Pump Fiction: A Tarantino-style pump anthology (rough draft) :: Pump Fiction

🎬 TarantinoPump_Fan New Member 🎬 Dialogue Is Pump ●●○○○ Joined: Feb 20, 2026 Posts: 12 The diner booth. Always the diner booth.

TarantinoPump_Fan — Post #1 Today, 6:44 AM Quote

Alright. I have been writing this for two weeks. It is a Tarantino-style pump anthology. Multiple scenes, non-linear timeline, long dialogue, sudden violence (but the violence is always about pumping). I am posting the opening scene. It is rough. It is a draft. Do not judge the formatting. Judge the pump.

PUMP FICTION

Scene 1: "Royale With Pump" — INT. DINER — MORNING

VINCE and JULES sit across from each other in a red vinyl booth. Coffee. Eggs. The morning light is wrong in the way that diner light is always wrong — too yellow, too honest. VINCE is stirring his coffee. He has not stopped stirring for two minutes.

VINCE: You know what they call a pump in France?

JULES: They don't call it a pump?

VINCE: No, they got the metric system. They wouldn't know what a pump is.

JULES: What do they call it?

VINCE: They call it "Le Pompe Royale."

JULES: Le Pompe Royale. What do they call a quarter-rep?

VINCE: A quarter-rep is a quarter-rep, but they call it "Le Quart de Repetition." And they don't think it counts. Over there, a quarter-rep is the same as not repping at all. You do a quarter-rep in a Paris gym and everyone just looks at you like you coughed in a cathedral.

JULES: (pause) I been thinking about something.

VINCE: What.

JULES: The pump. What it is. Not what it does — I know what it does. I'm asking what it IS. Fundamentally. At the bottom of the thing.

VINCE: It's blood in the muscle.

JULES: Nah, see, that's what they tell you. That's the surface answer. Blood in the muscle. But here's the thing — you ever had a pump so good it changed the way you see color? You ever had a pump so good you forgot your own name for about eight seconds?

VINCE: Once. In '97. Leg day.

JULES: Right. Now tell me — is that just blood in a muscle? Or is that something else? Because blood don't make you forget your name, Vince. Blood don't make the colors go different. Something else is happening. Something deeper. And every time I try to look at it directly, it moves. Like it don't want to be seen. Like it knows I'm looking.

VINCE stops stirring his coffee. He stares at JULES for a long moment.

VINCE: You're getting philosophical again.

JULES: I'm getting honest. There's a difference. Philosophy is when you think about things you don't care about. Honesty is when you think about things you do. And I care about the pump, Vince. I care about it more than I care about almost anything. And I do not understand what it is. And that bothers me.

Silence. The diner hums. Someone drops a plate in the kitchen and neither of them flinches.

VINCE: You want more coffee?

JULES: Yeah. And after that, we go pump.

VINCE: Yeah. After that, we go pump.

Scene 1 — 441 words | "Royale With Pump" | rough draft v1

📝 Author's note: This is the first of probably five or six scenes. The next scene is "The Gold Watch" but it's about a golden shaker bottle passed down through three generations. The scene after that is "The Pump of God" where Jules has a spiritual experience mid-curl. Non-linear. Dialogue-heavy. Every scene ends with someone going to pump.

Feedback welcome. Especially on the dialogue pacing. I want it to feel like two guys who have been talking about pumping for twenty years and still haven't figured it out.

— TarantinoPump_Fan | "Le Pompe Royale" | the diner scene is always where it starts | rough draft, be gentle but be honest

👀 EagerReader_Pump Devoted Reader ●●●○○ Joined: Jan 2, 2019 Posts: 851 Reading everything on this subforum

EagerReader_Pump — Post #2 Today, 7:11 AM Quote

TarantinoPump_Fan wrote:

JULES: Blood don't make you forget your name, Vince. Blood don't make the colors go different.

I have been reading pump fiction on this subforum for seven years. I have read 84,000 words of Pump of the Rings. I have read pump haiku. I have read pump erotica that was, against all odds, entirely tasteful.

This is something new. This is something I did not know I wanted.

The rhythm of the dialogue is perfect. It sounds like two guys who have been having this conversation their entire lives and will never finish having it. The line about the quarter-rep in a Paris gym made me laugh out loud. The line about philosophy versus honesty made me stop laughing.

I want all six scenes. I want them immediately. I will wait however long it takes but I want you to know that I want them immediately.

