Writing for the New Pulp Fiction Market

by Fred Adams, Jr.

Ever hear of The Purple Scar? Lady Domino? The Black Bat? How about the Shadow? Doc Savage? Conan the Barbarian? Ah, I see recognition lighting up a few faces.

The aforementioned heroes and heroine are members of the pantheon of pulp fiction characters popular in the magazines of the 1930s and 40s. Literary types are fond of tagging Pulp Fiction as "escapist literature named after the cheap pulp paper on which the magazines were printed." I prefer to think that Pulp Fiction is named after the state in which the villains are left after the hero is finished beating the living snot out of them.

Hundreds of pulp magazines graced the newsstands and magazine racks of America, some monthly and some weekly in the 1930s and 40s. And they kept authors like H.P. Lovecraft, Fritz Leiber, Ray Bradbury, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, Kenneth Robeson, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and a host of others from starving to death in the hard times of the Great Depression. As a matter of fact, during the Depression, the prolific Robert E. Howard had a greater income than the President of the bank in his hometown of Cross Plains, Texas.

The magazines had titles like Spicy Detective Stories, Weird Tales, Astounding Science Fiction, THRILLING ADVENTURE, THRILLING DETECTIVE, THRILLING MYSTERY, THRILLING RANCH, THRILLING SPORTS, THRILLING WESTERN, and THRILLING WONDER STORIES.

It's no coincidence that so many of these magazines had the word Thrilling as the lead adjective in their titles. That's what their audience wanted - thrills; escape, adventure, romance, to take their minds away from the grinding sadness of the Depression or the horrors of war.

Much of the writing was poor at best, in many cases because it was cranked out so quickly for magazines that came out on a weekly schedule. But the Pulps included gems of very high quality: Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon first appeared in Black Mask. H.P. Lovecraft, Fritz Leiber, and Robert E. Howard saw much of their best work appear in Weird Tales for a half-cent a word (one reason why their stories are often so long and detailed). Even the young Tennessee Williams had a story. "The Vengeance of Nitocris" published in Weird Tales.

In principle, the circumstance is illustrated by an anecdote involving Science Fiction grand master Theodore Sturgeon. The story has it that an interviewer once said to Sturgeon, "Mister Sturgeon, you know that 90 percent of science fiction is crap." Sturgeon replied, "Young man, 90 percent of everything is crap." This was true of Pulp Fiction in the '30s and '40s and is still true of the Pulp Fiction written today. It's that other ten percent that pulp fans look for in new fiction.

In the fifties, the pulps faded away and disappeared from the newsstands, but the best stories and their characters came back in the 1960s in the form of Ace Paperback doubles featuring Conan stories by Howard, and Ballantine paperback reprints of the hundred thirty-odd Doc Savage novels by Lester Dent, aka Kenneth Robeson, Western authors Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour.

What possessed editors and imprints to bring these stories back? It was the nature of the iction.

Pulp writers had one rule that good and bad writers alike followed: adherence to the art of storytelling. Every story had a beginning and an end, sharply etched economical , almost archetypal characterization, loads of action, high emotions, and plenty going on. The mission was to keep the reader hooked while you transported him or her into a more exciting and interesting world of fantasy and make-believe, to spirit the reader away from the drab, everyday world. Its mission was to entertain with a capital E.

My generation, largely born after the pulps disappeared from the newsstand, bought and read these adventurous stories in anthologies with lurid paperback covers and found they were, simply put, fun to read. Pulp fiction has experienced the first stirrings of a new wave of interest in recent years as another generation discovers that reading pulp fiction can be at least as entertaining as video games, television, and social media.

Over the past eight to ten years, vendors began showing up at Sci-Fi cons and then at cons devoted to pulp fiction, cons like the Pulp Fest in Columbus (this year the last weekend of July in Cranberry, PA) and The Windy City Pulp and Paper Con in Chicago with crumbling pulp magazines in plastic sleeves and reprints of entire pulp magazines. The old vintage magazines, because of their cheap paper are hard to find in good condition, so people who wanted to read the adventures of The Shadow or Secret Agent X bought these facsimile editions (complete with the ads for X-ray glasses, sneeze powder and joy buzzers from Johnson-Smith Company) in big numbers.

A common sentiment was the lament that having read the entire canon of a specific author, the fun was over; many wished that the adventures would continue. And they have. Built on the popularity of Conan the Barbarian, Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp, among others, began writing new Conan adventures with the blessing of the Howard Estate's literary executor the late Glenn Lord. Today, I've lost track of the number of authors writing new Conan novels and stories. But they sell. How do we know? Because the publishers keep cranking them out. They will stop when people stop buying them.

As more fans discovered lesser known heroes like some of the ones I mentioned earlier, a demand arose for new stories involving these characters as well. When publishers went looking for literary rights, they learned that a large number of these characters had never been copyrighted, or that their copyrights had never been renewed under law, and they were public domain - free for the taking.

A whole new subgenre of fiction has arisen around the revival of these characters in new stories.

As I said earlier, new wine in old wineskins.

In addition to Conan, new stories featuring Doc Savage, Alan Quatermain, and other characters began to appear, even new Sherlock Holmes stories written by different authors. Alongside the traditional pulp heroes, new characters also emerged and the pulp fans embraced them.

While many of you may not particularly like the kind of rock ’em sock ‘em fiction that the pulp milieu presents, ask yourself this question: what am I? The answer is: a writer. What do writers do? They write for publication. Writing New Pulp is a road to your name on the cover of a book from a legitimate publisher.

Go to the websites of the publishers that I’ll discuss later and download their submission requirements. Those who publish new stories based on established characters provide a character “bible” ranging from a paragraph to a page of information; back story, regular associates, and other details peculiar to the character. Some of these publishers post anthology projects and request submissions. Others send out regular e-mails to writers who work with them or who request the information.

