Familiar Territory

Wikipedia has trouble defining noir.

Film noir, that is. There isn't an article for written noir. I can look up hardboiled, or detective fiction, mystery fiction, whodunit, legal drama or even spy-fi, but I guess noir isn't a term applicable to fiction.

I find that odd, because I definitely like to write noir. Maybe someone who knows what those other terms mean would tell me that I don't write noir, because it doesn't exist in terms of fiction, but I don't really care. I like to write noir.

I know some people are unfamiliar with this style and genre, and unfortunately for the first (and only) time in my memory Wikipedia will not help you. Instead, question yourself this: have you ever heard of Raymond Chandler? The Big Sleep? The Maltese Falcon? L.A. Confidential, even? If you are familiar with any of these, then I feel assured that you can figure out what noir is without the help of a magical Internet encyclopedia.

So I like to write noir. I didn't know I was writing in that style at first. A few friends started a Facebook round-robin story in that style on my profile a few years ago, and I just jumped in and mimicked the tone that I perceived.

I must make a brief comment here: Tone is my thing. Lots of writers have a thing. Some are really good at characters, others plot, but I'm really good at tone. I can still write characters and plot and all that other necessary stuff well enough, but they are of lesser importance to me than tone.

I believe that I took to noir so easily because of its distinctive tone. I can't describe the tone but in mundane terms - "dark" and "heavy" and "Rorschach-from-Watchmen." My previous post, The Streetlight, is the best I've ever done at describing how I feel about the tone of noir. It was a fictional piece, I know, but I am a fiction writer and thus express myself through fiction. Sometimes I imagine myself alone, standing beneath a streetlight on the edge of an empty highway, silent but for a soft wind as I gaze into the dim glowing circle and imagine what to do next.

I also like imagining that I'm part of an adventure involving murder, sabotage, cigarettes and '67 Camaros. I've begun to dream in this noir tone, playing the role of the cynical protagonist in full trenchcoat and fedora, wandering the deserted night streets and seedy bars in search of femme fatales to backstab and helpless bystanders to rescue before disappearing down dark alleys. I blame this recent trend on a professor of mine who has encouraged my fascination by burning me disc after disc of 1940s classic film noir.

I am expressing this all on a public blog for one purpose, as given to me by another professor. I do not know what to write. I do not think anyone much cares to read my blog. But if I write according to a theme, I might begin to understand what I truly want to blog about.

For now, it seems inevitable that this theme stem from my gravitation toward writing noir.