28/05/2021 How to Write a Book in Three Days – Ghostwoods

How to Write a Book in Three

Days
Note: This is the 404 page, because most visitors are looking for this article. If you didn’t
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Pah. Try NaNoWriWeekend.

Michael Moorcock is a highly in uential English writer. His career has mostly
specialised in fantasy and sci- , and whilst some of his novels have been highly
literary, he was a rm exponent of sword-and-sorcery, particularly in the sixties
and seventies.

He has often commented on the craft of writing, but one of his most unique and
interesting techniques is his plan for writing a book in three days. He was talking
about sword-and-sorcery at the time, the fantasy inheritor of pulp ction, and the
books in question were typically 60,000 words, but even so, there’s a lot to be said
for his methods. Despite the general medium, the power of his work has been huge,
and his best-known character, Elric, is one of fantasy’s great standouts.

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Michael Moorcock

Anyway. Here is Mike’s technique for writing a book in three days:

* First of all, it’s vital to have everything prepared. Whilst you will be
actually writing the thing in three days, you’ll need a day or two of set-up
rst. If it’s not all set up, you’ll fail.

* Model the basic plot on the Maltese Falcon (or the Holy Grail — the
Quest theme, basically). In the Falcon, a lot of people are after the same
thing, the Black Bird. In the Mort D’Arthur, again a lot of people are after
the same thing, the Holy Grail. It’s the same formula for westerns, too.
Everyone’s after the same thing. The gold of El Dorado. Whatever.

* The formula depends on the sense of a human being up against

superhuman force — politics, Big Business, supernatural evil, &c. The
hero is fallible, and doesn’t want to be mixed up with the forces. He’s
always about to walk out when something grabs him and involves him
on a personal level.

* You’ll need to make lists of things you’ll use.

* Prepare an event for every four pages.

* Do a list of coherent images. So you think, right, Stormbringer: swords,

shields, horns, and so on.

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* Prepare a complete structure. Not a plot, exactly, but a structure where

the demands were clear. Know what narrative problems you have to
solve at every point. Write solutions at white heat, through inspiration:
really, it can just be looking around the room, looking at ordinary objects,
and turning them into what you need. A mirror can become a mirror that
absorbs the souls of the damned.

* Prepare a list of images that are purely fantastic, deliberate paradoxes

say, that t within the sort of thing you’re writing. The City of Screaming
Statues, things like that. You just write a list of them so you’ve got them
there when you need them. Again, they have to cohere, have the right
resonances, one with the other.

* The imagery comes before the action, because the action’s actually
unimportant. An object to be obtained — limited time to obtain it. It’s
easily developed, once you work the structure out.

* Time is the important element in any action adventure story. In fact, you
get the action and adventure out of the element of time. It’s a classic
formula: “We’ve only got six days to save the world!” Immediately you’ve
set the reader up with a structure: there are only six days, then ve, then
four and nally, in the classic formula anyway, there’s only 26 seconds to
save the world! Will they make it in time?

* The whole reason you plan everything beforehand is so that when you
hit a snag, a desperate moment, you’ve actually got something there on
your desk that tells you what to do.

* Once you’ve started, you keep it rolling. You can’t a ord to have
anything stop it. Unplug the phone and the internet, lock everyone
out of the house.

* You start o with a mystery. Every time you reveal a bit of it, you have to
do something else to increase it. A good detective story will have the
same thing. “My God, so that’s why Lady Carruthers’s butler Jenkins was
peering at the keyhole that evening. But where
was Mrs. Jenkins?”

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* In your lists, in the imagery and so on, there will be mysteries that you
haven’t explained to yourself. The point is, you put in the mystery, it
doesn’t matter what it is. It may not be the great truth that you’re going to
reveal at the end of the book. You just think, I’ll put this in here because I
might need it later. You can’t put in loads of boring exposition about
something you have no idea of yourself.

* Divide your total 60,000 words into four sections, 15,000 words apiece.
Divide each into six chapters. You can scale this up or down as you like,
of course, but you’ll need more days — and stamina — for longer books,
and keep chapters at 2.5k max. In section one the hero will say, “There’s
no way I can save the world in six days unless I start by…” Getting the rst
object of power, or reaching the mystic place, or nding the right
sidekick, or whatever. That gives you an immediate goal, and an
immediate time element, as well as an overriding time demand. With
each section divided into six chapters, each chapter must then contain
something which will move the action forward and contribute to that
immediate goal.

* Very often a chapter is something like: attack of the bandits —defeat of

the bandits. Nothing particularly complex, but it’s another way you can
achieve recognition: by making the structure of a chapter a miniature of
the overall structure of the book, so everything feels coherent. The more
you’re dealing with incoherence, with chaos — ie with speed — the more
you need to underpin everything with simple logic and basic forms that
will keep everything tight. Otherwise the thing just starts to spread out
into muddle and abstraction.

* So you don’t have any encounter without at least information coming

out of it. In the simplest form, Elric has a ght and kills somebody, but as
they die they tell him who kidnapped his wife. Again, it’s a question of
economy. Everything has to have a narrative function.

* Use the Lester Dent Master Plot Formula. [[I’ll put the formula at the end
of Moorcock’s tips — Ghostwoods]] You must never have a revelation of
something that wasn’t already established; so, you couldn’t unmask a
murderer who wasn’t a character established already. All your main
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characters have to be in the rst part. All you main themes and
everything else has to be established in the rst part, developed in the
second and third, and resolved in the last part.

* There’s always a sidekick to make the responses the hero isn’t allowed
to make: to get frightened; to add a lighter note; to o set the hero’s
morbid speeches, and so on. The hero has to supply the narrative
dynamic, and therefore can’t have any common-sense. Any one of us in
those circumstances would say, ‘What? Dragons? Demons? You’ve got to
be joking!’ The hero has to be driven, and when people are driven,
common sense disappears. You don’t want your reader to make common
sense objections, you want them to go with the drive; but you’ve got to
have somebody around who’ll act as a sort of chorus.

* When in doubt, descend into a minor character. So when you reach an

impasse, and you can’t move the action any further with your major
character, switch to a minor character ‘s viewpoint, which will allow you
to keep the narrative moving, and give you time to brew something.

Elric with his soul-drinking blade Stormbringer.

Lester Dent’s Master Plot Formula

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You’ll also need to know the Lester Dent Master Plot Formula. Lester Dent was a
hugely proli c writer of pulp ction stories, and is particularly remembered for the
Doc Savage tales, which he created and wrote the great bulk of. His masterplan is a
blueprint for classic pulp ction stories, and it retains a lot of power, even today.

Lester Dent’s penname is Kenneth Robeson. He is the creator of Doc

Savage and author of that successful book-length magazine since its
birth. He has been writing ve years and often turns out 200,000 words a
month. He has not had a rejection in the past three years. This article
describes the master plot that Mr. Dent uses.

This is one opinion. It is opinion of one who believes in formula and

mechanical construction, for a pulp yarn. It is opinion of one believing:

1—Majority of pulps are formula.

2—Most editors who say they don’t want formula don’t know what they
are talking about.

3—Some eds won’t buy anything but formula.

Framed over this typewriter, on a bulkhead of my schooner now

anchored o a bay in the Caribbean while we attempt to raise a Spanish
treasure, is an object which tends to make the convictions mentioned
appear to be facts—or an unexpected hallucination.

The object on the bulkhead is a formula, a master plot, for any 6000-
word pulp story. It has worked on adventure, detective, western and war-
air. It tells exactly where to put everything. It shows de nitely just what
must happen in each successive thousand words.

No yarn written to the formula has yet failed to sell.

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Lester Dent

A year or so ago, a rough form of this master plot was handed to a man
who still had a rst sale to make. If recollection is correct, he sold his next
six yarns written to the master plot.

The business of building stories seems not much di erent from the
business of building anything else. The idea is apparently to get
materials, get a plan, and go to it.

The rough form of this story plan, this master plot, will follow. But rst, it
might be a good idea to consider some of the materials.

