I love stuff like this

[dianeduane]

Lester Dent's Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot

(...The challenge now being to adapt it for novel use, and to find out whether it works.  Certainly a lot of the advice seems sound...)

 The business of building stories seems not much different from the business of building anything else.

It sometimes saves embarrassment to know nearly as much about the locale as the editor, or enough to fool him.

 DON'T TELL ABOUT IT! Show how the thing looked. This is one of the secrets of writing; never tell the reader--show him. (He trembles, roving eyes, slackened jaw, and such.) MAKE THE READER SEE HIM.

Shovel the difficulties more thickly upon the hero.

 THE SECRET OF ALL WRITING IS TO MAKE EVERY WORD COUNT.

And equally useful for a writer spending some time in the 1940's:

Twists, Slugs and Roscoes (A useful dictionary of '40's detective slang)

Why get in a car when you can hop in a boiler? Why tell someone to shut up when you can tell them to close their head? Why threaten to discharge a firearm when you can say, "Dust, pal, or I pump lead!"

Why indeed...

 

Comments

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

Interesting to note, I actually understood the phrases, but then I'm a fan of the old gamgster flicks.
Its more interesting if you can get the cant genuine but it doeshelp if they have any idea of what you are talking about but its better to be genuine than throw anachronisms into the text. It doesn't help in historical fiction to refer to contempary items within the body of the text (worse if it is within what the characters actually say). Even if it does make it clear to the reader what you mean it kinda spoils the whole ambience.