Last week, I mentioned my affection for John Milton Edwards’ The Fiction Factory and it’d oddly engrossing lists of publications and income across his writing career. He’s an interesting writer because he occupies a space where the dime novel format gave way to the pulp magazine—a format that won out because, as a periodical, it could be shipped far cheaper than a book at the time.
Every year, Edwards list of sold stories includes a double-digit run of “five cent library” and “ten cent library” stories, which are actually novellas of 20,000 to 40,000 words. Serials of the era typically ran to 60,000 words, broken up into four parts, and the short stories could well be novelettes depending on the market.
One of my favourite chapters in The Fiction Factory is where Edwards lays out The Ethics Of The Nickel Novel, which often feels like a glimpse into another world. The format proves to be fairly regimented:
The libraries, as they were written by Edwards, were typed on paper 8-1/2″ by 13″, the marginal stops so placed that a typewritten line approximated the same line when printed. Eighty of these sheets completed a story, and five pages were regularly allowed to each chapter. Thus there were always sixteen chapters in every story.
In these days of the infinite scroll, where computers keep extending the page down as required, the idea of tracking word count seems quaint and archaic; a metric from a bygone age where hitting the bottom of a page meant physically removing it from a typewriter and inserting a new sheet. Lots of early pulp writers measured their productivity via pages, rather than words, but Edwards nickel novel format is roughly equivalent to starting a novella and knowing you’ll write 16 chapters of 1250 words apiece.
I’ve adopted that format as an experiment a time or two, and it’s a remarkably calming way to work. The story conforms to the structure: Four chapters of set-up, eight chapters of complications, and four chapters to wrap everything up. Not a huge amount of forward planning needed because you’re just rolling towards one of sixteen way-stations in the story. The type of conflicts and solutions you offer are limited by the demands of the wordcount. All of these things are hard edges, ways of narrowing the infinite possibilities of what might happen in a story down to a more reasonable number of choices.
Plus, it brings style into the arena, demanding a certain speed and rhytjm adn pithiness. Speaking of which:
Each chapter closes with a “curtain.” In other words, the chapter works the action up to an interesting point, similar to a serial “leave-off,” and drops a quick curtain. Skill is important here. The publishers of this class of fiction will not endure inconsistency for a moment. The stories appeal to a clientele keen to detect the improbable and to treat it with contempt.
1250 words for a chapter isn’t a lot. As I keep telling a lot of the writers I mentor, one of the major reasons we read is to see characters solving problems, and often their attempts to solve those problems are going to fail or create new issues. Every scene will usually have a character with a goal, and three or four beats where they try to attain that goal by switching up their tactics.
In this respect, the calming aspect of writing a story to this format is clear. Sixteen chapters means sixteen problems, each of which is tackled four different ways. 64 beats per book, each approximately 300 words long. The typewritten page becomes the rhythm of the work, in much the same way that comic book narratives have a rhythm placed upon them by fitting stories onto specific pages and generating effect by knowing when the page will flip to a new double-page spread.
The business model of the nickel novel also had their business model down, with an approach that seems very familiar to those of us in the indie publishing world:
Usually the novels are written in sets of three; that is, throughout such a series the same principal characters are used, and three different groups of incidents are covered. In this way, while each story is complete in itself, it is possible to combine the series and preserve the effect of a single story from beginning to end. These sets are so combined, as a matter of fact, and sold for ten cents.
Three nickel novels, in effect, give them a whole new dime novel to release. A solid choice, especially in a world where the original nickel novels disappear before too long and back-issues are non-existent. Although you can feel Edwards chagrin every now and then when one of his regular publishers realises they no longer need new stories because they can reprint the older works in their inventory.
Edwards has a lot more to say in his rambling, third-person style, but the remainder is less about the structure of the nickel novel and more about the content – who the heroes should be, what kinds of conflicts to avoid, etc. Interesting stuff, but for a neo-pulp writer in the modern age, something that leads us into the inherent intersectional issues of racism, classism, and sexism that are threaded through the fiction of the pulp era. There is a great deal said of manly virtues, with all the problems inherent with that. Although I am fond of this advice:
As for swearing, it is a useless pastime and very common; besides, it betrays excitement, and the hero is never excited.
In 1903, Edwards wrote 42 of these using the structure laid out here. 840,000 words of fiction, alongside ten other works, and probably higher than that (there’s a point in The Fiction Factory where one of his regular five-cent library publishers changes their preferred length from 30,000 to 20,000, and I think this predates the change). In many other years he limits himself to twenty, although they’re usually accompanied by an equal amount of new dime novels at 40,000 word a pop.
To a contemporary writer, especially those of us who grew up in the era where Stephen King was wrote too fast by producing four or five novels a year, this feels like an insane amount of work. Even in 1903, it’s impressive. Edwards is upfront about the fact that he works insanely hard, although he’s making a pretty good living from it.
On the other hand, I keep pondering how much the sheer regularity of the structure helped make this kind of writing possible. There’re studies into motivation that show focusing on what we do, instead of the long-term goal, tends to make it easier to keep returning to the same tasks—we may be inspired to go to the gym by the idea of losing weight and being healthier, but the people who stick with the gym routine typically forget about all that and focus on what they do: get up at 6:00 AM and head to the gym; do six K on the treadmill and then the yoga class; do weights Tuesday and Thursday. Their goals are short-term and manageable.
In a similar way, I’m going to write a novel or I’m going to write 40 novellas next year is a large, impossible to conceptualise goal. It sounds good—I’d like to be the kind of person who does that—but it’s going to take months of work and a huge cognitive load figuring out how to get all that writing done and what’s going to happen at every step.
The routine structure of the nickel novel takes away a huge chunk of the cognitive load around the work, and repeating the same rhythms over and over means you barely need to think about how things are going to be done. One never needs to think about the long-term goal, because the short-term goals are always the same:
- Today, I’ll write three chapters.
- For the next hour, I’m focused on hitting these four beats.
It doesn’t take long for the numbers to accumulate. I finished a novella five days ago using this structure. I’m halfway through the next one, which marks the end of the trilogy. If I maintain my current writing speed, the current WIP will be finished on Thursday or Friday, whereupon I’ll pivot to a new trilogy. I’m debating which of my various ideas is the best choice to start.
The challenge, as always, is that drafted doesn’t mean finished. There’s plot issues with the novellas to be wrapped up, and copyediting and other production work related to the PhD. While I can write fast, I don’t particularly write clean yet, although I’m remembering things that help. Stuff like “Start each scene by orienting the reader, and putting one big ‘world’ gimmick there”, and “work towards a mid-scene pivot”.