It seems likely that “character” rates as one of the principal story-making

materials. Many a yarn comes back with /“Inadequate Characterization”
/pencilled on a rejection slip, and a scribbler works up a headache trying
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to gure out what the hell that meant. It might help to glance over some
barn door variety characterization gags that most professionals use.

A fair idea is to make out a list of characters before starting a yarn. Then
it’s conceivably a better idea to try to get along with half the list.

For a detective yarn, several characters may be handy, to wit: /One/hero.

One villain. Various persons to murder. It may not be a sure- re thing to
murder women, some editors being nicky that way. Somebody for the
hero to rescue is often handy, too. Female. Not female, though, if the
editor has what he is wont to quaintly call a “no woman interest” mag.

Characterizing a story actor consists of giving him some things which

make him stick in the reader’s mind. Tag him. A tag may be described as
something to recognize somebody by. Haile Selassie’s sheet and drawers
might be called an appearance tag. So might Old John Silver’s wooden
leg in /Treasure Island/. And movie comic Joe Brown’s big mouth. The
idea is to show the tag to the reader so that he may thereby recognize
the actor in the story. Instead of marching the character in only by name,
parade the tag.

Mannerism tags may cover absent-minded gestures. Perhaps the villain

(villainy at this point unknown) is often noted rubbing his eyes when in
private or when thinking himself unobserved. At end of yarn, it turns out
the color of his eyes has been disguised by the new style glass opticians’
cap which ts directly on the eyeball, and cap was irritating his eyes.

It’s nice to have tags take a de nite bearing on the story. Not all can,
however.

Disposition tags should not be overlooked. Is the character a hard guy?

Does he love his women and leave ‘em—and later help them over the
rough spots? This tagging might go on and on and become more and
more subtle.

Characters usually have names. Occasionally an author is a literary Argus

who writes a yarn carrying the actors through by their tags alone, then

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goes back and names them. This procedure is not necessarily to be

advised, except a time or two for practice.

It is not a bad idea to use some system in picking names. Two characters
in the yarn may not necessarily need names which look alike. Confusing
the reader can be left to villains. If the hero’s name is Johnson, “J” and
“son” names for the others might be avoided. Too, it may not be the best
idea to go in for all very short names exclusively. And a worse idea is to
go in for all long ones. Telephone books are full of names, but it’s an idea
to twist them around, selecting a rst name here, second one there. If
nothing better is at hand, a newspaper, possibly the obit page, can help.

Now, about that master plot. It’s a formula, a blueprint for any 6000-word
yarn.

A rough outline can be laid out with the typewriter, although some
mental wizards may do it all in their heads. About a page of outline to
every ten pages of nished yarn might serve.

Doc Savage, Man of Bronze.

Here’s how it starts:

Devise one or more of the following:

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1. A DIFFERENT MURDER METHOD FOR VILLAIN TO USE

2. A DIFFERENT THING FOR VILLAIN TO BE SEEKING
3. A DIFFERENT LOCALE
4. A MENACE WHICH IS TO HANG LIKE A CLOUD OVER HERO

One of these DIFFERENT things would be nice, two better, three swell. It
may help if they are fully in mind before tackling the rest.

A di erent murder method could be–di erent. Thinking of shooting,

kni ng, hydrocyanic, garroting, poison needles, scorpions, a few others,
and writing them on paper gets them where they may suggest
something. Scorpions and their poison bite? Maybe mosquitoes or ies
treated with deadly germs?

If the victims are killed by ordinary methods, but found under strange
and identical circumstances each time, it might serve, the reader of
course not knowing until the end, that the method of murder is ordinary.
Scribes who have their villain’s victims found with butter ies, spiders or
bats stamped on them could conceivably be irting with this gag.

Probably it won’t do a lot of good to be too odd, fanciful or grotesque

with murder methods.

The di erent thing for the villain to be after might be something other
than jewels, the stolen bank loot, the pearls, or some other old ones.
Here, again one might get too bizarre.

Unique locale? Easy. Selecting one that ts in with the murder method
and the treasure–thing that villain wants–makes it simpler, and it’s also
nice to use a familiar one, a place where you’ve lived or worked. So many
pulpeteers don’t. It sometimes saves embarrassment to know nearly as
much about the locale as the editor, or enough to fool him.

