TIPS FOR FICTION WRITERS
G'day folks,
Here are some tips from Elmore Leonard for those of you who write fiction.
Elmore Leonard: Using adverbs is
a mortal sin
1 Never open a book with weather.
If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the
weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking
for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more
ways than an Eskimo to describe ice and snow in his book Arctic Dreams,
you can do all the weather reporting you want.
2 Avoid prologues: they can be annoying,
especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a
foreword. But these are ordinarily found in non-fiction. A prologue in a novel
is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in
John Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday, but it's OK because a character in the
book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: "I like a
lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy
that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like
from the way he talks."
3 Never use a verb other than
"said" to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the
character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But "said" is
far less intrusive than "grumbled", "gasped", "cautioned",
"lied". I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with
"she asseverated" and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary.
4 Never use an adverb to modify the
verb "said" ... he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or
almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest,
using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I
have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical
romances "full of rape and adverbs".
5 Keep your exclamation points under
control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you
can throw them in by the handful.
6 Never use the words
"suddenly" or "all hell broke loose". This rule doesn't
require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use
"suddenly" tend to exercise less control in the application of
exclamation points.
7 Use regional dialect, patois,
sparingly. Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading
the page with apostrophes, you won't be able to stop. Notice the way Annie
Proulx captures the flavour of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories Close
Range.
8 Avoid detailed descriptions of
characters, which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like
White Elephants", what do the "American and the girl with him"
look like? "She had taken off her hat and put it on the table."
That's the only reference to a physical description in the story.
9 Don't go into great detail
describing places and things, unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint
scenes with language. You don't want descriptions that bring the action, the
flow of the story, to a standstill.
10 Try to leave out the part that
readers tend to skip. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs
of prose you can see have too many words in them.
My most
important rule is one that sums up the 10: if it sounds like writing, I rewrite
it.
Clancy's comment: There are some great tips here, especially the one about leaving out the bits that people skip. Yep, the secret is to cut to the chase and write for your reader - not yourself! Someone recently wrote to me and complimented my style of writing, "Your short sentences catapulted me through the story'. Mm ...
I'm ...
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