photo by D. Lopez
1. Discover what fascinates you about noir. I'm not saying you have to explain why it fascinates you. We wouldn't want to take the fun out if it (although if that's fun for you, knock yourself out). The gangster-type stuff? The weird psychological creepy stuff (that's my fave)? The ordinary-person-falls-into-a-netherworld stuff? Whatever it is, that's what you want to write about. Forget about the rest. It's OK to pick and choose. We're talking about a vast genre here.
2. Discover what fascinates you about everything else. Your best writing will come from writing about what obsesses you—not what you think should interest you, but what really does. So if your other interests don't seem to fit into the constrains of noir or crime—well, write it about anyway, and fuck anyone who says you can't or shouldn't.
3. Consider that while noir is generally (but not necessarily) hardboiled in its use of language it is generally not (but can be) hardboiled in how it deals with emotions. Many of our noir icons—the folks in Casablanca, in Sunset Boulevard, in Chinatown—were held prisoner by their emotions more than any crime. You could make a compelling argument that noir in particular and crime/mystery fiction in general concerns itself more with our emotional, psychological, and moral lives than any other genre (including the genre known as literary fiction).
4. Remember that if we don't care about your characters, that means you didn't care about your characters, and that means we won't read your book again. And if you want your reader to cry, you better be crying as you write. Same with laughter, fear, and feeling like you've been kicked in the teeth. Lots of people shooting each other and finding stuff out and exciting stuff going on, if you handle it right, will carry a reader through a first reading enjoyably enough. It won't usually make them read it again and again.
5. On the other hand, remember that noir started as a commercial genre. I'm no historian, but my understanding is that noir as we know it started within the commercial studio system in Hollywood and the world of pulp fiction. So there's no shame in trying to write a book people actually want to read (and buy!).
6. Pacing is everything. You knew that already, right? And all pacing is is attention to detail. It's up to you when to slow things down and when to speed it all up—use that power wisely. A consistent pace can mean one boring book.
7. Understand that if someone's life isn't changed (yeah, "ended" is a way of being "changed"), the whole thing is kind of pointless.
8. Know that a book can be noir and not have a single crime or gun in it.
9. Consider that "noir" might be another world, with its own rules, its own logic, and its own understanding of time and reality. A "noir" story might be a story about a person from the ordinary world who falls into "noir," a kind of parallel universe that exists alongside our own.
10. Fuck rules. Write exactly what you want to write. Call it whatever you want. You don't have to explain yourself to me or anyone else and you owe the world exactly nothing. Now go get to work, and write something no could have written but you, OK?