I’m trying to nail down my genre for NaNoWriMo this year, and right now (amongst about fifteen other, equally undefined ideas), I’m leaning towards a pulp adventure. The problem is, although I have a vague idea in my mind of what pulp is, I don’t really have a good definition of what pulp is. There’s no denying that pulp is a genre, but it isn’t exactly an officially recognized one, since pulp technically refers to the type of magazine these stories were published in. My question is: can you give me a good definition of pulp, or give me links to some resources about pulp stories? I would really appreciate it.
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Don’t worry about definitions. Definitions just shoehorn you.
I actually wrote a pulp short story for a creative writing workshop my last semester in college, and had to wrestle with the same issue of not knowing what exactly pulp was.
My idea of pulp is just tons of crazy things, stereotypes, cliches and betrayals. And nazis, of course.
I actually came up with the title for my story first, Brick Jackson and the Dino-zombie Cybots. The Dino-zombie cybots didn’t make the final cut, so I had to change the title, but the story went over really well. It has time-traveling nazi robots, a Shaft-esque hero with a Crocodile-Dundee-esque ally, and of course dinosaurs.
http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddt5nptm_74ghvhkxgb
One criticism I got from the professor was that the story seemed a lot like a comic book. I actually take that as a compliment, though, since comic books evolved from pulp fiction. So when in doubt, try for golden age comics with a sexy, politically-incorrect spin.
And don’t forget the nazis.