An Open Letter To Pulpists
Dear Fellow Pulp Producers,
If the best name you can come up with for your shadowy agency is essentially a self-description, (The Organization, The Lab, The Shop, etc.,) you are doing it wrong.
If the moniker could easily double as a nickname for an art collective, a college dance bar, or the name of the structure in which your characters work, then it sounds like you couldn’t take a further two-minutes to come up with something better.
Consider: people love “The Man From UNCLE”, but they would not love “The Man From Secret Hideout” – and you can just forget about “The Man From Basement”.
Sincerely,
JRD
Yet I love The Man Called Flintstone.
To be fair, Flintstone (if you drop the alliterative Fred) does sound like the surname of a secret agent protagonist.
“This week, Johnny Flintstone defies death at a gas station that dispenses only evil – you don’t dare miss: “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service.””
“Next week, Johnny Flintstone takes the ride of his life on a bus that takes the carpool lane to doom. You must see “Exact Change Only!”
Prepare yourself for a geyser of action as Johnny Flintstone chases down a gang of bandits hiding in Yellowstone Park – Can Johnny handle the hot springs, and hotter dames? It’s two fists of environmentally-friendly fury in “Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires”