Writing in the Hardboiled Style
My book Blood Shadow: A Vera Shadow Mystery is written in the style of the Hardboiled Detective stories of the 1930's and 40's, made famous by writers such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain. I have attempted to write their style, and I would like to provide insight into how I've mimicked the style.
The first thing that everyone thinks of when you say 'hardboiled detective" or in more modern times, "Film Noir", is the brooding detective and the slang used. He always calls women "dames" or "doll" and has an internal monologue (assuming the story is written in first person). One of the most important things to me was to get the slang right. So I read every hardboiled detective story that I could get my hands on with my meagre book budget. This was a great way to experience how the slang is used, but I need a glossary. That is when I came across Mr. Ian Tregillis' glossary, A Hard-Boiled Slang Glossary for his book "Something More Than Night"; which I recommend everyone who loves the Noir/Hardboiled genre. Also to my surprise that we both include angels in our stories. This glossary has been invaluable to my own writing, and I will be including Tregillis in the acknowledgements in Star Shadow, the sequel to Blood Shadow.
The second thing is the oddly specific descriptions, similes, and metaphors that show up in the prose of these novels. A couple that I really liked are:
"He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan" ~The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett.
"A shadow fit to cold stop a brawl in the rowdiest tavern in Nepal had just fallen across my office door" ~Assumption Blues
It seems that description is always important in detective stories but the Hardboiled genre takes it to a another level.
The third thing that seems to be a theme is that the prose seems to have a rhythm to it. It feels like someone is speaking to you than a simple description. When writing these stories I tend to read the sentences out loud to make sure they have that beat to them. To make them flow like you are watching the events unfold from inside my characters head.
That's all I can really think of right now.
Cheers,
Enkelli Arn Robertson
The first thing that everyone thinks of when you say 'hardboiled detective" or in more modern times, "Film Noir", is the brooding detective and the slang used. He always calls women "dames" or "doll" and has an internal monologue (assuming the story is written in first person). One of the most important things to me was to get the slang right. So I read every hardboiled detective story that I could get my hands on with my meagre book budget. This was a great way to experience how the slang is used, but I need a glossary. That is when I came across Mr. Ian Tregillis' glossary, A Hard-Boiled Slang Glossary for his book "Something More Than Night"; which I recommend everyone who loves the Noir/Hardboiled genre. Also to my surprise that we both include angels in our stories. This glossary has been invaluable to my own writing, and I will be including Tregillis in the acknowledgements in Star Shadow, the sequel to Blood Shadow.
The second thing is the oddly specific descriptions, similes, and metaphors that show up in the prose of these novels. A couple that I really liked are:
"He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan" ~The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett.
"A shadow fit to cold stop a brawl in the rowdiest tavern in Nepal had just fallen across my office door" ~Assumption Blues
It seems that description is always important in detective stories but the Hardboiled genre takes it to a another level.
The third thing that seems to be a theme is that the prose seems to have a rhythm to it. It feels like someone is speaking to you than a simple description. When writing these stories I tend to read the sentences out loud to make sure they have that beat to them. To make them flow like you are watching the events unfold from inside my characters head.
That's all I can really think of right now.
Cheers,
Enkelli Arn Robertson
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