Here’s a nifty much used in faking local color. For a story laid in Egypt,
say, author nds a book titled “Conversational Egyptian Easily Learned,”
or something like that. He wants a character to ask in Egyptian, “What’s
the matter?” He looks in the book and nds, “El khabar, eyh?” To keep the
reader from getting dizzy, it’s perhaps wise to make it clear in some
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fashion, just what that means. Occasionally the text will tell this, or
someone can repeat it in English. But it’s a doubtful move to stop and tell
the reader in so many words the English translation.

The writer learns they have palm trees in Egypt. He looks in the book,
nds the Egyptian for palm trees, and uses that. This kids editors and
readers into thinking he knows something about Egypt.

So. The Master Plot itself.

Divide the 6000 word yarn into four 1500 word parts. In each 1500 word
part, put the following:

* FIRST 1500 WORDS

1. First line, or as near thereto as possible, introduce the hero and swat
him with a stful of trouble. Hint at a mystery, a menace or a problem to
be solved–something the hero has to cope with.
2. The hero pitches in to cope with his stful of trouble. (He tries to
fathom the mystery, defeat the menace, or solve the problem.)
3. Introduce ALL the other characters as soon as possible. Bring them on
in action.
4. Hero’s endevours land him in an actual physical con ict near the end
of the rst 1500 words.
5. Near the end of rst 1500 words, there is a complete surprise twist in
the plot development.

SO FAR: Does it have SUSPENSE?

Is there a MENACE to the hero?
Does everything happen logically?

At this point, it might help to recall that action should do something

besides advance the hero over the scenery. Suppose the hero has
learned the dastards of villains have seized somebody named Eloise,
who can explain the secret of what is behind all these sinister events.
The hero corners villains, they ght, and villains get away. Not so hot.
Hero should accomplish something with his tearing around, if only to
rescue Eloise, and surprise! Eloise is a ring-tailed monkey. The hero
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counts the rings on Eloise’s tail, if nothing better comes to mind. They’re
not real. The rings are painted there. Why?

* SECOND 1500 WORDS

1. Shovel more grief onto the hero.

2. Hero, being heroic, struggles, and his struggles lead up to:
3. Another physical con ict.
4. A surprising plot twist to end the 1500 words.

NOW: Does second part have SUSPENSE?

Does the MENACE grow like a black cloud?
Is the hero getting it in the neck?
Is the second part logical?

DON’T TELL ABOUT IT. Show how the thing looked. This is one of the
secrets of writing; never tell the reader–show him. (He trembles, roving
eyes, slackened jaw, and such.) MAKE THE READER SEE HIM.

Characterizing a story actor consists of giving him some things which

make him stick in the reader’s mind. TAG HIM.

BUILD YOUR PLOTS SO THAT ACTION CAN BE CONTINUOUS.

* THIRD 1500 WORDS

1. Shovel the grief onto the hero.

2. Hero makes some headway, and corners the villain or somebody in:
3. A physical con ict.
4. A surprising plot twist, in which the hero preferably gets it in the neck
bad, to end the 1500 words.

DOES: It still have SUSPENSE?

Is the MENACE getting blacker?
The hero nds himself in a hell of a x?
It all happens logically?

If so, ne. These outlines or master formulas are only something to make
you certain of inserting some physical con ict, and some genuine plot
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twists, with a little suspense and menace thrown in. Without them, there
is no pulp story. These physical con icts in each part might be
DIFFERENT, too. If one ght is with sts, that can take care of the pugilism
until next the next yarn. Same for poison gas and swords. There may,
naturally, be exceptions. A hero with a peculiar punch, or a quick draw,
might use it more than once.

When writing, it helps to get at least one minor surprise to the printed
page. It is reasonable to to expect these minor surprises to sort of
inveigle the reader into keeping on. They need not be such profound
e orts. One method of accomplishing one now and then is to be gently
misleading. Hero is examining the murder room. The door behind him
begins slowly to open. He does not see it. He conducts his examination
blissfully. Door eases open, wider and wider, until–surprise! The glass
pane falls out of the big window across the room. It must have fallen
slowly, and air blowing into the room caused the door to open. Then
what the heck made the pane fall so slowly? More mystery.

