I think all Doc Savage fans dream of becoming Kenneth Robeson some day. Or you can be like Jack Mackenzie and try to create a Pulp character with all the fun of Doc Savage but with a more modern sensibility. And he succeeds in his upcoming book, Wild Incorporated. The closest I ever got to the super-Pulp team is my stories of the Athenodorians in “The Case of the Phantom Legion”. Jack’s braver, far braver than I.
Anyway, sometimes it is the absence of something that helps you to see what is right about other kinds of writing. That’s where Doc comes in. If you want to learn about action, how to keep a story moving, pace and plotting, Lester Dent and the other men who were Kenneth Robeson can teach you a lot.
Here are some of the things Dent and the rest taught me to appreciate in other writers’ work:
- Characterization is more than a gimmick.
Characterization is a word that many writers and critics have tried to define, but unsuccessfully. Does a writer need to give a long psychological profile (ala Henry James) to see into a character? Do we have to follow them around like some kind of Maigret, taking them apart? Or does it just happen in the writer’s words and the character’s actions. I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does.