Hammered – an Ode to Mickey Spillane” - the 2023 Story Event Official Support Thread

[NotWise]

Serious question. I get the noir style and atmosphere, the grim salty look at everything, the sleaze etc...

But for this contest do we really have to use the language? Do we need to use 'dames" and Gams and all these terms popular in Spillane's day or can we have this in modern language but with the proper 'tone'?

No-one but the readers are judging the stories. I think you can do it your way--at least, I am.

 

[SimonDoom]

Serious question. I get the noir style and atmosphere, the grim salty look at everything, the sleaze etc...

But for this contest do we really have to use the language? Do we need to use 'dames" and Gams and all these terms popular in Spillane's day or can we have this in modern language but with the proper 'tone'?

You know the answer to that already, don't you? First, the site is never especially picky about what you do or don't do to satisfy the standards for these things. And, second, Chloe has been on record as encouraging an open-ended attitude toward event guidelines. The important thing is to capture the feel and style. How you do it is up to you.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Serious question. I get the noir style and atmosphere, the grim salty look at everything, the sleaze etc...

But for this contest do we really have to use the language? Do we need to use 'dames" and Gams and all these terms popular in Spillane's day or can we have this in modern language but with the proper 'tone'?

Nope. You sure don't. Have at it however you like. For myself, mine's set in the present, modern language, but I aimed for the sleaze and the gritty low-life stuff. So no worries about no dames and dolls, just go for the sex, violence and attitude.

“Man up,” I told him, after duct taping him into inaudibility, because all the whining and pleading, along with the sobbing, was getting kinda annoying. “You had your chance to do business with me, and we coulda all made out like bandits, but oh no, you didn’t want to. So bite me.”

Not that he could, I’d kinda knocked a lot of his teeth out with a hammer.

Just a snippet from my masterpiece in progress....

 

[MajorRewrite]

Well, I finished my story for this event far sooner than expected. Now I have to decide if I want to put it on the shelf until July or just post it now outside the event. Bugger.

 

[EurasianBlackLove]

I'm interested in writing a story for this contest, and I may attempt to read another Mickey Spillane novel for inspiration.

I read The Erection Set, my first and, at that time, last Spillane novel, around 2014/2015 but found the writing horrible, boring, and confusing. It was the name, the cover, and the fact it was a Mickey Spillane novel that garnered my interest.



I have enjoyed the Mike Hammer films (e.g., The Girl Hunters, where Spillane portrays Mike Hammer, and Kiss Me Deadly). I have also found a few episodes of the 1950s series with Darren McGavin, but it got boring after a while...lol.

 

[WifeWatchman]

I'm looking forward to this year's event. Now I just need to come up with a story idea...

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'm looking forward to this year's event. Now I just need to come up with a story idea...

I've got the idea, I just need to write the story!

 

[ChloeTzang]

I'm interested in writing a story for this contest, and I may attempt to read another Mickey Spillane novel for inspiration.

Just think that noir style. Gritty. Sex. Violence. Dark. And go with whatever inspires you. Don't get too tired to Spillane of Chandler or Hammett. Just think of the mood and tone.

 

[ChloeTzang]

I've got the idea, I just need to write the story!

Get to it!!! she says, cracking the whip! LOL

 

[WifeWatchman]

Not trying to toot my own horn, here, but if y'all want an example of Noir, read my story Film Noir (click here) to get the idea...

 

[EdwardsOtherSide]

I am making some progress with mine, but I think I am putting in too much plot.
I picked a real but absurd incident from NYC in the late 1930s, and am using it as the "big reveal" for why a chemist for a perfume company would be shot dead with a Russian pistol (to the best of my knowledge, no perfume company people were murdered IRL, but it was a supremely weird thing, that easily could have led to murder).
The private detective ends up getting down with the dead guy's mistress & widow who each think the other did him in. He doesn't do his secretary, but he may walk in on her flicking the bean.

The problem; trying to get facts about lower Manhattan circa 1938 right turns into just fascinating rabbit holes.
Did you know the Diamond District was only about 6 blocks from the New York Stock Exchange? And most of the multi-million dollar deals in the Diamond District are done on a handshake and the family's reputation? And if you screw someone on a deal, they will spread that news far and wide, and your own family will turn on you?
(Now, the Diamond District is on 47th street, a few kilometers away and close to Times Square, as property values in lower Manhattan went through the roof as the Depression wound down.)
And so much Yiddish.
I don't know if it is a good thing or not that Duolingo is starting a Yiddish course.

 

[intim8]

I actually started a story like this a while ago. More Raymond Chandler style (not that I really know the difference), but close enough. I put it aside because I couldn't figure where to take it, and more important things got in the way. I'll have to revisit it. It has a female detective, and opens with a guy getting his head blown off by a sniper while she is blowing him just below. She was pumping him for information about a case that looked simple and uncomplicated up to that point. Don't they all?.

