I've been an Elmore Leonard fan for some time. Recently, FX has developed one of his characters, U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens from Pronto and Riding the Rap, into a show - Justified. It stars Tim Olyphant, and I have enjoyed his previous work as well (Deadwood) .
Watching Justified got me thinking about Leonard's rules and other musings of that sort.
Here are Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules on Writing, from New York Times article, “Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle."
1) Never open a book with weather.
2) Avoid prologues.
3) Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4) Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
5) Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6) Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7) Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8) Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9) Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10) Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
Interestingly, in the years after this essay was published, Elmore Leonard whimsically said that he had an 11th rule:
"Don't be afraid to break the rules if it makes the story better."
Watching Justified got me thinking about Leonard's rules and other musings of that sort.
Here are Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules on Writing, from New York Times article, “Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle."
1) Never open a book with weather.
2) Avoid prologues.
3) Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4) Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
5) Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6) Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7) Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8) Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9) Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10) Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
Interestingly, in the years after this essay was published, Elmore Leonard whimsically said that he had an 11th rule:
"Don't be afraid to break the rules if it makes the story better."
2 comments:
I looked through Leonard's book on writing before and while I do enjoy his style of writing a lot, I wonder how well everyone can do with these rules. A lot of authors break almost all of these rules pretty much all the time. What would happen if someone who wasn't Leonard tried to abide by every single one of these rules?
....
Challenge Accepted!
You know what else would be funny? Purposefully writing something that broke all of these rules :)
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