Check them out. If a publisher wants novellas for a Purple Scar anthology, give it a shot. Because these folks are not Knopf or Simon & Shuster, they are a little more down-to-earth and will work with you within reason. Bottom line, they’ll give your work a fair read, and if you write a good piece, they’ll likely use it. The checks may not be huge, but they cash.

And don’t think that this is all you pitch to the New Pulpers. You can submit characters of your own. I’ll use myself as an example.

My entry into Airship 27 was my novel Hitwolf  (what would the Mob do with a werewolf?). It was accepted immediately, as was Six Gun Terrors, vol.1 (cowboys and Cthulhu) that I wrote and submitted four months later.

These two paved the way for my supernatural detective C.O. Jones, Mobsters and Monsters and my first novel and Dead Man's Melody (rejected by one agent who shall remain nameless – he told me the only thing that sells these days is troubled female investigator fiction). Dead Man's Melody coincidentally was nominated by the2017 Pulp Factory Awards as Pulp Novel of the Year.

Other characters of my own accepted and published by Airship 27 include conjoined Chinese twins, the Smith brothers (The Eye of Quang-Chi, nominated as pulp novel of the year this year), and Thirties private eye Ike Mars (Bloody Key).

In addition, I’ve written original character novellas for anthologies for Airship 27: All-American Sports Stories and Aviation Aces, Vol. 1. I’ve also written established character stories for Pulp Mythology vol. 1 (a Beowulf story) Secret Agent X vol. 5 and vol. 6, a Conrad von Hoenig story for Flinch Books' Quest for the Space Gods, and a pair of original Sherlock Holmes stories for Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective vol. 9, as well as stories for volumes 12 and 13.

All were accepted and all are paid publications. Six have already been made into audio books with the others to follow as Airship converts its entire catalog.

I would also point out that the publishers are now looking for female heroes, super powers or not because of the success of last year’s Wonder Woman movie. Robert E. Howard’s Red Sonja is coming back with re-issues of novels by David C. Smith and Dick Tierney. Domino Lady is back under the Airship 27 imprint. Female pulp heroes are going to be a big seller in the near future.

You may not get rich writing new pulp this year, or maybe next year, but your name will be out there, and when an agent or editor asks “what have you published lately?” you have a legitimate answer. Also, when you do a book signing or an author sale like tomorrow's, you have hard copy books to offer. This week I have fifteen titles to put out for sale, all from the past four years.

Things are looking better all the time for the new Pulp Market. Currently, an Airship character named Brother Bones was recently optioned for a movie, and if that succeeds, the producers will be looking for more titles.

So, the market is out there. Now how do you write a New Pulp Fiction story?

Pulp fiction, to my thinking is a logical extension of Gothic fiction from the 18th century. Lurid, sensational novels were popular reading then, and those two adjectives certainly apply to pulp, but the similarities run deeper.

In my doctoral dissertation, Edith Wharton's American Gothic: Gods, Ghosts, and Vampires I defined Gothic fiction as "Literature that portrays society's inability to protect the individual in extreme circumstances."

A favorite example of this extension in the modern world is the classic B movie alien invasion flick of the fifties. A spacecraft lands. The first thing police and/or the army do is surround the craft and point weapons at it, in military parlance, all by the book. The aliens soon prove to be beyond human control. Standard protocols are ineffective, and the outsider, in many cases a curmudgeonly scientist dismissed by the establishment as a crank, comes up with a solution that saves humanity.

Pulp fiction carries this a step further. In extreme circumstances, beyond the reach of law enforcement, government, military force, religious authority, or science, where can a person turn? I.E., who ya gonna call? The private detective who operates outside the proscribing rules of a police officer, the hired gunslinger whose fast draw settles things marshals and posses can't, the anti-hero who breaks every rule to set things right.

Pulp Fiction has absolutely no literary pretensions. It is written to entertain. As Ron Fortier, Airship 27’s editor in chief says, “if you want to develop character, do it between the gunshots."

The advice editor Marcel Duhammel gave to author Chester Himes, who went on to write the successful Grave Digger Jones series (ever see the movie Cotton Comes to Harlem?) is as valid today as it was sixty years ago: Make pictures. We don't give a damn who's thinking what, only what they're doing.

I’ve always enjoyed Pulp because when I read it, I don’t have to psychoanalyze the characters, or go to the library and find a book on organic chemistry or marine biology (are you listening, Randy Wayne White?) to make sense of the plot. I don’t need to reference some deep literary allegory or have to know minutiae about some historical period.

Pulp fiction is action, action, action. Fist fights, gun fights, sword fights; conflict and mortal peril underlie everything in the story, narrative tension should run high throughout. August Lenniger, in a 1929 Writer's Digest article about the infamous Black Mask magazine wrote of its stories, "There is never a moment in [its stories] where there is not something happening. There is constant action; a continual series of surprises, and it holds its suspense through the threatening [of] death..."

As I am fond of saying, the fundamental question at the heart of fiction is "what if?" The fundamental question at the heart of pulp fiction is "what next?"

As in Gothic fiction, pulp fiction achieves this by either placing an extraordinary individual into ordinary circumstances, or an ordinary individual into extraordinary circumstances. The result is what literary snobs call escapist fiction, but that is pulp fiction's greatest appeal: its ability to push an uncomfortable reality to the back of your mind for the duration of the story. Herein lies the source of nostalgia for something today's readers may have never experienced before. A gateway "to those thrilling days of yesteryear."

But where does pulp fiction originate? I am fond of saying that most pulp fiction stems from two of the great classics of western literature: The Iliad and The Odyssey.

