Calling All Fans Of Pulp
The Pulp Stories collection on Medium is intended to be a source for modern fiction that takes inspiration from the pulp era of storytelling. I’m looking to serve both readers and writers with this collection.
What Is Pulp?
The origin of Pulp fiction is the cheap fiction magazines of the first half of the 20th century. Printed on cheap paper they aimed at populist entertainment with an emphasis on escapist fiction. The action was fast paced. The covers were bright and colorful, almost lurid in their presentation. The heroes were bigger than life and the villains were thoroughly evil. This was a world of adventure where good would eventually win out, with people to cheer and people to boo.
Doc Savage, Flash Gordon, Sam Spade, Zorro these are just a few examples of pulp heroes. Popular writers included Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.P. Lovecraft, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammet. Pulp spanned many genres though hard boiled detectives, science fiction, fantasy and horror were very popular. But Pulp is very much a style of storytelling or a set of story conventions rather than a particular setting or genre.
Does Pulp Still Exist?
While style of storytelling have moved on, much like everything else, Pulp sensibilities still inspire and resonate in popular culture. Whether in the form of remakes or pastiches, pulp is everywhere. Many of the most popular characters in fiction began their lives in pulp magazines.
Perhaps the most visible representation of that is in comic books and with superheroes. The earliest superheroes started around the same time as Pulp and certainly characters like Batman and Superman are fundamentally Pulp in their origins.
Mainstream fiction has tended towards characters of increasing complexity with a greyness to their morality that perhaps reflected the growing uncertainty of the times. And the same time there has been a move away from serialized storytelling (as paperback books replaced Pulp magazines as the primary means of consuming fiction) and an increase in the sophistication of the storytelling methods that are employed which may sometimes make the old Pulp stories look simplistic.
However, if you look at the popularity of pastiches like The Rocketeer or Indiana Jones, or more recently at the rise of superhero movies, it’s clear that the public still enjoys a well told action story with a hero to cheer for. There is room in the world of fiction for many types of storytelling and the web in particular may be a perfect format for Pulp stories.
What Are You Looking For?
Well I’m looking for readers and writers (and possibly editors). Readers have an easy job. Just follow Pulp Stories on Medium and enjoy what’s posted. If you find a story you really enjoy then be sure to recommend it. Recommending a writer’s story is your way of paying them back for their effort in writing it. It lets other readers know about the story and hopefully garners them more attention.
For writers, what I’m looking for is short stories and serialized stories that exemplify the Pulp sensibilities I’ve just discussed. Genre doesn’t matter. Make it a hard boiled detective story, or a superhero story or a sci-fi story. Just give us those larger than life characters and fast paced action.
Length is flexible but I would suggest that 500 – 3,000 words is probably the ideal length for web based reading. If your story feels longer, remember that serialized fiction is encourage. Don’t forget the cliffhanger!
Fan Fiction, Yes Or No?
Yes…ish.
This isn’t intended to be a place for parody work, though pastiches are certainly welcome. There are quite a few pulp characters that have fallen into the public domain however and they are certainly open for use. There are also quite a few characters where the companies who own them are open to some non-commercial fan fiction. In that case, let’s see some stories.
If it’s a character where I know the owners are going to be unhappy. Well, it’s probably just best to avoid that isn’t it?
How Do I Submit?
Medium has a rather unusual submission system for Collections. You can only submit to Collections where you are an editor or writer. So the first thing you need to do is sign up for Medium.
This is a very easy process. If you have a Facebook or Twitter account you’re basically good to go. Once you have a Medium account, post your story. This is something that I recommend writers do whether they want to submit to Pulp Stories or not as it will increase the visibility of your work and present it in a very reader friendly format.
Once you have a story that you think is suitable for Pulp Stories, reach out to me. I’ve set up a simple web form where you can give me the link to your story and a contact email address. If I feel like the story is a good fit for the collection then I will see about adding you as a writer to the Collection. Writers are then able to submit stories.
