Plotting stories for the love pulps

A successful romance fictioneer shares tips and tricks for hopeful writers from the pulp era.

By Sally Gordon

Nothing ever happens to you. Not once have you seen a beautiful lady beckon mysteriously to you from the shadows of a luxurious limousine. Never have you crossed the Pacific in a non-stop air flight or been captured by gentlemanly bandits.

You want to write glamorous stories about things that never happened. You want to tell about things that are foreign to your daily dull routine.

“How can I write about me?” you ask. “Nothing ever happens to me — nothing worth the cost of the typewriter paper I’d put it down on. All the interesting things happen to other people.”

You’re wrong. I know that you’re wrong.

Because you can write about yourself. You can write thrillingly about yourself.

You can make interesting stories out of the everyday things that happen to you. You can see yourself as glamorous and romantic. It all depends on the angle from which you can write.

You lead a simple life. You own neither a machine gun nor a harem. No unknown admirer showers you with kingly gifts. No anonymous lover writes you letters that are poems of love.

No, then, can you write about yourself? Very easily. Let’s take the events of a single day in your life and see what stories we can weave.

Your day begins with the bell of your alarm clock. Nothing to write a story about? Isn’t it? What about the story of a girl who was a slave to her alarm clock until one glorious day when something went wrong with the alarm clock bell and she awoke just too late for work, after she had been warned that one more tardy day meant the loss of her job? Let her go out, recklessly hoping against hope that she would find a job to take the place of the one that she had lost.

Let her be plunged into the maze of a mysterious murder. How? Well, suppose that she is waiting outside an employment office, wonder if it is worth while to dash into the crowded, hopeless mass of unemployed. Let her be the sole witness to a murder. Better still, let a strange but handsome young man also be witness to it. Then the murderers whisk the girl and the handsome hero off with them so that the witnesses can’t give testimony about the murder. There’s a story for you.

Melodrama? Of course. But why not? It will sell, if well written, to any of several love pulp magazines. Of course you must have a love affair between the girl and the handsome co-witness. Of course, too, the girl must think him a member of the gang who abducted her and must love entirely against her will until the moment arrives when he finds a way to win freedom for her and himself, and to bring the murderers to justice. Then you can have your story end with wedding bells and orange blossoms. Good old Cinderella!

The Big Opening

What next? After our alarm comes dressing for work. Can we get a story out that? Suppose that you are a sales girl in a department store. Today is the day of the Big Opening. All of the girls are supposed to be smartly dressed in a way that is appropriate to the festive appearance of the store.

But your clothes are shabby and out of date. Even careful attention to the wave in your hair and the cupid’s bow of your mouth and the contour of your face cannot hide the fact that you are much too poorly dressed for the occasion.

What are you going to do about it? You have no money to buy new clothes. Could you borrow some? Only from a girl you hate. Why do you hate her? Because she is trying to steal your best beau, of course. But she is generous with her clothes and has offered to lend you an outfit for the opening day. You don’t dare refuse (although you suspect that she has some ulterior motive), because you simply can’t afford to lose your job at a time like this.

You take the borrowed clothes and go to work. But something happens. A customer appears and accuses you of stealing a purse from her. She swears that she cannot be mistaken and everybody believes her except your best beau — the floorwalker or a buyer — something or other in the store. He remains faithful in spite of the fact that all appearances are against you. After a lot of commotion it is discovered that she has identified you by your dress — the borrow dress.

But you think that your sweetheart loves the other girl and you won’t make him unhappy by letting him know the truth about her. Eventually the customer reconsiders, after her worst temper has evaporated: “You-you have gray eyes. The girl who took my bag has black eyes. Otherwise she’s just like you. She even has a dress exactly like yours. No. It must be the same dress. I noticed yesterday that one button was gone off the sleeve and I see that your dress has lost the same button.”