I have recently added a third root to the tree: the Knight and his Squire, Don Quixote and the faithful Sancho Panza as a leading example. Buddy fiction, if you will, the hero and a second banana sidekick like Tonto to Fran Stryker's Lone Ranger.

The Iliad: a team of characters, each with a specialty; strength, wisdom, cleverness, etc. who join forces to fight an enemy. You’ve seen it since in Doc Savage’s team, the Blackhawk comics from the 40s and 50s, Mission Impossible, the A-Team, the first Star Wars film, and the Justice League and Marvel Avengers. Each member of the team contributes to the victory in his or her unique way.

The Odyssey: Homer was very shrewd to choose Odysseus, "the man of many schemes" as his stand alone hero. He is the prototypical loner against all comers, natural and supernatural. He is human, not even a demigod, and though he gets help from a few deities, he faces opposition from others in his quest to return home from the Trojan War. He is the archetypal trickster found in every mythology: Hermes, Loki, Coyote, Anansi, Popocatapetl, and he uses his many schemes to thwart his powerful enemies and to succeed in his efforts.

The fact that Odysseus is human and not supernatural opens the door for strong reader identification with the hero, an element crucial to successful pulp fiction. H. Bedford-Jones writes: "Never forget that the reader, in general, identifies himself with the chief character of a story. He desires to see things through the eyes of that character." Herein lies the escapist appeal of Pulp Fiction, the Walter Mitty-ism of the reader seeing himself as a two-fisted Alpha hero.

A main staple of traditional Pulp has always been the private detective, a figure George Will recently wrote was an extension of the American Cowboy (another staple of Pulp Fiction), the gun-toting loner who has substituted a car for a horse, and an automatic for a six-shooter, but who embodies the same tough-guy ethic and sense of right and wrong that motivates him to protect the vulnerable (as did another action figure, the Knight Errant of an earlier era). I.e. people the system cannot protect.

Ron Fortier of Airship 27 writes on Airship’s website, “People love mysteries, and they love private eyes.” If mystery is your forte, write one and submit it to Airship 27. I purposely write detective novels set in the 30s (Ike Mars), the 40s (C.O. Jones), and the 1890s (The Smith Brothers) so that I can write about detecting skills and physical confrontation, not the Internet, cell phones, digital surveillance cameras, The NCIS database, and a host of other modern conveniences that allow investigators to solve crimes and catch criminals in fifteen minutes while sipping a latte in their swivel chairs.

My detectives get their info the old way, by paying snitches, trading on old friendships with cops still on the force, peering through keyholes and over transoms, and beating it out of recalcitrant people. Action, action, action. As Raymond Chandler once wrote, “When in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.”

Sam Dunne, my protagonist in Dead Man’s melody is my sole protagonist who operates in the present. Sam manages to navigate modern technology well enough, but when all else fails, he has the reassuring knowledge that when all else fails, he can always climb over the table and punch the s. o. b. in the teeth.

Your loner hero can be a detective (private or otherwise), a cowboy, a closet crime fighter, a pirate, someone with supernatural ability, or the character I’m developing now, an 18th century insurance investigator for Lloyd’s of London who offers me the potential to pit him against crooked customs officers, pirates, sea monsters, the antagonistic French and Spanish governments, spies, and dockside ruffians. Good ripping fun with a sword, a belaying pin, and a musket; no iPads allowed.

Lester Dent, pen name Kenneth Robeson -- remember him? He created Doc Savage and wrote hundreds of novels, sometimes one a week. He published "the Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot" in 1936. It still works. You can Google it at: http://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/dent.html. And for those of you who like to use Scrivener software, an enterprising author has created a Scrivener template for Pulp Fiction found at: http://byzantineroads.info/pulptemplate

Dent pretty much nails it. I’ll read an excerpt from his four-phase formula.

First 1,500 words: 1 -- First line, or as near thereto as possible, introduce the hero and swat him with a fistful of trouble. Hint at a mystery, a menace, or a problem to be solved--something the hero has to cope with.

Yep. That's how pulp works, and that's why the readers love it. Joseph T. Shaw says, "... it is not necessary to stage a gun battle from start to finish, with a murder or a killing in every paragraph. You can keep it alive and moving, when sympathy is once aroused, by tension and suspense, through dialogue or other form of plot development, when action is absent. Action in one form or another, is, however, pretty much in demand."

So you’ve got an idea about plotting and characters. Run with it. Be as outlandish as you like, because Pulp Fiction (new or old) demands internal logic, but not external logic. Within the bounds of the story, you can be as outlandish as you like.

My first Six-Gun Terrors novel, subtitled "Six Guns and Old Ones" featured not only cowboys and Indians and the Cavalry; it included a wagon train with forty Dayak headhunters from Borneo, a boatload of Chinese Pirates, the Vatican, a one-eyed tribal chief who reads Aristotle, and of course, H. P. Lovecraft’s Old Ones. I just said what the hell and threw everything I could think of into the plot.

It sold. So can your work.

I mentioned earlier the prospect of writing pulp stories and novels with previously established public domain characters. Dozens exist. The magic era seems to be the mid-1930s. Anything copyrighted before then, if not appropriately renewed, has become public domain. This frees the presses to publish new fiction featuring these characters and it frees you to write it. My recommendation is that you not only look over the character bible on any of these you might want to try but that you read some of the older fiction involving these characters to acquaint yourself with the character(s) and the style of the original works.

Certain characters are still protected by copyright: Tarzan is still owned by the Burroughs estate. Doc Savage, and Robert E. Howard's characters Conan, Bran Mak Morn, Solomon Kane, et al. If you want to try a character that's not on the list I gave you, I'd vet it with the publisher before going to the trouble of writing a novel you can't legally sell.

