Deborah Elliott-Upton is taking a well-deserved sabbatical for the remainder of this month. Today, in her stead, we welcome back Louis Willis with some fascinating observations on the history of the mystery crime short story market.

—JLW

IN THE OLD DAYS

by Louis Willis

Last year, I bought Pulp Fictioneers: Adventures in The Storytelling Business, a collection of articles about the experiences of the writers, editors, and publishers from the late 1920s to 1950s. I don’t remember how I came across the book but I bought it because of my interest in pulp fiction. As I read the book, I became especially interested in the story requirements of the magazines. Two of the four excerpts below reflect the pulps’ attitude toward women. The third suggests that the editor was prejudiced against Native American history of the old West. The fourth is specific about who are to be the heroes and who the villains.

Writer’s Digest of April 1930 informed writers that Ace High Magazine was

broadening its policy to include a slight amount of woman interest. While physical masculine action, viewpoint and appeal must be paramount, if a woman is necessary to the plot and does not overshadow the other elements, she is permissible. But she must always be a secondary character and kept in the background. Ace High contributors, formulate your future stories along the above line!

I don’t suppose Ace-High would have accepted any stories from women, especially if a woman was the main character.

The editors of Ace-High certainly would not have accepted the kind of stories a new western magazine was publishing. According to the Writer’s Digest of November 1936, women had a definite role in Spicy Western Stories:

The cover of Volume 1, Number 1, of “Spicy Western Stories,” shows a mostly nude blonde young woman roped to a madly dashing horse while the villain pursues with a horsewhip (intended for the girl, not the horse). The magazine contains 10 stories, all of the same caliber as the cover indicates. Best other example is the girl getting branded by the villain, instead of the bad man or the steer.

Stories run up to 4000 words and are constantly on the move, jam packed with action. The dancehall western beauty, the marshal’s daughter, the rancher’s daughter, the gambler’s pet beauty are the women involved. The stories are all frankly sexed up. If the new Spicy sells, the contamination will spread into the hitherto untouched western field.

The editor obliviously felt scantily clad damsels in distress would put him ahead of the competition in the selling of the western pulps.

The editor of another western magazine wrote to Writer’s Digest in October of 1932 advising writers who submitted stories not to

… manufacture a gun battle just to give your story the proper high powered sendoff. If you can give your characters human, valid reasons for dragging their hardware, let them go to it. We like action, in its proper place and value. But we don’t want the old brand of hectic, unmotivated bullet-throwing that gets the story nowhere and callouses the reader to the real thing when it comes along. All stories must have bona fide Western color and atmosphere, but story material may be dug from the entire history of the White Man’s West, since there are no definite period limits implied in our story policy (55).

He gave good advice on how to write non-cliché, well-structured stories about the old west. The advice on where to obtain story material hints at his negative attitude toward Native Americans, who, apparently, had no positive place in the history of the west.

The Shadow Magazine published its story requirements in the Writer’s Digest of December 1933:

Detectives or police officers may be heroes; the villain must always be a crook. Our pages do not cater to the criminal; do not show how crime is done, but how it is uncovered. We keep away from crooked police officials or detectives; are not interested in stories of gangsters. What we want are stories of clever detective work done by officials who are not afraid to risk their lives in the performance of their duties.

Payment was “1¢ a word on acceptance.” Padding in the old days must have been very profitable if the writer could get away with it.

With the advent of online publishing, is it possible something like the pulps will return to again train young writers?