Elmore Leonard
Elmore Leonard was an American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. He was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on October 11, 1925 and grew up in Detroit, Michigan.
Leonard began his career as a writer in the 1950s, publishing western novels under various pseudonyms. In the 1960s, he turned to crime fiction and wrote numerous novels and short stories featuring complex, colorful characters.
His breakout success came with the publication of "Glitz" in 1985. Leonard's works were known for their realistic dialogue, laconic prose (using very few words), and attention to detail.
Stephen King placed him in the same company as John D. MacDonald, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but Leonard himself felt more influenced by Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck.
Leonard was associated with the hit TV series โJustifiedโ, as the showโs main character, Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, appears in several of Leonard's novels and short stories. While Leonard did not write the show, his work served as the inspiration for it and he was credited as an executive producer.
Twenty-six of Leonard's novels and short stories have been adapted for the screen (19 as motion pictures and another seven as television programs). Movies include โGet Shortyโ, โJackie Brownโ, โThe Big Bounceโ, and โBe Coolโโฆ
He received numerous awards throughout his career, including the National Book Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2012. Leonard passed away on August 20, 2013 at the age of 87.
In 2001, Leonard wrote a short piece for The New York Times on his Ten Rules for Writing. The article was rewritten as a book: Elmore Leonardโs 10 Rules of Writing:
โThese are rules Iโve picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when Iโm writing a book, to help me show rather than tell whatโs taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.
1. Never open a book with weather.
If itโs only to create atmosphere, and not a characterโs reaction to the weather, you donโt 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 to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, 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 nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeckโs โSweet Thursday,โ but itโs O.K. because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: โI like a lot of talk in a book and I donโt like to have nobody tell me what the guy thatโs talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. . . . figure out what the guyโs thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. Thatโs nice. But I wish it was set aside so I donโt have to read it. I donโt want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.โ3. Never use a verb other than โsaidโ 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 โshe asseverated,โ and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb โsaidโ โฆ
. . . 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 โfull of rape and adverbs.โ5. 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 โsuddenlyโ or โall hell broke loose.โ
This rule doesnโt require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use โsuddenlyโ 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 wonโt be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories โClose Range.โ8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingwayโs โHills Like White Elephantsโ what do the โAmerican and the girl with himโ look like? โShe had taken off her hat and put it on the table.โ Thatโs the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.9. Donโt go into great detail describing places and things.
Unless youโre Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if youโre good at it, you donโt 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.
A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, heโs writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the characterโs head, and the reader either knows what the guyโs thinking or doesnโt care. Iโll bet you donโt skip dialogue.My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I canโt allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. Itโs my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. (Joseph Conrad said something about words getting in the way of what you want to say.)
If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character โ the one whose view best brings the scene to life โ Iโm able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and whatโs going on, and Iโm nowhere in sight.
What Steinbeck did in โSweet Thursdayโ was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. โWhom the Gods Love They Drive Nutsโ is one, โLousy Wednesdayโ another. The third chapter is titled โHooptedoodle 1โ and the 38th chapter โHooptedoodle 2โ as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: โHereโs where youโll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it wonโt get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want.โ
โSweet Thursdayโ came out in 1954, when I was just beginning to be published, and Iโve never forgotten that prologue.
Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters?
Every wordโ.
Hope you enjoyed the 10 Rules as much as me. Happy New Year, Peace!
Are you a โJustifiedโ show fan? Love the comments!
I always like returning to Elmore's 10 rules every so often, as they are so practical. I almost always have to edit out extra unnecessary words from my early drafts (actually, kinda, sort of, and the like). I had hoped to train my brain to stop using them but if my old dog can't learn new tricks on a first draft, I'm happy to catch 'em on later drafts.
Paul......I enjoyed Leonard's "10 Rules for Writing," despite feeling as if he wrote them only after reading two of my articles. Raging self-consciousness (and, my icing-drizzled cruller) aside, I might offer one more: Never use a colon except for only the most necessary gastro-intestinal purposes. And, only use a semi-colon if you've had half of it removed. Parenthetically yours, (Brad)