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Underground > Creation >

Untitled Spy Story '02 - rules and notes

  
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
09:36 / 08.10.02
Dust of your Cold War, and here we go. This is not a farce, not a pastiche. The idea is to evoke that ole Cold War feeling - fear, greyness, depression, and paranoia. No large guns, just rain and neurosis and betrayal. This is not Tom Clancy, nor was meant to be. Step up to the bar, Mr. Graham Greene.

Rough Plot:

Merriman, a forty-year-old secret servant, is on leave in a small English town, recovering from a traumatic assignment overseas. In this damaged state he is approached by someone who claims to have vital information - but for whom?
 
 
Sax
09:09 / 14.10.02
Can someone please add something to this story? Please?
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
11:35 / 14.10.02
Done...

May I suggest we title this 'The Cut Out'?
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
16:24 / 14.10.02
And may I further enquire as to the root of this obsession with whelks?
 
 
Sax
18:02 / 14.10.02
I was sort of hoping someone would write us out of this corner I'm getting us into...
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
18:41 / 14.10.02
Very Cohen brothers. However, you're dodging the question
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
08:18 / 15.10.02
Sax.

You have drowned us in whelks.

It's just conceivable that we can Brighton Rock our way out of this, but only if everyone remembers that this is not supposed to be a spoof. The inherent comedy value of the whelk makes it a dangerous leitmotif.
 
 
Sax
14:54 / 15.10.02
Nah, think of the whelks as a macguffin. It's the seaside; you'd expect to find a whelk seller there. I think. We don't need to make too much of the whelks, just the seller. Someone's got to impart a message to Merriman, remember...
 
 
gridley
12:23 / 21.10.02
aw... heck... don't tell me I killed the spy story. that would make me feel bad...
 
 
Jack Fear
13:32 / 21.10.02
Maybe not: it's getting a bit bizarre, but that may be a good thing. And you gave me an excuse to use the name "Swastika Singh" (who is a real person, BTW--a tech writer whose work I've edited) in its proper god-given context: as a Bond-girl-slash-Bond villain.
 
 
Jack Fear
13:44 / 21.10.02
Shit: reviewing the notes upthread and find that I am wrong, wrong, wrong. We've gone from Len Deighton and John LeCarré to Ian Fleming with a snootful of E.

Do we roll with it, or delete and pretend it never happened?

If we keep the fantastic grounded in the mundane, we might be able to maintain the tone--but in any case we've definitely moved from a psychological portrait to and action/caper movie structure. I'm thinking that the "Process" itself becomes the MacGuffin, or the Bomb, if you will; it's fallen into the hands of the Wrong People, or is being adapted to a Wrong Purpose...

Will this be acceptable?
Do we roll with it, or delete and pretend it never happened, returning instead to the Scotch and the pier and the pissing rain?
 
 
gridley
14:28 / 21.10.02
Not LeCarre perhaps, but damn entertaining. I agree that the "Ian Fleming on e" stuff can serve perfectly well as McGuffin while the identity stuff still remains what's important.

I suppose the real test is how much it pisses Nick off. I can also pull my part if it's too out of line.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
10:30 / 25.10.02
*snort*

I think we'll call this one a Barbinevitability. I didn't honestly think the Cold War mood would hold, so let's chase the madness and have some fun with it. The thread was dropping into darkness, anyway - too hard, too little fun.

New rules should be proposed here. Let's try to hold the tone stable for a while, though - no jumping into Lovecraft, the Matrix, or Modesty Blaise for a while...
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
10:49 / 25.10.02
By the way, I maintain that this is whelk-related.
 
 
Sax
10:56 / 25.10.02
Well, the signs were there - don't think I didn't see through your naming the lead character "Merriman". Why didn't you just call him "Merman" and have done with it? And I bet this bloody train manages to fall into a wormhole and pop up in Arkham in 1936.
 
 
Sax
10:57 / 25.10.02
I mean Innsmouth of course.
 
 
Jack Fear
13:16 / 25.10.02
Sax's post, #13, should be headed "Chapter 2."

Maybe we should stick with Golden for a while--I like the idea of alternating viewpoint...
 
 
Sax
14:43 / 25.10.02
We seem to have had some tenses tension as we've gone along... the majority of later posts seem to use past tense, so should we stick with that?
 
 
Jack Fear
14:46 / 25.10.02
The tenses are fucked from Nick's first post--he starts off "If this was not an epiphany..." and then, after the flashback, he's in present tense.

Bad writer! Bad Nick! No soup for you!
 
 
Sax
14:52 / 25.10.02
I just cut'n'pasted the entire thing and printed it out... it actually reads pretty well, actually. It'd be nice if this kept going in a fairly logical vein for a bit before succumbing to the usual malaise.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
15:05 / 25.10.02
Jack: At the risk of sounding precious, it was a deliberate choice. I had in mind a setup where we are introduced to Merriman as a character in a narrative which has happened, are taken into his past at the time of the beginning of our narrative, and then enter that time. In a novel, the past tense (from our present) would lend itself to a more authorial voice while the past tense (from Merriman's view at the time) is the past from his perspective, and the present tense of Merriman's viewoint - chosen for immediacy - could yield if needbe to a present tense of our narrator giving us present day consequences.

Complex, but far from unusual in the form.

Take that, Mr. Fear, and give me back my damn soup.
 
 
Jack Fear
15:17 / 25.10.02
Sounds like the sort of thing that should've been mentioned in either the abstract, or in this thread. I'm just sayin'.

(You want a salad with that?)
 
 
Sax
12:22 / 29.10.02
Just a mention: Annie's Bar is located inside Westminster and is the usual haunt for MPs and sometimes journalists. I'm not sure if it is now (or has ever been) run by anyone called "Annie", but that doesn't matter too much here, I suppose.

And Peter Golden seems to have become Jack Golden for some reason. Any moderator want to alter it one way or the other for continuity purposes?
 
 
Jack Fear
12:41 / 29.10.02
Nah. Annie calls everyone "Jack."
 
 
Sax
13:31 / 29.10.02
Heh.

I'd suggest we switch back to Merriman now, by the way.
 
 
gridley
19:12 / 29.10.02
You mean before we get into Vega's file!

awww..... all right. I'll wait til the next Golden chapter....

have your damn segue...
 
 
The Tower Always Falls
20:35 / 31.10.02
Yeah, hope it's all right me hopping on and all that. Haven't dusted off the old net-pseudo-fanfic story muscles in a bit...
 
  
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