Story Vitality

Story Vitality

It vaguely irritates me to hear that a pulp writer need not know anything about his scene, that he should have no preoccupation with accuracy, that a beginning action scene and plenty of fight are the only requisites.

Many moons ago I wrote a story called The Phantom Patrol. I wrote it with an old-timer’s remarks in mind. I said to myself, “M’boy, you’re writing tripe, why slave over it? Why go to all the trouble of researching the thing? Your readers won’t know the difference anyway.”

And so The Phantom Patrol cruised the markets, collected copious rejects.

When it at last came limping home, abashed and whipped, I gazed sternly at it. It would seem that it had all the things required for a good story. It had action, it had unusual situations, it had lots of thud and blunder. Why, then, didn’t it sell?

To understand the evolution of The Phantom Patrol, some of the plot is necessary. It concerns a Coast Guard boat, a dope runner and piracy.

The hero is a lieutenant, chasing a cargo of heroin. He gets cast ashore in the blow, his crew is all drowned, he wakes on the beach in the morning to discover that his vessel is still serviceable. But before he can board the boat, the dope runners shoot him down and steal the ship before his eyes.

He recovers from the wound, escapes to the C.G. base only to discover that he is tagged with the name of pirate. Unknown to him, the villains have taken his boat, have stopped liners in the name of the Coast Guard and have robbed them.

He has no way of proving his innocence, so he goes to jail, escapes, returns and wipes out the dope runners.

Ah, yes, I know. That story has always been good. I felt it would sell, but I could think of no way to pep it up.

I threw it in the ashcan and rewrote it all the way through. It went out again—and came home, more battered than ever.

Certainly there was something wrong, but I didn’t have time to waste on it and I threw it in the files.

It might well have stayed there forever, had I not been faced with one of those sudden orders which leave you cold and trembling for want of a plot.

The second rewrite of The Phantom Patrol was ten thousand words. The order was for twenty thousand. And all I could find in the files was The Phantom Patrol. Something had to be done about it. I had a few days to spare and I decided that maybe the Coast Guard might be able to slip me some data which would lengthen it.

Then and there, I learned something. The scene of the yarn was laid in the Gulf and Louisiana. In my rambles I seem to have missed both places. The theme was the Coast Guard and, outside of watching some of the C.G. boats, I knew little or nothing about the outfit.

But hadn’t an old-timer said that accurate data was unnecessary? Why did I have to go to all this trouble?

It happened at the moment that I was writing aviation articles for about twenty-five bucks a throw. The price of the twenty-thousand worder was to be two hundred and fifty dollars.

Thinking about that, I reasoned that maybe I ought to spend a little time on the latter, if I always spent a day on an aviation article.

With the bare thought that maybe I could get some data for stretching purposes, I hied myself down to the city and looked around. A Coast Guard tug was tied to the dock.

Summoning up my nerve, I walked up the plank and rapped on the commanding officer’s door. He was engaged in changing his uniform, but he bade me enter.

I sat down on a transom and plied him with a few questions. He informed me with some heat that lieutenants were never in charge of seventy-five-foot patrol boats. Only chief petty officers captained them.

I asked him about the Gulf and service there, but he was rather ungracious about it. A little miffed, I started to go.

As a parting broadside, he said, “I always laugh when I read stories about the Coast Guard.”

And I stamped down the gangway, vowing that this would be one story which wouldn’t make the so-and-so laugh, yea man!

Another C.G. boat was in, a slim greyhound. I decided I ought to board her and see what I could discover there. No officers were aboard. The deck watch was headed by a chief petty officer, a grizzled soul with a salt tang to his speech.

“You wanna see the old tub, do you?” said the C.P.O. “All right, Johnny here will take you around.”

Johnny, another C.P.O., escorted me through the vessel. He explained about engines in terms which made me squirm. He showed me everything, including how to fire a one-pounder. He told me that dope runners were bad eggs. Why, once up in Maine he had…

And so passed the afternoon.

I skittered homeward, mentally afire. I blessed the C.P.O. and cursed the officer in the same breath.

