As storytellers we make a promise to our readers that they will at the very least be entertained. If we don’t fulfill this promise, they will but down the book and find something else that fulfills that desire to be entertained.
What does that mean though?
To be entertained.
Of course for everyone it is a different and unique flavor pf desire. Some like a complete character growth arc one where the lonely neglected street urchin becomes king honored, refined, and desired. Through their journey we achieve a temporary relief from our own dissatisfaction with our place in this would.
If you don’t know what you are promising your genre reader than you won’t be successful. Period.
I write pulp western fantasy novellas.
My first promise is simple.
SEX
Premo Prose,
Ink stains that your eyes easily…oh so… effortlessly slide over crafting euphemistic yet euphoric images inside your minds,
I promise a sweet dark chocolate surprise somewhere hidden within my text.
But I am not writing Erotica. I’m writing Pulp I am literally writing easy to digest garbage. Staple of the pulp promise are racy plot driven stories that finish quickly and leave no marks on the reader after the experience is over.
My second promise is a bit more complicated
Western stories
mean more than the three decades of American expansionism that sprung the genre. In its basic elements a western is a story following an unchanging iconic hero often a stoic emotionally as they navigate a hostile world. At the bare minimum it must contain the stoic emotionally distant hero and a hostile world. No gun-play and cowboy boots needed.
My fantasy promise
is the fantastical. From the magic’s of the elder dragons of the northern kingdom to the rumors of dwarves. These are facts of reality for the denizens that populate my world and stories but they are not of the earth that we inhabit and when you read about how an illusion caster summons lighting from the clouds. You should be impressed and your own imagination should run with the questions of how, why, what if, and that would mean, etc.
Those are the basics of my promises to readers
This blog has made the promise that if you didn’t smirk you’ve left unsatisfied
and well i am sorry but this is a blog
and as such it’s only promise is that it is a web based log of it’s author’s thoughts. Which it is.
I didn’t promise Shakespearean turn of phrase.
I didn’t promise you atmospheric mastery like Lovecraft.
[Self thought: it would be rather ironic once my writing mastery has reached the point where I can craft works on par with Lovecraft or Hemingway but have to shelve those works because they do not satisfy the promise of pulp western fantasies.]
What have you promised your readers? Drop it in the comments. I’ll get to it if I can
By entering genre fiction.
Much love,
Hngyhngyhppo
hngyhngyhppo 