Writer explains what is Noir - Oh Really?

A friend and writer I know, Wallace Stroby had a book launching earlier this week. I was lucky enough to attend it. It was held at the Mysterious Bookshop in lower Manhattan. Everyone likes reading a good mystery, so if you get a chance, you should visit the New York City icon that is the Mysterious Bookshop. While you are there, buy Wallace's newest book: Some Die Nameless. Wallace writes noir female protagonists and Wallace writes well. Yay.

At the launch, an off-hand question was inadvertently raised. As I mentioned in a previous post, many successful and educated writers do so by instinct. The have a distorted or poor understanding of how they reach their audience. Their success is inherent to their essence, which is why they cannot teach it to someone else. It comes naturally. However, they succeed very well and very often when they write. We call those types of people "gifted," and they are.

In discussing Wallace's plot, it was posed that a small crime that the non-detective protagonist tries to solve morphs into a crime on a much larger scale. That idea reminded me of those nested Russian dolls. The off-hand question was how does having a small mystery initiate the protagonist's investigation into a contiguous or related crime that is much larger in scope ala Chinatown, the movie.

An author I respect and who has an MFA from a major university answered, "That is what noir is. A small crime that is in some way related to a crime of a major scale, and the detective is draw into solving the larger crime while attempting to solve the lesser one. The protagonists are ordinary people who get in over their heads." While this is an erudite answer, and is partially true - true in the way that all turtles are amphibians, but not all amphibians are turtles. - it is not a definition of noir.

However, defining noir mystery is not an easy task. Most people know it when they see it, but ... oh that is another literary subject.
Here are a few definitions with the link to the source from which they were harvested.

1. From: besthorrornovels.com/noir 
Noir is horror's hardboiled cousin. Noir, meaning black in French, is a subgenre of mystery that explores gritty, urban landscapes with a cynical detective who uncovers dastardly deeds. The darkness of noir is what lends it so perfectly to the horror genre. Both face dark truths that lie under the guise of normalcy. Both deal with outsiders who see the world as it truly is, be that outsider a hardboiled gumshoe or Frankenstein's monster. When Frankenstein's monster becomes the sardonic investigator, noir horror is born. Of course, that's a pretty simplistic view of the genre.

Noir, as a subgenre, did come from the hardboiled detective novels of the 1940's, but an important distinction between the two is that the protagonist does not need to be a detective or investigator. The protagonist can, in fact, be anyone so long as their attitudes match the gritty setting. Noir horror protagonists are notably outsiders who see the ugly truth of the world they live in. The are generally cynical in nature, and have the potential to be destructive either to themselves or others. Frankenstein's monster, without being a hardboiled gumshoe, is a great example of a horror noir protagonist in that he sees the world as evil and heartless and eventually changes to fit this mold. 

The world, or setting, of horror noir could almost be considered a character itself. Squalid, debauched, typically urban settings are common, brimming with forces that are hostile toward the protagonist. This can be anything from a dark, careless city, like Gotham in the Batman comics, brimming with violence and mayhem to supernatural and otherworldly forces that have no use for humanity. Most importantly, the setting should be just as depraved as the characters and the events that unfold around them.

Another important aspect of noir horror is the tone. As its name suggests, this subgenre is relentlessly dark. The tone of works of horror noir is one of despair and suspicion. Themes often center around greed, corruption, oppression, or revenge, and while happy endings in horror are rare, they are particularly hard to come by in the noir genre.

The above transfers to our genre - pure noir mysteries - quite well. 

Here's more.

2. From: merriam-webster.com/dictionary/noir   
Definition of noir: crime fiction featuring hard-boiled cynical characters and bleak sleazy settings an example of classic noir.

3. From: wikipedia.org/wiki/Noir_fiction 
Noir fiction (or roman noir) is a literary genre closely related to hardboiled genre,[1] with a distinction that the protagonist is not a detective, but instead either a victim, a suspect, or a perpetrator. Other common characteristics include a self-destructive protagonist.[2] A typical protagonist of noir fiction is dealing with the legal, political or other system, which is no less corrupt than the perpetrator, by whom the protagonist is either victimized and/or has to victimize others on a daily basis, leading to a lose-lose situation.