Of course, you could write a Conan novel, and simply change the name of the hero and the name of the land or the milieu as did Gardner Fox, (Kothar the Barbarian) or Lin Carter (Ka-Zar), or a host of other sword and sorcery scriveners. The risk you run with that strategy is the likelihood that an editor will read the first three pages and dismiss it as faux Conan.

The temptation exists to put a personal spin on an established character. Be careful about that. Readers cherish their favorites, and don't always take kindly to a new face on an old favorite. I'd liken it to Hollywood directors remaking classic movies with the attitude, "It was great, but it will be perfect if I just make this one change to the plot." The road to bad reviews, gang, and the waste of a hefty Hollywood budget.

There's a reason these characters are still popular seventy or eighty years after they first saw print: they were engaging. Readers liked them and knew what to expect issue to issue of a given magazine. A long series can be repetitive, but with the good ones, readers don't mind so much. As Walter Gibson tells us, it's like chatting with an old friend.

One way to handle individualizing your take on a character is what I did with Secret Agent X. My Agent X story "The Devil in the Deep Blue Sea" is set immediately after World War I, earlier in X's career than the original canon. That gave me leeway to work X to my satisfaction without distressing fans of the original. My second foray into Agent X's adventures, "Island in the Sky" is set in 1939 on the verge of World War II and allowed me the same freedom.

Some publishers frown on changes. Airship 27 has published eleven anthologies of new Sherlock Holmes fiction with two more awaiting publication. Despite the popularity of the mega-star anthology Shadows Over Baker Street, Airship 27 refuses to take Holmes stories that involve the supernatural or science fiction elements. I wrote a pair of Holmes novellas without knowing this fact, and at the Windy City Pulp Con two years ago, Ron Fortier told he couldn't use them for the aforementioned reason.

I was lucky that day. Tommy Hancock from Pro Se Press was standing beside me and as soon as Ron said he couldn't use the stories, Tommy said, "I'll take 'em." And they are now in print in Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Chronic Argonaut.

Writing Sherlock Holmes stories is one of the most demanding and daunting tasks a writer can tackle. The readers are unforgiving of errors and/or misrepresentations and largely intolerant of plot twists like revealing that Holmes is a woman in disguise, is Watson's secret lover, or is from outer space or another dimension. Amazon reviews, fan blogs, and social media can be devastating to sales, and remember, barring nuclear war or collision with an asteroid, few things have a longer life than postings on the Internet. They'll haunt you for years to come.

The pulp characters on Airship 27's "fair game" list are a little bit easier to manage. You don't need to throw a reference to the character bible every other paragraph just to let the reader know you've done your homework. The result of that can often be the appearance of simply trying too hard to be another author. Those of you who have read any of the newer Spenser novels by Ace Atkins, who took over the series after Robert Parker's death will understand completely.

It is worthwhile to read newer fiction featuring an established character to get a feel of what a new pulp publisher wants to see, but that is no substitute for reading the original author's work to understand how he or she saw the character. A mistake some authors make is referring to or spinning off from an incident portrayed in a story that never occurred in the original canon. This is an immediate red flag that you are not familiar with the original author's treatment.

If you write a series of character revival stories, you can get away with referring to incidents, characters, etc. unique to your work, but keep everyone else's newer tales in a separate compartment. A few more caveats: most editors shy away from origin stories. There is a compelling reason.

Walter Gibson, who wrote over a hundred novels featuring The Shadow, wrote in his essay "A Million Words a Year for Ten Straight Years" (that's double NANOWRIMO all year 'round) the following wisdom about the Pulp hero:

You must treat the character as a discovery, rather than your own creation. Treat him, not just seriously, but profoundly. Picture him as real, and beyond you, in mind as well as prowess. Feel that however much you have learned about him, you can never uncover all. This mental attitude gives you deeper knowledge of the character than the story does.

Gibson is correct. When you think about fictional characters you have enjoyed, ask yourself, would I enjoy that character more or less if I were told every detail of the character's origin? That sense of mystery that Gibson's approach provides helps that character remain larger than life in the reader's mind, and enables what Samuel Taylor Coleridge called the "teleological suspension of disbelief" in the character that permits the most outlandish (and often the most entertaining) events to be presented.

Another red flag is a story that presents the death of the hero. Publishers want return engagements. If you kill off a popular hero, or one of your own creation, you've killed a golden goose.

If you create a new pulp character, keep in mind the words of Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of Perry Mason, but also the author of hundreds of pulp magazine stories:

An editor, usually with a strong individuality, cultivates writers who have strong individualities. They create characters that stand out. As writers, editors, and readers become more familiar with these characters, they develop, round out, and become flesh and blood beings to the readers.

Another aspect: in the current publishing game, many of the New Pulp Houses utilize Amazon's Create Space in tandem with Kindle for their releases. This has made a significant change in the market; instead of a publishing house printing a thousand copies or fifty thousand copies of a book and distributing them to sellers, then remaindering those copies that don't sell, effectively taking the book off the shelf, a title's life is open-ended, being available so long as Amazon is in business. Your books are never out of print. People will eventually read your stuff, like it, and go looking for more. They'll find it all on Amazon. A slow ride, perhaps, but you will arrive.

The strategy I pursue is to continue writing and publishing, building a catalog, and having it ready if and when my work enjoys its fifteen minutes of fame. In the meantime, I'm having fun.

A simple Google search of New Pulp Fiction will uncover a number of possible markets. Download their submission requirements, and study their publications. To learn what others are doing in the field, you might also join the Pulp Factory discussion group found at: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/thepulpfactory/conversations/messages

My advice to every author is: be your own demographic. Write what you'd like to read. If you don't like what you're writing, how can you expect a reader to like it any better? If you are excited what  you write, the excitement will be contagious. Writing will be less like work, and more like the adventure it ought to be.

