The Washington times., 1901-07-07
WRITER'S OF DIME NOVELS.
Penny Dreadfuls the Creations of
Painstaking Salaried Grinders.
Most of the Yellow Backs Made 10
Ordcr-FOrty Thousand Words
Written in Two Days-Virtue Tri
umphs and Vice IL Punished

To the romantic Imagination of the
small boy the writer of dime novels is of
the same heroic and fire-eating type as
the heroes he portrays. The actual fact
is so different that if it were known the
resultant loss of glamour would undoubt-
edly be accompanied by a corresponding
decrease of sales. The men who write
dime novels do not wear their hair long
They carry no siX-shooters nor bowie
knives, and many of them never saw
live Indian or cowboy. The writing of
such literature is a business rather than
a profession, and the only special quail
fcations requisite to success are an imag-
ination of great resource and fertility and
an unlimited capacity for hard and rapid
work Each publishing house engaged in
the business employs a staff of regular
writer's, paying those who do nothing
else a salary, and to those who do other
work a fixed sum for the manuscript and
copyright of each story. Thus is carried
on the business of embodying and re-
embodying the good old heroes, Alkali
Ike, Gentleman Joe, Big Foot Sandy,
One Eye Pete Deadwood Dan, Daredevil
Dick, The Man With the Iron Hand, the
Boy Detective, and ali the other popular
favorites who are still on duty, trading
Indians hanging horse thieves, reScuing
Kidnapped maidens, finding lost heirs, re-
covering lost fortunes, and in other ways
helping good people out of bad scrapes
and leaving bad people 'clinging, weak
and despairing, to yielding twig that
holds them for one thrilling moment sus-
pended between the edge of the cliff and
the yawning, rockbound abyss thousand
feet below"
q, 4 ha 1rbn ppH
to produce a certain amount of copy
within a given time in order to supply
the regular issues of the libraries each
publisher has list of men who can write
a story to order at short notice. They
are classed as extras or specials
and are called upon when regular writer
is i'll. on vacation or falls behind in the
production of copy. These extra writers
are usually newspaper men employed on
some paper in the city. or men engaged
in some other class of literary work that
does not fully occupy their time. Nine
tenths of all the sO-called blood and
thunder stories produced are written to
order AS a rule, the author does not
even select the title of his story, and in
many cases he is compelled to follow
plot suggested by the publisher or to use
some incident in real life as a basis.
The publishers keep close watch upon
the daily papers for stories of sensational
crimes and adventure that may serve as
incidents in the fiction prepared for the
small boy, and when a great event or an
incident of national interest occurs. there
is an exciting race between publishers TO
be the first to put upon the market
dime novel relating in some way to the
affair that is in the public mind. Within
n week of Deweys victory in Manila Bay
a score of thrilling stories in which that
battle was the chief incident were on the
newstands. When the sailors of the
United States cruiser Baltimore were at
tackled in the streets of South Amer
lean city few years ago. and there was
much wild talk of war publishing house
in New York put on sale forty-eight hours
after the news of the affair reached this
country a dime novel with the murdered
boatswain's mate of the cruiser as the
hero. The author of the story wrote for
thirty-siX hours without rest or s.eep, pro-
ducing 10000 words of copy, which went
TO the printers sheet by sheet, as he wrote
It. This is probably the record for rapid
production. 1t often happens that
a writer of such literature is called upon
to produce a story of 1900 to $1,000 words
in three days.
Writers of dime novels do not, as a
rule, attempt a polished style of English
and rarely re-read or revise page of
their copy. The publishers want action
plot. incident, dialogue, and thrilling stu