I am Back -- the Return of L.A. Preschel

I have been away for quite a while honing my craft - writing. Some might say you cannot teach an old dog new tricks, but I ain't no dog, just old. So here are some old tricks made new.

During my intermission from actual writing -  in the process of learning to write - some of the people I have worked with were very helpful. My present mystery critiquing group tops that list. I have learn significant lessons - not just punctuation or spelling - isn't that what Grammarly and Spell Check are for.  

I have also read a number of books on how to write. Most were written by people, MFA's aside, who prove the point: those who can't do teach. In literature, the corollary to that theory is those who can't write become literary agents. (For the benefit of all my future agents that was solely a cheap joke. Literary agents are chronic readers. We love ya.)

Many books are written about writing by successful writers who prove they have no concept as to why they are successful. Several of the books on writing were written by famous and/or successful authors who could communicate. In that group, the results of their theories and proposals vary from outstanding to awful or obvious. My meaning of awful, in this case, is not a work filling one with awe. Some, such as Sol Stein or Stephen King, actually understood the art of writing and how to communicate it to their reader. The greatest single précis on writing is Sol Stein's Ten Commandments of Writing. The true art in literature is communicating while holding your reader's interest.  

Two types of writing live in this world. One type is concerned with the writer showing how knowledgeable he or she is. These creatures write primarily in "literary novels." Many of these writers have perfected the information dump - similar in value to perfecting a slug dump. The EPA should burn their books, but instead, people crown them with honors. I don't get it.

These authors feel obligated to communicate their superiority to the reader. Plot, pacing, story, character arc, as well as human interest are all secondary to vocabulary and obtuse logic that even the Navajo Code breakers could not decipher. These books become eligible for prizes, including Nobles and such. Their snooty audience gets on a very high horse and declares any one who writes below this level is a hack or worse yet, a "genre" writer, as if that epithet was a pejorative. I would infer from their statements they have never read James Lee Burke who by the way is a college English professor as was Robert B. Parker. Both these genre authors have prose of the highest order, as do many other "genre writers."

I have been in several groups that follow the tenet literature must be exotic, otherwise it's not real writing. If you can understand the manuscript on the first read, it is not literature. They believe real authors write "Literary masterpieces," because that is the only real writing. They worship a false God.

When you write any manuscript, its utility is served by accessibly. It must communicate an idea or story to your reader. Readers want to journey to places that they do not inhabit in their life. They want to feel and know emotions that they cannot allow in their lives without becoming uncivil. They want to identify with a major character in the story, especially if that character is beyond their life's scope. They want to know what drives that character to perform those acts in that way at this time.

The SAT level of the words used to create that journey is as important to the reader as the vehicle a traveler rides in to get to their journey's end. Chevy versus Rolls Royce, who cares, as long as we reach our destination. From inside the vehicle, it is only important to the passenger that the vehicle move toward the goal. Uber, Lift, cab or private car if it gets there, the rider is happy.

If the words are the vehicle, then the story and plot are the scenery. It is the scenery that interests the passenger on his or her journey. Fancy words and incomprehensible sentence structure are the mud on the windows of the vehicle/story. We can't see out the windows unless they are clear, allowing us accessibility to the scenery.

Reading should be an enjoyable avocation/trip to somewhere new. If you have to look up words constantly or imply their meaning from the context perpetually; if you are required to concentrate intensely to find the meaning; if theme is too arcane and occult, and beyond the concept of the reader, then the author has written a text book, not a novel or a story.

I write noir, hard-boiled feminist detective novels, unrepentant, and proud. I have created Samantha Cochran, a woman who left the NYPD as a gold-shield detective, because of a me-too-situation. She has become a female Sam-Spade-style private investigator. Hired as the in-house detective of Allyson Catherine Worthington, Esquire, (Thank you Rex Stout and Nero.) she fights dirty to reach a just end. I hope that really soon, you will have the opportunity to enjoy her first novel length mystery. Check back here to see where and when it is released.

At this time, the Central Jersey Chapter of Sisters in Crime's short story anthology 30 Shades of Dead, has a Sam Cochran/Catherine Worthington story called Thirty Years to Life. It is available through WC Publishing @ www.OnTargetWords.com/WCPublish.

I am L.A. Preschel and I authorized this message - sorry another bad joke.