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NOTE: The following is a transcript of a presentation Fred Adams, Jr., made at the In Your Write Mind Conference at Seton Hill University on 22 June 2018. The audience comprised largely graduates of the University's MFA program for novelists.

Laughing Between the Gunshots: The Use of Humor in Action Fiction

by Fred Adams, Jr.

In a scene from one of my favorite movies, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, we find Butch and Sundance trapped on a ledge over an impossibly deep gorge with a boiling river below them. Above them, the super posse that has been relentlessly chasing them and now has them cornered. Their death seems imminent.

Sundance, true to his character, wants only as he puts it, "one clear shot." Butch, the thinker says, "We'll jump." Sundance argues with him and finally reveals the reason he doesn't want to jump: he can't swim.

Butch breaks up in guffaws of laughter and says, "Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill you."

The buildup to the scene on the ledge is one that ratchets up the tension in the viewer as we are shown the super posse hired by the railroad to take out Butch and his gang. We see all of Butch and Sundance's crew gunned down, leaving only the two of them, the best in the business, to be hounded and pursued nonstop by the posse. Their old tricks are of no use, and they find themselves cornered on the ledge, faced with Charybdis and Scylla, the archetypal dilemma of Odysseus.

The tension is fierce. It's a nail-biter; we are about to see two loveable rogues killed in cold blood by the machine-like hired guns. Then Butch says, "We'll jump."

The element of surprise kicks in here and the absurdity of leaping to certain death to avoid being killed by gunfire. But it perpetuates the outlaw ethic: they'll never take me alive.

Sundance's argument presents absurd humor, the absurdity of them arguing with each other in the face of death. Then Sundance, embarrassed, reveals that he can't swim. Can't swim? This tough, resourceful, capable hombre can't swim? Here the element of surprise takes over, for both Butch and the audience.

Butch stares, incredulous, at Sundance for a beat or two, completely forgetting about the peril they're in and breaks out in guffaws of laughter. Then he says, "Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill you."

They jump, and the tension level jumps with them as they plummet into the river and is relieved when we see them bobbing in the rocky white water below.

A fundamental narrative technique: tension and release through comic relief.

Let's talk about what I like to call the Thumbscrew Principle of narrative tension.

Everybody familiar with the thumbscrew? Just in case you aren't, it is a medieval torture device that holds a person's thumb inside a casing and a screw is threaded through the outside so that tightening the screw puts excruciating pressure on the thumb. More tension, more discomfort. The torturer must, however, be careful to not put too much pressure on the thumb for too long a time, lest the thumb become numb and the torture become ineffective. So, the standard practice was to periodically loosen the screw, let the blood flow and allow feeling to return to the thumb, then tighten the screw again for even greater discomfort.

There is an analogy to be drawn between the thumbscrew and narrative tension in fiction.

thumbscrew : thumb = narrative tension : reader

Discomfort is the singular similarity between otherwise dissimilar items in the analogy. Let's talk about narrative tension and how the use of comic relief can maximize
its potential.

Narrative tension, simply put, is the degree to which the reader invests emotion in the outcome of specific conflict in a story. Opposing forces, generalized for this discussion as antagonist and protagonist, work against each other, like hands pulling a spring in opposing directions. The further the spring is pulled the greater the tension. The continuous action in the plot ramps up the tension as the story moves toward its climax, which constitutes a release of that tension. Back to the spring pulled taut by opposing sides: One side lets go of the spring, and its returns to rest, zero tension.

That tension caused by opposing forces is a cause for discomfort in the reader, who reads on, seeking relief from it.

The more intense and sustained the conflict, the more pronounced the narrative tension. It is essential to good fiction, but as with all things, too much narrative tension can work against you.

One of my friends says that she couldn't stand to watch the television series 24 which pits the protagonist, agent Jack Bauer against terrorists and their ilk within a real-time 24-hour span divided into episodes. Her reason: the action and the resultant tension were unrelenting and overwhelming, from the start of any given episode to its cliffhanger ending. There was no release of the narrative tension until the season's final episode. The sustained tension wore her out emotionally.

The same thing can happen in novel length fiction if the author is not careful. We can overload the reader with tension and emotionally exhaust him or her.

Novels usually follow a series of ascending and descending action, peaks and valleys, if you will. The sustained action of most novel plots allows for periods of lower tension as the activity shifts back and forth from fighting the bad guys to doing something less stressful.

The private eye may spend an evening out with his girlfriend, or go back to his apartment for a glass of scotch on the rocks while he puts some good jazz on his vintage turntable. He unwinds a little and so does the reader so that the next time the action ramps up the tension, the reader has the emotional energy to handle it.

A good example is the late Robert B. Parker's character Spenser. After a hard day of gumshoeing, he goes to his apartment and cooks a tasty meal (described in detail) for himself and often for his sweetheart Susan Silverman, or he meets his partner, Hawk, at the gym for a hard workout. This gives his head a rest, and ours too for what's to come.

Sometimes, intense subclimaxes push the tension level almost to the breaking point, then let off just enough to give the reader some emotional slack. An example: Now You See Her, one of G. Michael Ledwidge and the ubiquitous James Patterson's collaborative novels; employs one sharp subclimax after another to the point that the reader is exhausted by the main climax of the novel. But each subclimax lets the reader relax just a little bit.

A different approach is to allow relief from the narrative tension through the introduction of humor. In the face of death or other peril, a good laugh breaks the tension and pushes an emotional reset button for the reader.

I would point out that not all writers of action fiction use humor as a release valve. Andrew Vachss' Burke, Lee Child's Jack Reacher, and my supernatural sleuth C.O. Jones aren't much for jokes or humor, but many contemporary writers do embrace humor as a stylistic choice.

