I was thirteen and standing at a public urinal when my older cousin John walked in on me and said: "Ben, if you shake it more than three times, it's masturbation". That taught me something important. Every good thing has an end. Today is the last Ten Rules To Write Noir and to end things with a bang, we have Allan Guthrie, writer of novels like Slammer and Savage Night. He is also behind the two tremendous Kindle successes Bye Bye Baby and Killing Mum.
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1: There are all sorts of good reasons why you shouldn't write noir fiction. So the first rule is: don't.
2: Still here? Okay, you're either compelled or crazy or you just can't stand humanity and writing about what an utterly fucked-up bunch of bastards we all are seems like a good way to spend your time. Fair enough. If you insist, then at least get yourself a job first. You'll need some way to pay the bills. Writing noir means you're writing for a niche market. And that means you'll end up being published by niche publishers and read by a niche audience. You'll make niche money. If you're lucky, you'll be able to pay niche bills.
3: You're going to die. That's not so much a rule as an observation. It's not something you think about much, perhaps, but it's the one thing I know about you, whoever you are. You know that too, however little you think about it. And so does your protagonist. Make him face his own mortality. Nothing says “we're all fucked no matter what” quite like being made to stare death in the face.
4: Following on from 3. Be pessimistic. The better you are at writing noir, the more you'll put people off reading your work. The best noir writer in the world is the writer who has no readers cause he's driven them all away with his relentlessly bleak and grim view of humanity and his constant obsession with death and the fact that we're all fucked, no matter what.
5: Load your noir with irony. (See 4).
6: Noir protagonists are not heroes. They get scared. They make bad decisions. They suffer. They lose. Even when they win, they lose. And they die, of course. But then we all die. We're fucked, I tell you.
7: When things get bad, make them worse. This is true for most crime fiction but particularly for noir. In noir, when things can't get any worse, you have to find a way around that. Things must always get worse, even when they can't. It's not enough to be fucked. You have to be bad fucked.
8: Give your protagonist hope. While it's okay for you, the writer, to be defeatist and cynical, it's necessary for the poor schmuck centre-stage to have something to lose. The realization that he's fucked has to dawn on him, you see.
9: “Noir” is a label. It pays to consider whether you want to conceal it inside your clothing or bumper-sticker "WE'RE ALL FUCKED" all over your car.
10: Noir fiction has no agreed definition, so you should really ignore all the rules, including this one. Although we're all fucked, so it doesn't really matter what you do.