The idea is to avoid monotony.

Suspense must be the sugar which draws the ies. And possibly it’s
coupled up with the MENACE, a slightly intangible thing at rst glance.
Menace shouldn’t be hard to recognize in a story. It’s that /feel /of
terrible things to happen to the hero and every other decent person. It
might be built up by repeated references, a word dropped now and then,
and by making the villain particularly bad.

Villians don’t necessarily have to be inhuman, though.

ACTION: Vivid, swift, no words wasted. Create suspense, make the

reader see and feel the action.

ATMOSPHERE: Hear, smell, see, feel and taste.

DESCRIPTION: Trees, wind, scenery and water.

THE SECRET OF ALL WRITING IS TO MAKE EVERY WORD COUNT.

* FOURTH 1500 WORDS

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1. Shovel the di culties more thickly upon the hero.

2. Get the hero almost buried in his troubles. (Figuratively, the villain has
him prisoner and has him framed for a murder rap; the girl is presumably
dead, everything is lost, and the DIFFERENT murder method is about to
dispose of the su ering protagonist.)
3. The hero extricates himself using HIS OWN SKILL, training or brawn.
4. The mysteries remaining–one big one held over to this point will help
grip interest–are cleared up in course of nal con ict as hero takes the
situation in hand.
5. Final twist, a big surprise, (This can be the villain turning out to be the
unexpected person, having the “Treasure” be a dud, etc.)
6. The snapper, the punch line to end it.

HAS: The SUSPENSE held out to the last line?

The MENACE held out to the last?
Everything been explained?
It all happen logically?
Is the Punch Line enough to leave the reader with that WARM FEELING?
Did God kill the villain? Make SURE it was the hero.

There it is. Take it, do what you can with it, while I go on deck, put on the
diving hood, and have another try at that galleon, with the wife up the
mast to keep an eye on the reefs for sharks and barracuda.

Note: Most published articles have interesting histories behind them. This
one might interest some of you. Lester Dent sent us a modest little six-
page article just about the time this magazine was going to press. The
last line of the article mentioned his master plot formula; the famed
master plot that has fed every Lester Dent story for the past several
years.

We wondered if Mr. Dent would share that formula with the fraternity. We
phoned his hotel in New York. “Sorry, Mr. Dent has gone to La Plata, Mo.”
We phoned the village postmaster at La Plata. “Sorry, Mr. Dent is on his
yacht, the /Albatross/.” “Where?” “O Miami someplace; my goodness,
why?” The long distance operator in Miami, a student of human nature if

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there ever was one, asked us a question: “How long has Mr. Dent been on
his yacht?”

“Why?” we were glad to ask this for a change.

“Well, you see if he’s just bought a yacht he’s on deck running up ags,
and then running them down again.”

“Oh.”

“But if he’s had it for a while, he’s below listening to his radio. If you want,
I’ll have the police put out a call for him on short wave.”

We demurred. The operator coughed, letting us know she knew we were

a plain sissy. To invade the privacy of an author anchored God only
knows where by belching into his radio: “L-e-s-t-e-r D-e-n-t, Lester Dent
call Miami police station. Yachts at sea o Miami, ag the /Albatross.
/Owner wanted by police.” What a rummy we’ve turned out to be, we
thought, as we gave the operator, who was by now politely sneering at
us with her conversational coughs, the go ahead.

About two hours later a startled voice called us from Florida and asked
what the hell we were up to. It seemed that every yacht o Miami caught
the call and began signaling the /Albatross /while the rest of that busy
little city came down to the wharf to see L-e-s-t-e-r D-e-n-t, a man
obviously wanted by the police.

We explained demurely. And of such stu are authors made that Mr. Dent
agreed to send along his famed formula, although he added, with a
touch of homespun: “I hadn’t ought to.”

It’s a pretty ne thing for an author to share such a hard-won secret with
his competing professionals, so if you like this piece, we have a mild
suggestion to make. Buy a copy of /Doc Savage /on the newsstands
and if you like the lead story, tell the publishers so in a letter.

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