One definition of humor calls it "a literary tool that makes audiences laugh, or that intends to induce amusement or laughter. Its purpose is to break the monotony, boredom, and tedium . . ."

Wait a minute.

This is action fiction we're talking about; hard-assed private eyes, gunslinging cowboys, pirates, secret agents, treasure hunters, and other two-fisted action types. There should be no tedium.

Ah, but the definition continues: "and make the audience's nerves relax." The emotional reset button.

Psychologists separate humor into four basic categories: Affiliative Humor, Aggressive Humor, Self-enhancing Humor, and Self-defeating or Self-deprecating Humor.

Literary theorists divide it into four basic categories as well: surprise, incongruity, absurdity, and irony.

In Robert B. Parker's Spenser novel Sixkill, Spenser, Hawk and their new protege Zebulon Sixkill visit Henry Cimoli, owner of the gym where they train. They arrive to find three thugs roughing up the little old man. Cimoli sees them and says, "Spenser, meet my new friends; Moe, Larry, and Fuckface." In the middle of a severe beating, Cimoli's wisecrack catches the reader totally off guard (the element of surprise and incongruity) and uses the aggression model of humor. After all, Freud says all humor is aggression, right?

First, Henry demeans his tormentors by equating them with the Three Stooges, naming the first two Moe and Larry. Second, his epithet for the third brings surprise into play, since the reader is expecting the third man to be called Curly. Third, the incongruity of wisecracking in the face of a beating is totally unexpected.

Parker doubles down by having Spenser reply, "Oh, Fuckface -- I've heard of you." The abrupt laugh, and the incongruity of humor in a violent scene relieve the tension, and hit the reset button before Sixkill demonstrates his prowess by viciously beating down Henry's assailants. Parker could have made the scene one of continuous violence, but the joke relaxes the tension a little before the real violence begins.

In my novel The Town Killers, my cowboys, Durken and McAfee are pursuing a gang of cannibal murderers. In the exchange that follows, McAfee has been shot, and Durken has just dispatched his assailant in a vicious hand-to-hand fight that ends when Durken shoves the head of an arrow through his opponent's throat:

Durken took his flask from his coat, uncapped it and took a drink, then he poured some whiskey down McAfee's throat. "If I'm not back in an hour or so, I'll likely see you in Hell."

McAfee looked up and said, "Speak for yourself."

This intentionally gives the reader a breather between one extremely violent episode and another to follow, which provides the climax of the novel.

I begin The Town Killers with an unsettling anecdote, a stranger who rides into a small town and murders the sheriff by hanging him upside down in a cell and cutting his throat, as he thinks, the better to bleed the meat. The next chapter rough-cuts to cowboys around a campfire where McAfee is trying to explain the working of the Solar System to an uneducated companion:

Smeck looked dubious. "So you're telling me that the world turns around once a day?"

"Yep. Just like the hour hand on a clock," Dinwiddee chimed in. "Ain't that right, McAfee?"

"Well, sort of, but the hour hand goes around two times every day."

"But what's that got to do with a e-clipse?"

"The moon goes around the earth, and once in a while, it gets between the Earth and the sun so the moon's shadow falls on part of the earth." He demonstrated with the chestnut and the potato. "And for a little while, it gets dark. Then since the moon keeps on going along its path, it moves from between the sun and the Eearth and the shadow goes away and we have regular daylight again."

"Hold on a minute," Smeck said. "You're telling me the world turns all day long, and we're riding on it like a pony on a carousel, how come it don't matter what time of day I walk out of the bunkhouse Vulture Peak's always right in front of me?"

McAfee rolled his eyes.

The second example is a longer passage, but the effect is the same; following a disturbingly violent scene, humor dispels the tension and the reader gets to relax for a few pages until the action ramps up the tension once again.

More often than not, the tension breaker is a clever bon mot, often a throwaway line from one character. I recently read Christopher Moore's Moore's pulp detective send-up Noir. Moore, whose novels include such wonderfully insouciant and irreverent books as, the vampire romance Love Bites and its sequel, Bite Me, Fluke, and The Island of the Sequined Love Nun employs one of the most bizarre sense of humor alive in today's fiction. In Noir, the narrator can't locate his girlfriend after a working weekend and is desperately worried for her safety. As he walks up to a friend on the sidewalk, his friend notices the look on his face and says, "Who shit in your tuba?" Apart from the utter absurdity of the premise, the line catches the reader off guard in an otherwise anxiety-filled moment.

I use this technique in the opening vignette of my second Six Gun Terrors novel, Fang and Claw. My cowboys, Durken and McAfee are chasing rustlers. They surprise the outlaws' camp and engage in a shootout. One of them gets away on a horse. The rustler, Bob, is a man whom both cowboys know. He served in the same infantry company with McAfee in the Civil War.

McAfee chases him, Bob fires at him and nicks McAfee's ear. McAfee runs him to ground, and Bob is surprised to recognize his pursuer.

"Clarence? Clarence McAfee? Is that you? Well, I'll be damned."

To which McAfee replies, "That's a foregone conclusion, Bob," before ultimately drawing on him and gunning him down.

Another facet of humor is irony, speech whose actual intent is expressed in words that carry the opposite meaning. Parker himself refers to Spenser as "self-amused." He is a wise guy who uses that humor to disarm tough and dangerous opponents, letting them know that they don't frighten him one bit. In a scene in Parker's novel Playmates, three mobsters come into Spenser's office to scare him away from investigating a college athlete who is shaving points.

They threaten him, and he has a desk drawer open with a pistol in it ready to hand. The reader doesn't know what will happen next, maybe a gunfight, or maybe he'll throw one of the intruders through a third floor window. Mobster Bobby Deegan tells him:

"It can go a couple of ways. One way is we give you a nice fee for deciding that Wayne isn't shaving anything but his gace. The college likes that, Coach likes that, we like it. Nobody doesn't like it." Deegan gave me a big grin.