By God, those officers weren’t so hot. My hero was the chief petty officer, beleaguered by officers and dope runners, battered by hurricanes in the Gulf, patrolling the sea with a keen salt wind nipping at him.

The new Phantom Patrol began:

Crisp and brittle, the staccato torrent ripped out from the headphones, “S.O.S. … S.O.S.—Down in storm 20 miles south of Errol Island. Hull leaking. Starboard wing smashed… Cannot last two hours…. Transport plane New Orleans bound sinking 20 miles…!”

Johnny Trescott’s opinion of the matter was amply summed in the single word, “Damn!”

And there I had it. Johnny is trailing the dope runners, but because saving life comes before stopping crime, he must leave his course and rescue the transport plane.

But the runner, Georges Coquelin, hears the SOS too and, as there’s wealth aboard that plane, Johnny walks straight into Coquelin when he tries to rescue the transport.

The atmosphere began to crackle in the yarn. I was still listening to that C.P.O. telling me about these trips, these escapes:

Heinie Swartz eyed the dripping foredeck of the lunging 75-footer. Green seas topped with froth were breaking. The one-pound gun was alternately swallowed and disgorged by water. The two 200 h.p. Sterling Diesels throbbed under the deck, pounding out their hearts against the blow.

I knew what made the boat tick and I could visualize it. I was suddenly so secure in my data that I felt able to tinker with the effect of situations.

The wordage went up like a skyrocket. I had so much at my command that I was hard put to hold the stuff down.

And then when Johnny came back to the base, he’s up against the officers. And are those officers a bunch of thick-witted, braid-polishing bums? I hope to tell you:

Lieutenant Maitland, counsel for the defense, entered with stiff, uncompromising strides. He had been appointed to the task much against his will, and the fact was clearly etched in his sunburned face. He sparkled with gold braid and distaste.

When he entered the cell, he eyed his two “clients” with disgust. Garbed as they were in prison dungarees, they were two uninteresting units which comprised a sordid case.

Johnny and Heinie stood up, in deference to his rank, but Maitland either forgot or refused to give the order, “At ease!”

In those first two stories, the patrol boat had merely been a method of conveyance.

Now it began to live and snort and wallow in the trough.

The plight of Johnny, meeting up with Georges Coquelin and losing his ship, was capped by the attitude of the officers. He was in trouble and no mistake. When I started thinking about what would actually happen in such a case, I began to feel very, very sorry for my hero. He was really on the spot.

And then, I had a little personal interest in the case too. Somebody thought they’d laugh when they read the yarn, eh? Well, let them try to laugh now.

With a very clear picture of Coast Guard armament in my mind, I was able to give the final scenes the reality, the zip they needed. And those final scenes, when you’re tired, need something outside to give them life.

Johnny Trescott sighted the lighted hut they had first seen. A harsh streak of lightning showed that the clearing was empty. The door of the hut swung to and fro in the wind.

Johnny pulled back the loading handle of the machine gun. The belt dangled over his shoulder, drooling water from its brace studded length.

Collected data changed the plot, pepped up the writing, gave the story an undercurrent of vitality which made the yarn. The wild implausibility of the original was there because I had no actual vision of what the Coast Guard tried to do and how it did it.

The first two drafts were laughable, worthless. But my writing hadn’t changed so terribly much. Nothing had changed but the subject.

And the subject had changed because I could feel it.

The Phantom Patrol was published in the January Five Novels. The illustrator made a slight error in making the pictures those of officers.

But even then the Coast Guard did not laugh. They read the story and wrote me about it and I felt that I had succeeded.

Adventure is as difficult as you want to make it. The way to make it difficult is to sail blithely along, listening to the words of wisdom dropped by the old-timers about how the knowledge of the subject is unnecessary. One should listen and then promptly forget.

Oh well, maybe when I’ve been in the game twenty-five years, I’ll go around pooh-poohing everything, especially accuracy. But if I do, I hope some young feller will take me for a buggy ride. Maybe I’ll remember then how I used to sell.