by James Scott Bell

In a 1948 booklet, Pulp Fiction, Robert Turner gave straight-dope advice on what it took to break into the pulp market. In one section he explains what happens to a manuscript when it comes in to an editorial office. What he says here has, I shall in a moment contend, application to writers in the age of AI-slop.

There are, says Turner, two piles in the office. One pile is for authors whose names are “known.” However—

If your name is not known—which makes your stuff an unknown quantity—the script is put at the bottom of the other pile, which is often huge. This is called the “slush” pile. It consists, I’m sorry to say, of about 98 percent junk. This is the fault of the writers, please understand, not the editors. It is also an advantage to you, if you have anything on the ball, because your script will then stand out like a rose on a garbage dump and the editor will make happy little noises.

This is true today, as it has always been true in this game. Most writing is junk. That is an advantage to writers who want to step up their game (which is why TKZ exists!)

The busy editor, says Turner, will always go to the “professional pile” first, as the odds of finding a good story are greater than with the slush. But he adds this note about the pro pile:

The casualties here are often heavier than you would expect them to be. Nearly all of these stories are “useable.” That is, they are professional pieces of work, with not too many outstanding flaws. But the editor doesn’t want merely “useable” stories. He wants damned good ones. He wants to get hold of a yarn that hits him so hard while he is reading it that he can hardly sit still. When he finishes reading he wants to be able to say: “Here’s a hell of a good Smithers story!” This does not happen very often. It takes a wow of a story to get an editor excited. He’s seen them all.

That is true of readers, too. They want a wow story, which is the rarest kind. Add to that all the AI-slop, which is competent. But is it ever wow? Is it ever unforgettable?

Our job is to become the rose in the garbage dump. May I suggest doing a “wow check” at every stage of a project, starting with—

Idea

I have a large file of ideas, things I’ve written down over the years when I’m sparked. I know you get these, too. Don’t ignore them, record them. Revisit them from time to time, seeing what still excites you.

I used to have a box for newspaper and magazine clippings. When something jumped out at me, I’d clip it and toss it in the box. Every now and then I’d go through them, seeing what still had a spark. One of them was a story about cops in L.A. stopping a driver of a convertible. He was a 6’4” guy, had an open container of Jose Cuervo Gold, and was dressed only in a Santa Claus hat and a G-string. This I clipped and threw in the box. Later it became the opening of my Ty Buchanan legal thriller Try Fear.

Development

Idea in hand, I’ll proceed (like a movie studio) to development. My favorite technique is that suggested by the great writing teacher Dwight Swain. I call it “the white-hot document.” It’s a free-form letter to myself, writing down as many plot and character and scene ideas as come to mind, following random threads and rabbit trails. I write without stopping in ten-minute chunks. I rest my brain, then come back to the document the next day.  I highlight the things I like best, and write some more. I do this for three or four days. If I’m still feeling the wow, I move on to—

Structure

I’m a plot and structure guy, so I lay out my “signpost scene cards” in Scrivener, including the “mirror moment.” The mirror moment is, for me, the key to it all. When I nail that—when I feel it—I know what the through-line of the whole book is.

Beginning

Then the day comes when I start writing. The first leg of the journey! This is fun, the scenery is new and fresh. I whistle a tune behind the wheel. But I know at some point I will probably hit—

The Wall

I’ve written before about hitting a “wall” at around the 30k mark. Other writers I know report the same thing. I usually pause here and review my first act, making sure it’s got the death stakes solid and the first Doorway of No Return clear. I make sure my heart still feels the wow factor so I can push on to the finish.

Editing

And then there’s the editing process. I do a read-through in hard copy, make changes, give it to my exacting editor (Mrs. B), incorporate her notes, then off to a beta reader, more changes, a proofreader, then my final polish. What keeps me going at this stage is the opportunity to put in more heart. I know my story now, see the big picture, know the characters, and I look for ways to increase the emotional impact of the whole thing.

So why go through all that when I can just prompt Chat or Claude to do the heavy lifting? Because I need to feel the wow, for myself as a writer and for my readers. Because, as Robert Turner says in Pulp Fiction, “to entertain a reader—in other words, to write a good story—is to play upon emotions, through the things that you make happen to your story characters.”

You don’t get that from a machine, in my (mostly) humble opinion.

Comments welcome.