"And the other way?"

"We put you in the ground," Deegan said. His voice was pleasant.

"Eek," I said.

"Sure, sure," Deehan said. "I know you're tough. We talked to a couple guys we know up here. But think about it. What's worth dying for here?" ...

"How much you willing to give me?" ! said.

Deegan glanced around my office again. "Two bills ," he said.

I shook my head.

"How much you want?" Deegan said.

"Two hundred thirty-eight billion ," I said.

Deegan was silent for a moment, then he grinned slowly.

"Well, like the old joke. we've established what you are, now we're just haggling over price."

"Be a long haggle," I said.

Deegan nodded . "Option two's looking better ," he said.

We sat for a moment quietly while Deegan lit another cigarette.

"So what are you going to do?" Deegan said.

"Hell, Bobby, . don't know. I was trying to figure that out when you came in and distracted me."

"I thought you was trying to get a look at some broad 's ass," Deegan said.

"That too," I said.

Deegan rose. "Okay, pal. You think about it some more, and I'll check back with you. Try not to be too fucking stupid"

"I been trying for years." I said. "Usually it doesn't work out."

Deegan laughed and walked to the door. He opened it and stopped and looked back at me.

"You know we mean it," he said.

"Sure," I said.

Deegan shrugged and started out.

"Leave the door open," I said. "I didn't hear her come back yet."

Spenser's ironic responses are his way of showing even the most dangerous people that he doesn't fear them. The narrative tension advances, but at a slower pace and dissipates with Spenser's throwaway line at the end, suggesting to the mobsters that he is more interested in the secretary down the hall than in their threats.

Occasionally, it is an unexpected action that surprises the other characters and the reader.

John Sanford's novel Escape Clause includes a scene in which investigator Virgil Flowers and fellow investigators Jenkins and Shrake are confronted by a half dozen members of the murderous Simonian family, a pack of burly thugs, who are grief stricken over the killing of their brother and are intent on revenge.

The oldest brother demands action. Virgil does what seems the best thing under the circumstances:

Virgil took out his ID case, pulled out several business cards, shuffled through them, found the one he wanted, handed one to the lead Simonian, and told him to call with questions... As they drove away from the medical examiner's office, Jenkins said to Virgil, "Better you than me...

They got nothing to contribute, but they're gonna call you every fifteen minutes."

"Don't think so," Virgil said.

"I got a hundred dollars that says they call you fifteen times a day. At least fifteen times a day."

"You're on," Virgil said.

Jenkins examined him for a moment then said, "You're too confident."

"Because I gave them one of Shrake's business cards." ...

Jenkins snorted and said to Virgil, "You're my new role model."

Shrake's phone rang and Jenkins started laughing.

The catch in that situation is the sly misdirecting language, misleading not only the detectives but the reader. Virgil tells Simonian to call with questions, but not specifically to call him. Then when Jenkins says, "They'll call you every fifteen minutes," Virgil says, "Don't think so," because he knows they'll be calling Shrake. The setup for the punch line is classic humor, and the extra laugh line when Shrake's phone rings doubles down on it.

In the same fashion, Parker uses the humor of action to open the release valve on narrative tension in a scene in his novel Stardust.

Spenser is visiting a crook named Rojack in his palatial mansion. Rojak is walking Spenser around, showing the place off when they come to the in-house gymnasium where Rojak's bodyguard Randall is working out. Rojak calls for a demonstration by Randall, who begins with a short gymnastic routine on the rings then does an elaborate martial arts kata including a vicious attack on the heavy punching bag, ending, as Spenser tells us:

For the coup de grace, he leaped into the air, scissor-kicked the bag with both feet and went into a backward somersault as he landed on his back, rolling to his feet in one continuous motion. ... Randall was so thrilled by his performance that his face was fluorescent with excitement.

Spenser delivers a characteristic wise crack: "Is he going to do anything else?" I said. "Juggle four steak knives while whistling 'Malaguena'? Something like that?" but the jape doesn't reduce the tension. Instead, it ramps it up further. Randall challenges Spenser to show what he can do on the heavy bag.

Regular readers of Parker know that Spenser is a former heavyweight pro boxer and have seen Spenser and Hawk work their magic in the gym. The glove is down, the testosterone is about to boil over.

I looked at Rojack.

"Be my guest," he said. I think the sound in his voice was mockery.

"Go ahead...big shot," Randall said.

I shrugged, reached under my left shoulder, pulled my gun and put a bullet into the middle of the body bag. The sound of the shot was shockingly loud in the silent gym. The body bag jumped. I put the gun back under my arm, smiled in a friendly way at Rojack and Randall, and walked out.

The narrative question: what will Spenser do? Since he is never one to back down in the face of tough and dangerous people, the reader wonders how Spenser will rise to the challenge.

The Result: Surprise to the max for the bad guys, and a good laugh for the reader.

The tension builds as the reader anticipates a bare knuckle brawl between Spenser and Randall, but Spenser handles the situation, as James Joyce puts it, "like a cleaver deals with meat," and the reset button is pressed. In the same vein as Indiana Jones shooting the Egyptian swordsman in the marketplace brawl, the tension is defused, and the reader begins another emotional climb.

The gunshot is a complete surprise to Rojack and Randall and to the reader.

Then the friendly smile dismisses the formidable threat of the bodyguard like swatting at an annoying insect. The laughter eases the tension for the reader.

Parker reminds the us of the incident later as Spenser tells Hawk, "Remember that big geek Randall, the one who thinks he's tougher than Oliver North? He knows karate." Hawk isn't impressed either. He replies, "Wow. That's good. Fun to watch," using the aggression model to further belittle the bodyguard.