I've considered going sci-fi with it, (on another planet), to avoid the issues EdwardsOtherSide mentions above (that story sounds great, BTW), and to just have a different take on the whole thing, to bring in some of that gritty "space colony in decay" feel. .

 

[EdwardsOtherSide]

....
I've considered going sci-fi with it, (on another planet), to avoid the issues EdwardsOtherSide mentions above (that story sounds great, BTW), and to just have a different take on the whole thing, to bring in some of that gritty "space colony in decay" feel. .

Thank you!

My biggest influence has been Hammett's Continental Op.
But I am an East Coast guy (grew up an easy train ride into NYC and lived in Brooklyn for several years in the 1980s as NYC was just starting to emerge out of the utter sleeze of the 1970s), so I am going with the city I know well.

I live near Washington D.C. now, but somehow DC never felt like a "Noir-ish" city.

I could picture a Noir story in Honolulu right before or during WWII (I lived there from '08 - '13).
In most ways, a far simpler city than NYC, but with a lot of wrinkles that are unique to Hawai'i. (Tongs, Yakuza, Philippino gangs, the relative isolation, espionage, 5 to 10 days to get there from California...)
For me, while I see so much potential, I am not ready for that one.

 

[WifeWatchman]

I actually started a story like this a while ago. More Raymond Chandler style (not that I really know the difference), but close enough. I put it aside because I couldn't figure where to take it, and more important things got in the way. I'll have to revisit it. It has a female detective, and opens with a guy getting his head blown off by a sniper while she is blowing him just below. She was pumping him for information about a case that looked simple and uncomplicated up to that point. Don't they all?.

I've considered going sci-fi with it, (on another planet), to avoid the issues EdwardsOtherSide mentions above (that story sounds great, BTW), and to just have a different take on the whole thing, to bring in some of that gritty "space colony in decay" feel. .

I like that start of your story! And please don't go sci-fi with it; it sounds like it would be a great Spillane/Noir story. I'm looking forward to it.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

I actually started a story like this a while ago. More Raymond Chandler style (not that I really know the difference), but close enough. I put it aside because I couldn't figure where to take it, and more important things got in the way. I'll have to revisit it. It has a female detective, and opens with a guy getting his head blown off by a sniper while she is blowing him just below. She was pumping him for information about a case that looked simple and uncomplicated up to that point. Don't they all?.

I've considered going sci-fi with it, (on another planet), to avoid the issues EdwardsOtherSide mentions above (that story sounds great, BTW), and to just have a different take on the whole thing, to bring in some of that gritty "space colony in decay" feel. .

If it is Raymond Chandler style, you may or may not answer all the questions in the mystery.

But in the end, does it matter where you slumber, in a granite and marble tomb or at the bottom of a cold lake? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was...

edit note added: This is from memory, 100% accuracy is not guaranteed.

this is the right quote: “What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on the top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell.”

I was sort of close.

 

[intim8]

I like that start of your story! And please don't go sci-fi with it; it sounds like it would be a great Spillane/Noir story. I'm looking forward to it.

Oh, it would still be that if I went sci-fi. Think something like Firefly, with a few high tech things but a lot of old stuff still because the colony, or whatever, is way, way past its prime and falling apart. That opening scene happens in an old industrial building, well, that decaying colony will have its own old abandoned industrial buildings. As well as hard-boiled cops, smartass lone wolf detectives, femme fatales (Philamena Marlowe will do anyone to get what she wants), archaic weapons, the whole works.

The advantage is, I get to make up the details of the broken down, decaying city, and the crime involved can be something like smuggling contraband flux capacitors or something instead of the usual guns/drugs/murder for hire to get an inheritance or whatever.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Just think that noir style. Gritty. Sex. Violence. Dark. And go with whatever inspires you. Don't get too tired to Spillane of Chandler or Hammett. Just think of the mood and tone.

So I've got an idea based on a comic book a friend and I were going to do years ago. Does anyone remember the Netflix film called Bright with Will Smith? Our idea predates the film but it is pretty similar. Except our story was a noir homicide detective story, in a world where elves and dwarves, orcs, and goblins existed in our world circa 1958 or so. Even the lead character isn't quite human, though his trench coat, fedora, sap, and Colt .45 would have been right out of a classic Cagney or Bogart film. Does this sound like something that would fit in this story event, or is it too far out there?

 

[ChloeTzang]

So I've got an idea based on a comic book a friend and I were going to do years ago. Does anyone remember the Netflix film called Bright with Will Smith? Our idea predates the film but it is pretty similar. Except our story was a noir homicide detective story, in a world where elves and dwarves, orcs, and goblins existed in our world circa 1958 or so. Even the lead character isn't quite human, though his trench coat, fedora, sap, and Colt .45 would have been right out of a classic Cagney or Bogart film. Does this sound like something that would fit in this story event, or is it too far out there?

