You might not know John Hornor Jacobs yet, but you will. He's taking the world by storm. Hell, he already took Twitter hostage (@johnhornor). He's going to release his first novel Southern Gods in August (click on the link to pre-order) and This Dark Earth in the summer of 2012. If you're interested in knowing more about him, you can go to The Bastardized Version or hop to The Night Bazaar, where he also writes sometimes. While he's not your conventional noir writer (John considers himself to be a horror writer with noir influences), he accepted today to share the ten rules to his unique stories.
1. No rule is inviolate.
2. Only use "said" in dialogue attribution.
3. Your main character needs to be inexorable.
4. If you want to engender emotion in the reader, be as emotionless as possible describing action.
5. Don't write women like they're aliens. (Women want revenge, to get laid, to punch that loudmouth in the craw just as much as men do. We're not that different, men and women, in our basic motivations. However, women usually pee sitting down and they have boobies. Mmmm. Boobies.)
6. The alcohol bone is connected to the tobacco bone. But not everybody smokes and drinks in real life. Luckily, we're not writing about real life.
7. Watch the adverbs. Don't get flowery.
8. Real men write in third person. First person in noir is tired. Mix it up a little. Also, consider your tense. Present tense is currently hot, but past tense is classic.
9. In real life, fights are messy and usually end up with two guys rolling around on the floor. Luckily, we're not writing about real life.
10. No one cares about the make of the gun, its range or caliber or performance in wet conditions, except other gun freaks and Dan Brown. Most readers just need to know that there's one there and the person holding it is willing to use it.