In my novel Wired, '30s private eye Ike Mars and his fiancée Marge return to the fancy restaurant where their waiter had unwittingly tagged the couple as easy marks for a pair of unsuspecting muggers, both of whom end up out cold on the floor of a parking garage.

We marched back to the dining room and to our table, where our slimy waiter was pouring champagne for an older couple who looked like they'd be named van der Snoot in Bringing up Father.

The waiter blinked in surprise but quickly regained his composure. "Did you forget something, sir?"

"As a matter of fact, yes." I turned to Marge. "Shall I?"

She shook her head and said, "I'll take care of it." Then she socked the little rat in the chops, knocking him backward over the old folks' table, where he lay like a tuxedoed parody of the crucifixion.

The van der Snoots stared open mouthed. Marge shook out her aching hand and stuck it in their ice bucket. She smiled at them and said, "Sorry. Enjoy your dinner."

Another element of humor that defuses the tension of an ongoing situation is the recurring gag. In a series novel, the reader often enjoys a sense of anticipation, and inserting the running gag into the action provides the comic relief to ease the tension.

Harking back to Indiana Jones, the joke is "Snakes? Why are there always snakes?" in his getaway airplane. The resourceful, tough adventurer surprises us with an all too human phobia. The humorous incident reveals a chink in the hero's armor in a comic fashion, defusing the tension of pursuit by a tribe of hostile natives. Jones' herpetophobia is then wonderfully recalled in the plot when he is thrown into the Well of Souls, which is essentially one big snake pit, and this humorous quirk suddenly becomes deadly serious.

Janet Evanovich is an absolute master at the technique of the recurring joke. In her Stephanie Plum novels, one running gag of many is the female bounty hunter's bad luck with automobiles. Her cars break down at crucial moments, are stolen, torched, blown up; she wrecks them or someone else runs into them accidentally or intentionally, whether it's her car, or a loaner like Ranger's Porsche (which she drives through a store front in one novel).

Stephanie Plum is cursed when it comes to cars -- with one notable exception: her late Uncle Sandor's hideously ugly two-tone 1956 Buick (portholes and all) which seems impervious to the doom she brings to other vehicles.

Evanovich juxtaposes other running jokes novel to novel with mayhem and murder; the antics of Stephanie comic sidekick Lula, her mother's bourbon bottle stashed in a kitchen cabinet, the adventures of Grandma Masur, who's eighty going on sixteen, and regular trips to Cluck in a Bucket for sustenance. Evanovich weaves these familiar gags almost like touchstones through Stephanie's cases, putting belly laughs cheek by jowl with murder, assault, arson, kidnapping, and other deadly situations. The result is cozy mysteries with a distinct edge. I enjoy reading them.

I mentioned my Hitwolf novels earlier. In the second novel in the series, Hitwolf: the Pack, Maura Jameson, a female anthropologist and expert on lycanthropy has joined the team. On the eve of a potentially deadly operation, John Slate, the team leader initiates a serious discussion with her about her situation:

The morning was grey and cold, the grass white with frost. Maura was crouched by the fire stirring a pot of oatmeal when Slate came out of the shack. "We need to talk."

"Okay, just you and I, not the others?"

"For the moment. You've studied werewolves; so have I, but I've also read a lot about wolf behavior. You?"

"Not as much."

"I'll get to the point. What happens if you're fertile on a full moon and we sense it? Do we try to mate with you? And do we fight each other for the privilege?"

Maura stared at Slate, then chuckled, then laughed out loud, great cathartic guffaws that echoed through the trees and unraveled all the anxiety and tension that had built up over the past three days.

"What?" said Slate. "What's so funny?"

"Courting behavior. The thought of three werewolves lined up, one with a bouquet of roses, one with a heart shaped box of chocolates, and one with a bottle of champagne."

Then Slate laughed too.

"John, I don't think you have to worry on that score. I've been on the pill for years. I couldn't risk getting pregnant on a six-month trek into the jungle or the steppes. Romantic encounters aside, I could have been abducted by natives, raped by bandits—who knows what? There's no fertility to sense. Besides, if I'm using the farkas ostor, I think I can manage a horny werewolf."

Singer stepped out of the shack slapping his crossed arms over his chest. "What's so funny?"

Slate and Maura grinned at each other and Slate said, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Singer warmed his hands over the fire. "So when do we leave for Fairfax?"

"It's two hundred miles, give or take. Maybe in an hour."

"I'll go shake the boys awake."

And the tension begins mounting anew as they go on their mission.

In the most recent adventure of the Hitwolf team, the fuzzy boys extract Charles Beaumont, a captured CIA agent from the clutches of the tinpot dictator of a banana republic. The werewolves have invaded an armed compound in the jungle, and in an orgy of bloody carnage, killed twenty or so people in the m ost vicious ways. One of the team has driven a truck through the front doors of the dictator's mansion. The agent runs into t he mansion's foyer to find his getaway vehicle is being driven by a werewolf who growls, "Get in."

Pursued by gunmen from behind, he gets in the truck, and as they drive across the compound before crashing through the gates, he sees two more werewolves jump into the back. As the truck bumps and jolts its way down a jungle road, Beaumont, whose mind is totally blown by this point, turns to the werewolf who is driving and says, "Uh, you guys are from the Company -- right?"

When you write thrillers, detective novels, adventure stories and other types of action fiction, remember the thumb screw principle: Letting off the tension for a little while makes it all the more effective the next time and the next time, and the next time.

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NOTE: This article is based on a presentation Fred Adams, Jr., delivered on 24 June at the In Your Write Mind writer's conference at Seton Hill University.