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Old 04-20-2010, 07:43 PM   #7
DaringNovelist
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I think the original critic is getting "pulp fiction" mixed up with "hack fiction." Pulp fiction is what it is from the start - it has a very specific meaning that it isn't a matter of quality. It's a genre. It's written fast and cheap, and punches the reader's buttons hard.

Pulp writers don't skate on previous credentials - very often they were writing under pseudonyms in the first place. (The pulp magazines often worked up the covers and indexes long in advance with made up names and titles, and writers would compete to get the assignment.) Many of those writers were brilliant, and all were working for low pay in a very competitive atmosphere.

What the original critic meant was that many writers, after reaching a certain level of success, just start repeating their successes - skating along on what they've done before. They become "hacks" writing to formula. IMHO, while this is sometimes true, usually when someone spouts a theory like that to blanket ALL writers, or all writers of a certain type, they're just posturing. Or sometimes they are just young and newly cynical. (Not speaking about the original poster here - but about the attitude he mentions in his friend.)

The problem is that we very often don't know the real arc of a writer's career. You only know what gets published and promoted, in the order they are published and promoted - you don't know the order it was originally written, and you don't know what the author has done that didn't appeal to his or her publisher. You also don't know what other issues might be affecting the author aside from purely creative issues. Scott Card wrote a heck of a lot before Ender's Game. I also knew him back then, and he has had quite a personality change since then, so... if you don't like what he writes now, is it really because of creativity, or is it that his vision is no longer interesting to you? (I don't like his current stuff, but I don't think it's because he's lost his creative edge.)

Last edited by DaringNovelist; 04-20-2010 at 07:47 PM.
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