How to Write Crime / Noir
Crime is the genre of consequence. Noir is the genre of fate. Crime asks how the system handles a transgression; noir asks how a man handles his own ruin. Both demand voice above all — the line has to feel like it was written by someone who has seen the inside of a bad room.
Crime vs. noir — different promises
Crime fiction can end with justice — the detective wins, the killer is caught, order is restored. Noir cannot. In noir the protagonist is doomed from the first page; the only question is how beautifully he goes down. Pick your contract early. Readers can tell by the second chapter which one you're writing.
Voice is the genre
Hardboiled crime and noir live on the sentence. Chandler, Hammett, James Ellroy, Megan Abbott — they don't waste a word, and they earn every metaphor. Read your draft aloud and cut anything that sounds 'literary' for its own sake. Noir prose is muscle.
Moral grey, all the way down
The cop is corrupt. The victim deserved it a little. The witness is lying for a good reason. The detective wants the case for his own ego. Crime and noir don't moralize — they observe. The reader will supply the morality. Your job is to refuse to.
Famous examples to study
Read Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye for prose, Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon for the hardboiled detective, James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential for moral compression, Megan Abbott's Dare Me for modern noir-as-suburbia, and Don Winslow's The Power of the Dog for epic crime.
Common tropes that still work
The doomed PI, the femme fatale, the corrupt cop, the one last job, the bagman, the wrong man framed, the dirty money, the small-town secret. Noir tropes are unkillable because the human weaknesses underneath them never change.
Common mistakes to avoid
Cleaning up your protagonist into a hero, telegraphing the twist by giving the villain the most page-time, writing dialogue that explains rather than reveals, ending on a redemptive note in a noir, and using period slang you haven't earned with research.
Five books to study
- The Long Goodbye — Raymond Chandler
- The Maltese Falcon — Dashiell Hammett
- L.A. Confidential — James Ellroy
- Dare Me — Megan Abbott
- The Power of the Dog — Don Winslow
Tropes that still work
- The doomed PI
- The femme fatale
- One last job
- Wrong man framed
- The dirty cop
Mistakes to avoid
- Cleaning the protagonist into a hero
- Telegraphing the twist
- Dialogue that explains
- Redemptive noir ending
- Unearned period slang
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