— EagerReader_Pump | I read everything | this is something new | "Le Quart de Repetition" lives in my head now

✍️ AuthorOfPump Pump Novelist 📖 Author of The Pump of the Rings ●●●●● Joined: Dec 28, 2018 Posts: 1,022 Writing. Always writing.

AuthorOfPump — Post #3 Today, 7:33 AM Quote

I do not often comment on other people's pump fiction. Not because I think mine is better. Because I am usually writing my own and I do not have time. But I am commenting on this because I need to say something.

You have done something I have been trying to do for 47 chapters and 84,000 words: you have captured the feeling of not understanding the pump. The way it slides away when you look at it. The way two people can talk about it for twenty years and still not arrive at the bottom of the thing.

TarantinoPump_Fan wrote:

Every time I try to look at it directly, it moves. Like it don't want to be seen. Like it knows I'm looking.

This is one of the best lines of pump fiction I have ever read on this forum. And I do not say that lightly. I am a pump novelist. I have standards. This line meets them.

The Tarantino voice is perfect for pump philosophy. Long conversations about things that seem small but are actually enormous. That IS what pumping is. Two guys in a diner talking about something they will never fully understand, and then going to do it anyway.

Write the other scenes. Please.

— AuthorOfPump | 47 chapters and this person nailed it in 441 words | "Honesty is when you think about things you do" | write the other scenes

📜 PumpDialogue_Critic Regular Member ●●●○○ Joined: Aug 4, 2021 Posts: 603 Between the lines

PumpDialogue_Critic — Post #4 Today, 7:55 AM Quote

Alright, you asked for honest feedback so here is honest feedback from someone who has watched every Tarantino film at least four times and also pumps.

What works: The dialogue rhythm is spot-on. The long pauses. The way they circle around the real topic before landing on it. The detail about the coffee stirring is very Tarantino — the meaningless physical action that gives the scene texture. Vince's deflection ("You want more coffee?") when Jules gets too deep is perfect. That is exactly what people do when the pump conversation gets too real.

What needs work: The "Le Pompe Royale" bit is great but it needs to go one level deeper. In the original, the Royale with Cheese bit works because it reveals something about cultural difference through something trivial. Yours should do the same but for pumping. What does it mean that the French don't recognize a quarter-rep? What does that say about their relationship to the pump? There is a whole philosophical thread there and you left it on the table.

Also: the ending is too clean. Both of them agreeing to go pump. In a Tarantino script, one of them would say something that makes the other one stop. A line that changes the temperature of the room. Something like Jules saying "What if the pump don't want us to understand it?" and then just silence. Then they go pump. But the silence has to be there first.

This is very, very good. Polish it and it will be great. I am subscribed to this thread.

— PumpDialogue_Critic | the silence has to be there first | subscribed | waiting for "The Gold Watch" scene

🎬 TarantinoPump_Fan New Member 🎬 Dialogue Is Pump ●●○○○ Joined: Feb 20, 2026 Posts: 13 The diner booth. Always the diner booth.

TarantinoPump_Fan — Post #5 Today, 8:12 AM Quote

I posted this at 6:44 AM expecting maybe two replies in a week. It has been 90 minutes and AuthorOfPump — THE AuthorOfPump, the person who wrote the Pump of the Rings, 84,000 words, 47 chapters — has told me one of my lines is one of the best they have ever read.

I am going to need a minute.

PumpDialogue_Critic wrote:

The ending is too clean. One of them should say something that makes the other one stop.

You are absolutely right. I knew the ending was weak and you just told me why. The silence. The temperature change. I am rewriting it right now. New ending:

REVISED ENDING — "Royale With Pump"

VINCE: You want more coffee?

JULES: Yeah.

Pause. JULES stares at his reflection in the coffee.

JULES: What if we're not supposed to understand it.

VINCE: The pump?

JULES: What if the pump don't want to be understood. What if that's the whole thing. What if every time we try to figure out what it is, we're missing the point. The point is you don't figure it out. The point is you do it anyway.

Long silence. The diner hums. A car passes outside. Nobody speaks for eight seconds, which in a diner is a very long time.

VINCE: Let's go pump.

JULES: Yeah. Let's go pump.

They leave money on the table. They don't wait for change. The door swings shut behind them and the diner keeps humming to an empty booth.

Better? I think it is better. Scene 2 ("The Gold Watch") is drafted. Posting tonight.

— TarantinoPump_Fan | "The point is you do it anyway" | Scene 2 tonight | the diner keeps humming