Then your best beau looks sharply at the dress and then at your rival — the girl who lent you the dress. He draws from his pocket a snap-shot of the other girl (in the same dress) and holds it out to the customer.

“Is this the girl who stole your bag?” he asks, and the customer recognizes the real culprit and accuses her.

So you are freed of suspicion and it really doesn’t make any difference that you haven’t smart clothes to wear to work, because (after a few wedding bells and orange blossoms) you are scheduled to settle down to life in a cottage, where your customary costume will be a pink house-dress with a frilly kitchen apron to match.

You see that I am planning stories for the love pulps. This is simply because that is the field in which I work most easily. If you follow this same method with your own plotting, you can slant the stories toward any field you prefer, of course.

Making your own plot

Now let’s go back to your own day: To the office. The same old place. The same old people. The same old routine. But suppose that there should be somebody new — somebody thrilling!

A mysterious young man who appears instead of your boss. He looks all over the office and beckons you to come into the private office.

Why does he choose you from all of the rest of the stenographers? Is it because of the look that passed between brown eyes and your gray eyes as you looked up to see him standing in the doorway?

He tells you that he is the son of the president. That his father has planned a friendly deal with a European customer. That the European has suggested that an alliance between the two families be cemented by a marriage between the son of the American and the daughter of the European. That the son, in order to avoid an arranged marriage, has said that he is already engaged to be married. That he wants you to act as his fiancée.

You are astounded. “Why should you pick me? Surely you know other girls.” He blushes. “My father knows what I’m doing and he has suggested that I choose one of the girls in his office so that there will be less danger of — of an entanglement there.”

Somehow you know why he has chosen you from all the girls in the office. You remember the look that passed between your eyes and his just before you entered the private office. You find yourself wishing that this mock engagement were a real one.

Of course, the other girl — the European — turns out to be a beauty and you are frightfully jealous of her. Your mock fiancé, to further his father’s business interests, must see a lot of her and you are afraid that he is growing interested in her. Finally she comes to you and in her fascinating broken English, tells you that she thinks you’ve put up a grand joke but that your mock-fiancé has told her the whole story. You are unbelievably angry. You forget that you have no real right to object to anything that the young man does. You stage a real fight and go away — leaving the office, as well as your furnished room. Somehow you want to get away from everything that reminds you of this man.

You hate him, you tell yourself. But you keep remembering the look in his eyes, the tone of his voice. In short, the reason for your anger is that you have fallen in love with him and that he has humiliated you by letting this fascinating European girl know that your engagement was only a face and that he doesn’t really care anything about you.

But the man finds you, of course. He tells you that he has loved you all the time. That he told the other girl your story so that she could help him win your love. That all he wants in the world is to make a home where you will be queen and he will be king. Wedding bells. Orange blossoms.

Love stories made easy

More pulp love stories can be made easily. What do you do after your morning routine? Go to lunch at a soda fountain and then go window-shopping?

Very well. Build yourself a story out of this. Beside you at the soda fountain sits a strange young man — a rather interesting looking young man. You can see that he likes you and that he would like to talk to you, but he sees that you are a quietly dressed, nice-looking girl and he doesn’t seem to dare to speak. You order your customary lunch. He orders the same lunch.

You stop and look into the window of a store. He stops and looks at the same display, without saying a word. You continue your walk. So does he. You stop again. So does he.

He follows you all around town, stopping whenever you stop, starting whenever you start, but never saying a word to you. You go back to your office. He follows. You seat yourself at your desk, and start to work.

Five minutes later he comes to your desk, looking very businesslike and very much at home. “Will you please step into the efficiency office, Miss Jones?” he asks. Bewildered, you follow him.

He is the new efficiency man who is here studying what the stenographers in your plan do with their leisure moments.

He is at a standstill. He knows what you do at lunchtime but he doesn’t know what you do after work. Will you please take him with you this evening so that he can see your usual leisure habits?

You are strangely angry. Why should he pick on you? What business is it of his? Why should your firm want to know what you do outside of business hours? They pay for eight hours of your day, not for 24 hours.

Somehow the fact that the man is young and handsome makes the anger still stronger.

You agree to take him with you, deciding that you will lead him a merry chase.

You rush to finish your work so that you can stop at a store on your way home. You decide to buy the enchanting dress that you’ve been longing for. You invest in slippers and fine mesh hose and a wisp of a chiffon handkerchief. You have made a date with the efficiency man for dinner time.

That evening is a mad whirl. You lead him to all the night clubs. You make him spend more money in one night than any other man has ever spent on you in three months. You treat him like the dirt under your feet, but you flirt daringly with a friend of his whom you meet through his introduction.

But when you go home you surprise yourself by bursting into tears instead of being triumphant at your success.

Why do you cry? Because you remember how mean you were to a man who was only, after all, doing his duty. It was his duty to study you just as it is your duty to type the letters that are your daily office routine.

Of course this is only the first of many dates. But you understand that he is only studying you. When he makes love to you, you think that is only a part of the routine. It is only because he wants to know what a stenographer does when someone makes love to her.

In the meantime you are also seeing something of the other man — the one to whom he introduced you. You know that he has fallen in love with you and you aren’t really surprised when he proposes to you.

You hesitate. After all, he is very nice and you do like him. Also he has money and it would be pleasant to live in a pretty cottage instead of a furnished room. You know that your efficiency man cares for nothing except his business and that you are so hopelessly in love with him that you don’t know how you get through your day’s work to get to the leisure hours that he spend with you.

While you are hesitating, the efficiency man comes.

The other man tells him about the proposal and asks him to help him plead with you. He teasingly says, “You are anxious to know what a stenographer does in her leisure hours? Well, here’s a chance. Sometimes she gets proposed to. If you help me to tell her how nice it would be to be married, you’ll be able to put in your report the exact words that a stenographer uses when she agrees to marry a man.”

But the efficiency man’s businesslike air is suddenly shed. He is masterful instead of studious. He ignores the other man and comes over to take you into his arms. “I refuse,” he says, “to admit that there is a possibility of my stenographer agreeing to marry any man in the world except me.”

He kisses you and then looks down and scolds you as you nestle in his arms:

“Why do you think I picked you instead of one of the other girls in the office?” he demands. “Why have I prolonged this study until I’m danger of losing my job? Why do you think I’ve let you bully me and flirt with other men under my nose and listen to proposals from other men?”

“I-I don’t know,” you falter, and he kisses you again.

“Because I love you, of course,” he announces. “Your days of bullying me and flirting with other men and listening to proposals are all over. From now on, you belong to me and I won’t have you doing things like that. You are marrying me tomorrow, young woman, and I’ll see to it that you spend every single leisure hour with me. Understand?”

Of course you do. More wedding bells and orange blossoms.

Romance from the routine

From an ordinary day of routine work we have built a little series of pulp love stories.

I have purposely chosen simple and typical plots. If you are just beginning to write for the pulp love magazines, it is not wise to make your plots too unusual or too complicated. If you do, you will have the stories nestling in your desk drawer indefinitely. The readers of these magazines want simple stories built around average girls. The problems of the girls in these stories are problems that might come to any girl who reads the story. She can understand the heroine’s experiences because they are things that might have happened to her.

Best of all, this type of plot should show you how easy it is for you to build stories around your own daily routine. If you work in an office, there are dozens of things every day that can be expanded into stories. What about the letter lost from the files? How about the new girl who is silent and mysterious but so beautiful that even your own best beau finds his attention wandering to her?

If you work in a department store, there are still more stories. The politics of a big department store suggest dozens of stories.

If you stay at home or go out and sell or buy, if you act or sing or write, you have experiences that will make stories. Just get out of the habit of thinking that every story has to be built out of an unusual event and you’ll be a long way towards success on the road that leads to writing stories about yourself.