changes in your state of mind. Your emotional balance, your equilibrium, is shattered. Feelings, ordinarily neatly restrained and disciplined, break loose in a surging chaos. These feelings take the overt form of observable reaction. You fall into a chair. You curse, you laugh, you cry. And there is the pattern of emotion. It’s the mechanism which creates feeling in your readers, and then helps them keep those feelings straight.

Its secret lies in the order in which you present your material … a strictly chronological order, so that one item follows another exactly as they occur in point of time. Never is any doubt left as to which element comes first, or which is cause and which effect.
To that end, you pretend that only one thing can happen at a time: Your bridge partner studies his own hand, and then he looks across at the dummy, and then he eyes your opponents, and then he frowns, and then he tugs at his earlobe, and then he twists in his chair, and then he puffs at his cigarette, and then he smiles wryly, and then he says, “Think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?” and then he plays the ace.
He does not do all these things at once, the way it really happened.
Now I grant you that I am, to a degree, exaggerating, here. It’s entirely legitimate for you to write, “Frowning, he twisted in his chair,” or “Puffing at his cigarette, he eyed Steve’s cards briefly.” But in general you avoid all hints of simultaneity, of events that take place at the same time.
The reason you do this is rooted in the very nature of written communication. For in writing, one word follows another, instead of being overprinted in the same space.
Which makes it impossible truly to capture on paper the fact that a man breathes and sweats and scowls and digests his dinner all at the same time. Furthermore, any attempt to present simultaneity rather than sequence is bound to confuse your reader.
Why?
Because simultaneity obscures the cause-effect, motivation-reaction relationship that gives your story meaning to him. (You can say that things happened simultaneously, you understand. But in point of fact you emphasize sequence, chronological order: “After that, everything happened at once. Hans swung the bottle, and Melville, ducking, whipped out his knife. Across the room, Scarne slashed at the rope that held the chandelier. The next instant, the brackets gave way,” and so on.)
To repeat, then, you present your material so that one thing follows another in strictly chronological order.

In terms of constructing a motivation-reaction unit, that order is this:
A. Motivating stimulus.
B. Character reaction.
(1) Feeling.
(2) Action.
(3) Speech.

I know, much longer than my usual posts, but it’s all good advice in this one. I really can’t underline how much Swain can improve your writing, no matter what genre you’re associated with. Follow his advice and your writing will be smoother and a lot easier to read.

PULP! The importance of characters, by Marion B Cockrell.

Characterisation used to terrify me, mainly because I found myself writing the same one over and over again. Two dimensional and more than a little Mary-Sueish, a stage perhaps that all writers go through on their journey. Good advice is hard to find, most of it next to useless, so when you find something that really makes you think … good days!
With that in mind, I never tire of reading wisdom passed down from those who worked in the Pulp Era. These guys and gals wrote to put food on the table, to excite and entertain their readers and they did so with skill and talent. Marion Cockrell’s essay in
Bryce Beattie’s collection of articles is an excellent primer on the subject, proving that good advice ALWAYS ages well.

In writing any kind of story it is important to remember that in fiction nothing is important except in relation to the people it happens to. Anything can be important if it happens to, or is done by, the right person. If a writer has a character, or characters, who are interesting and unusual personalities, they can go through the most commonplace actions and incidents, and hold the reader’s interest completely. Or an unusual or exciting plot can be written about the most ordinary run-of-the-mill people, and if they are real and alive they can produce an absorbing story merely by their reactions to an unusual situation.

Beattie, Bryce. Pulp Era Writing Tips. (Available from Amazon for a very reasonable price)

What is the purpose of a scene, by Larry Brooks.

Learning to write has been a real journey for me. I was a typical rookie; I thought I knew everything when in reality I knew very little at all. Structure was a surprise to me, and Larry Brook’s trio of excellent books, Story Engineering, Story Physics and Story Fix really drive home just how important it is. Now I have no beef with either pantsers or plotters, I can see the pros and cons of both ways of writing. Honestly, I suspect that most writers are a combination of the two anyway. That being said, structure is inescapable, ignore it and you always, always end up in a mess. At the heart of structure is the humble scene, and here Brooks gives valuable insight into what you need to get across.

… every scene needs to deliver a piece of story information, also known as exposition. A scene that merely describes a place, or even something about a particular character, yet nothing really ever happens in the scene—no decision, no information, no action, no change or forward motion to the story whatsoever—the scene violates one of the most basic and empowering of storytelling principles. Every scene has a mission to accomplish. Or it should have. And that mission—in addition to lovely descriptive language about setting and place—is to move the story forward. Not to take a snapshot of it. That said, here’s the golden little secret that is rarely spoken aloud, and just as rarely broken: each scene should contain only one such piece of exposition. The mission of each scene is to deliver a single, salient, important piece of story to the reader.

Brooks, Larry. Story Engineering (p. 233). F+W Media. Kindle Edition.