The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1901-06-30
WRITING OF DIME NOVELS.
PATNsTAKING sALARIED WRIT
ERS

Many ''Penny Dreadfuls" Are Made
to order Around Some Incident
Which Is Occupying the Public
Mind-Speed Counts for Much, cas-
There is often Race for the
Market Between Rival Publishing
Firms-A Dime Novel OF 10000
Words Which Appeared on the
Market Two Days After the News
of the Incident Which Suggested
It-This Line of Literature Has Its
own Morality, which Is Very
Rigid; Virtue Must Triumph, Vice
BE Punished, and All without Spe-
cific Word or Suggestion Which
Could Offend the Most Prudish.
New York, June 2S-To the romantic
Imagination of the small boy the writer
of dime novels is of the same heroic and
fre-eating type as the heroes he por-
trays. The actual fact is SO different
that if ID were known the resultant loss
of glamour would undoubtedly be accom-
panied by a corresponding decrease OF
sales. The men who write dime novels
no six-shooters nor bowie knives, and
many of them never saw a live Indian
or cowboy The writing of such literature
is business rather than profession,
and the only special qualification requis-
lite to success are an imagination 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, Alkah Ike, Gentleman Joe.
Big Foot Sandy, One Eye Pete, Deadwood
Dan, Daredevil Dick, The Man with the
Iron Hand. the Boy Detective, and all
the other popular favorites who are still
on duty, trailing Indians, hanging horse
thieves, rescuing kidnapped maidens,
finding lost heirs, recovering lost for
tunes and in other ways helping good
people out of bad scrapes and leaving bad
people 'ciinging, weak and despairing,
to a yielding twig that holds them for
one thrilling moment suspended between
lH6 6uS0 Oh ln6 CHI anu the ydWIllkp
rockbound abyss a thousand feet below"
In addition to the men who are engaged
to produce a certain amount of COPY
within given time in order to supply
the regular issues of the libraries" each
publisher has a 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 ill. on vacation, or falls behind in the
production of copy. These extra writers
are usually newspaper men employed OH
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 rule the author does not
even select the title of his story apd in
many cases he is compelled to follow a
plot suggested by the publisher or to use
some incident in real life as basis.
The publishers keep a 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 a
dime novel relating in some way to the
affair that is in the public mind. Within
a week of Dewey's victory in Manila Bay
a score of thrilling stories in which that
battle was the chief incident were on the
news stands. When the sailors Of the U.
S. cruiser Baltimore were attacked in the
streets of South American city a, 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 au-
thor of the story wrote for thirty-six
hours without rest or sleep, producing for
ty thousand words of copy, which went to
the printers sheet by sheet as he wrote
it. This is probably the record for rapid
literary production. 1t often happens that
a writer of such literature is called upon
to produce a story of forty thousand to
fifty thousand 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