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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24893
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24893
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The vast majority of the fiction produced in any age is of the type that would generally be called pulp or potboiler. It is simple non-challenging stuff meant to occupy a vacant hour for an reader who is a mood for something light and frothy.

Generally pulp does not have much of a shelf life, though there are occasionally works that were written as pulp which survive.

And then there is literature. It is more challenging. It demands more of the reader and provides far greater rewards. It is much harder to write. You can do things in literature that you would not attempt in pulp, because they tax the attention of an inattentive reader. Some literature is much more accessible than other, even after the passage of time. A great writer can make lucid and engaging the kinds of passages that would be utterly tedious in the hands of any lesser author.

So, different things work in pulp than work in literature. Publishing houses and agents looking for pulp want different things than those looking for literature. But if a question on this site does not specify whether the writer is setting out to write pulp or literature, then we should not cite the rule of either pulp or literature as if they were universal.

Also, we should notice that there are pulp authors of extraordinary gifts who are capable of transcending the usual confines of pulp style, even if they never ascend to the heights of literature. J. K. Rowling is a great example of this. The Harry Potter series is not literature by any stretch of the imagination, but it is pulp of extraordinary skill and accomplishment, and it does things that the usual rules of pulp say you should not be done, like starting with a several page descriptions of the place the hero comes from. Not only is there no action in the description of Privet Lane, very little of the story takes place there.

So, to answer the question, no, I don't believe things have changed all that much. The reason they seem to have changed is that all that remains current from the past is its literature. Its pulp has long since faded away. But most of contemporary publishing, like most publishing in the past, is pulp. Comparing the pulp of today with the literature of yesterday is comparing apples and oranges.

But if writers.stackexchange is about writing and not just about pulp, then answers should talk as much about literature as about pulp, unless the questioner specifies pulp or literature in the question.

(Dividing all of writing into pulp and literature is, of course, a gross oversimplification. But writing is a broad subject and we should not mistake the rules and characteristics of one of its many branches for the whole.)

Original score: 7