The opening sentence has an almost mythical status in writing. Authors agonise for months, even years, about crafting the right one. Often it’s the last thing to be written.

Which is odd, because very few people abandon a book if they don’t like the first sentence. It’s not like the first sip of wine that tells you if the Grand Cru has been corked! Most people at least finish Chapter One.

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Pulp Librarian

@PulpLibrarian

15 Jun

Today in pulp:I recast Blakes 7 with 1970s British sit-com actors to see if it still works!

Surprisingly it does...

#Blakes7 was the BBC's dystopian space opera, running from 1978 to 1981. Cynical, bleak and violent it captured the mood of the late '70s.

But what if David Croft and Jeremy Lloyd had written it? Who would they have cast in Blakes 7: The Sitcom?

Well for Roj Blake my money's on Richard O'Sullivan. Decent, craggy, a natural leading man and a versatile actor. He also played Dick Turpin on ITV so he knows how to portray an outlaw.

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Pulp Librarian

@PulpLibrarian

14 Jun

Today in pulp: how do you write a novel in two weeks?

Pulp writing that has to work within specific constraints, which in turn shape the nature of the story. And speed is the biggest constraint of all: you have to write quickly!

But there are ways to make it work for you...

Today a prolific author may write a book every year, but in the 1950s and '60s pulp writer sometimes had as little as two weeks to complete a 50,000 word story and have it ready for print.

That’s 25 novels a year: but at least they got Christmas off!

Writing that quickly is hard, but surprisingly liberating. Pulp writers had to go with their first ideas and had to make them work. There wasn’t time to ‘kill your darlings’ - instead you had to toughen them up and send them into battle!

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Pulp Librarian

@PulpLibrarian

8 Jun

Did you have a twin tub? It was the miracle of 1960s washing machine technology that literally shook the kitchen!

Let's take a look at it...

The twin tub bridged the gap between the mangle washers of the 1950s and the front loaders of the 1970s. Finally the days of cranking washing between two rollers to wring it out were long gone!