Style Guide
The Style Guide is your quick reference for how we do things here. Review these guidelines before you begin posting, and you'll be on your way in no time. Note that these guidelines may be revised and updated as time goes by.
What is pulp? & Questions of Tone
Pulp, as we are using it here, is a broadly-defined genre of fiction (be it written or otherwise), with the following traits as its hallmarks:
- A spirit of adventure and action
- A common(ish) time period: the classic pulp period stretches from around the 1920s through the second World War.
- A certain over-the-top element, heroes with improbable abilities, implausible villains, lost cities, and far more zeppelins than are really reasonable.
- A fairly simplistic moral outlook. There are heroes, and there are villains. Complicated shadings and sophisticated quandaries of ethical behavior are not pulp.
- Science triumphant. The pulps were born of an era when science was remaking the world, and it seemed like the future was going to be flying cars, personal rocket ships, jetpacks (really, they were quite obsessed with flight, which makes sense given the time period) and wondrous new medicines. There was nothing science couldn't eventually figure out. Sure, sometimes this meant atomic death rays, but that's what heroes were for: to punch the bad guys who misused SCIENCE to do such things.
It is also worth noting that some things are not pulp, though they share some traits in common:
- Noir is not pulp. Born of much the same time period, noir differs from pulp most notably in a more realistic tone and a much more complicated and cynical view of morality. Noir is all shades of gray. Pulp is mostly black and white. In Jim's words, "Bud White torturing folks, while great reading, is not pulp." Noir protagonists are just that, protagonists. Pulp protagonists are heroes.
- Superhero comic books are not pulp. The pulp stories predate comics, and are their direct precursors. Superman and Batman, for example, owe a strong debt to pulp icon Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze. Pulp goes over the top, even to the fantastic, but nobody in a pulp story is going to have laser eyes or fly (without a jetpack, anyway).
The lines are pretty blurry, but the tone isn't too hard to grasp. Think "Indiana Jones". For direct literary inspiration, you may want to check out ThePulp.Net. On the nigh-ridiculous end of the spectrum,Doc Gnosis borders on the purely fantastic, but is well within the spirit of things. Conversely, Hank Barton is relatively realistic, with no special powers and exploits that, while improbable, don't generally require rewriting the laws of physics. If you want to walk on the Doc Gnosis, far-edge of the genre, see especially the comic book "Hellboy" (despite the time-period difference).
Just keep the general ethos of the genre in mind and you can't go too wrong.
Templates
Two of the domimant entries on this wiki fall into the categories of Characters and Organizations. For the sake of standardization, we have created templates to be used when creating one of these entries. To use, simply open the relevant one, select and copy its contents, and paste it into the editing window of your new entry.
Timelines, continuity, and rigorous detail
These sorts of things are mostly optional. If you wish to provide very specific dates and timelines for persons and events in your entries and stories, feel free to do so, but do not feel obligated. Playing it fast and loose is fine. Just don't cross over into contradicting established details, as specified in the rules.
Language issues.
While lots of us may swear like sailors, it's not terribly genre. In your works here, anything beyond a "damn" or a "hell" is probably unwarranted. Avoid profanity.
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