LOL. Love it. Go for it.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Well, mine's about 75% done now, and I have my heroine's image nailed to the wall.....

 

[NoTalentHack]

LOL. Love it. Go for it.

So I've got an idea based on a comic book a friend and I were going to do years ago. Does anyone remember the Netflix film called Bright with Will Smith? Our idea predates the film but it is pretty similar. Except our story was a noir homicide detective story, in a world where elves and dwarves, orcs, and goblins existed in our world circa 1958 or so. Even the lead character isn't quite human, though his trench coat, fedora, sap, and Colt .45 would have been right out of a classic Cagney or Bogart film. Does this sound like something that would fit in this story event, or is it too far out there?

If you haven’t yet, go check out the movie Cast a Deadly Spell. Noir Cthulhu, nice and cheesy with Fred Willard as the detective.

 

[dmallord]

I'm ... working on it – between cups of coffee at Tx's cafe. That doesn't leave much time, by the way, for writing.

I decided to do an illustrated story since I had yet to submit a story in that area. I've played around with some AI images created by entering descriptive words to experience that aspect of life since I have difficulty drawing stick figures resembling anything – even walking stick insects! [used up my free hours quickly] I found some copyright-free photos that fit and inserted those too. Then I read the Illustrated Story criteria and all the cringing bureaucratic paperwork that goes with it; I may pass on that category and just do text – sexy text and cum stuff that still flows well. Maybe put it in ROMANCE.

I have 14K written and nicely beyond the third draft stage. It's about a parolee convicted of triple homicide back outside after six years in prison. He's looking for the fourth guy in revenge for his dead sister, an ex-girlfriend owned by a loanshark and paying her loan back by [you know how]; a shadowy swordswoman avenger [Hammer-heroine type] who drives criminals insane with her sword tactics, and several scenes involving honey, sex on the floor, in the bathtub [not gin], in the kitchen, even a bed comes into the picture. It has flawed characters but a nice ending after the police find their man [you can imagine how that part ends] – not noirish at that point.

 

[nice90sguy]

"I'm out to make a reckless verisimilitude, and make you believe it's all true", says James Ellroy in this interview from a couple of days ago:

https://www.latimes.com/entertainme...llroy-michael-connelly-festival-of-books-lapd

 

[ElectricBlue]

I decided to do an illustrated story since I had yet to submit a story in that area.

The problem with Illustrated as I see it (where someone pops a few pictures into a narrative, vs a comic book/graphic approach) is, what's the likelihood that your aesthetic taste is the same as anyone else's? Very low, I'd say.

I cringe when I see badly rendered 3D illustrations, as we've seen for the last several years, and not much of the AI stuff currently floating around works for me (mutant hands and odd eyes). I don't see the point of half a dozen pics being added to a story - they detract from it, I reckon.

 

[Rob_Royale]

My Geek Pride story is missing some key elements and I've decided to back-burner it unless I have an epiphany, and so I have begun the story for this event. It will be called Wellspring and very likely will be a continuing series. I'm looking forward to this.

Our hero stands on a rooftop looking over the city. A city awash in the blue, greens, and purples of the aurora borealis. Which happens every night, when every scientist agrees that it shouldn't. The wind whips at his trench coat. He reaches up to seat his fedora more firmly on his head. The recent murders are very troubling and he's deep in thought when he feels her first touch on the back of his neck.

 

[dmallord]

The problem with Illustrated as I see it (where someone pops a few pictures into a narrative, vs a comic book/graphic approach) is, what's the likelihood that your aesthetic taste is the same as anyone else's? Very low, I'd say.

I cringe when I see badly rendered 3D illustrations, as we've seen for the last several years, and not much of the AI stuff currently floating around works for me (mutant hands and odd eyes). I don't see the point of half a dozen pics being added to a story - they detract from it, I reckon.

I took a quick trip through a couple of those. It looks so strange to see cartoon-type arms and legs bent in different directions. Agreed, the aesthetics differ from where my mind goes as I skimmed the text.

My thoughts run toward composing at least one story in each category. Unless the court battles force AI into some dark corner and shut it down, it may improve over time as AI evolves. I don't see courts closing AI doors, though. The few attempts I made to use AI were interesting. As I typed in descriptions, it generated visuals for them - an accomplishment in drawing that I could never achieve by hand. My use concentrated on facial features and didn't cause those weird body poses. Some writers in this thread have created awe-inspiring work, although, from their explanations, it took considerable additional talents and more software to achieve that effect. The illustrated story category would check off one bucket list item – leaving me plenty more checks to go.

Thanks for sharing. If I get mine through the Lit publishing hurdles, I hope it looks better than frames mashed by a truck!
!