He prefaces the list with a short disclaimer of sorts:<\/p>\n These are rules I\u2019ve picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I\u2019m writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Leonard then goes on to lay out the ten commandments, infused with his signature blend of humor, humility, and uncompromising discernment:<\/p>\n 1- Never open a book with weather.<\/b><\/p>\n If it\u2019s only to create atmosphere, and not a character\u2019s reaction to the weather, you don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n 2- Avoid prologues.<\/b><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n There is a prologue in John Steinbeck\u2019s Sweet Thursday<\/i><\/a>, but it\u2019s O.K. because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: \u201cI like a lot of talk in a book and I don\u2019t like to have nobody tell me what the guy that\u2019s talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. . . . figure out what the guy\u2019s 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. That\u2019s nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don\u2019t have to read it. I don\u2019t want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.\u201d<\/p>\n 3- Never use a verb other than \u201csaid\u201d to carry dialogue.<\/b><\/p>\n 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 \u201cshe asseverated,\u201d and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.<\/p>\n 4- Never use an adverb to modify the verb \u201csaid\u201d \u2026<\/b><\/p>\n \u2026he 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 \u201cfull of rape and adverbs.\u201d<\/p>\n 5- Keep your exclamation points under control.<\/b><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 6- Never use the words \u201csuddenly\u201d or \u201call hell broke loose.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n This rule doesn\u2019t require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use \u201csuddenly\u201d tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.<\/p>\n 7- Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.<\/b><\/p>\n Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won\u2019t be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories Close Range<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n 8- Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.<\/b><\/p>\n Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway\u2019s Hills Like White Elephants<\/i><\/a> what do the \u201cAmerican and the girl with him\u201d look like? \u201cShe had taken off her hat and put it on the table.\u201d That\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 9- Don\u2019t go into great detail describing places and things.<\/b><\/p>\n Unless you\u2019re Margaret Atwood<\/a> and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if you\u2019re good at it, you don\u2019t want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.<\/p>\n And finally:<\/p>\n 10- Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.<\/b><\/p>\n 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, he\u2019s writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character\u2019s head, and the reader either knows what the guy\u2019s thinking or doesn\u2019t care. I\u2019ll bet you don\u2019t skip dialogue.<\/p>\n My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.<\/p>\n If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.<\/b><\/p>\n Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can\u2019t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It\u2019s my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. (Joseph Conrad<\/a> said something about words getting in the way of what you want to say.)<\/p>\n If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character \u2014 the one whose view best brings the scene to life \u2014 I\u2019m able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and what\u2019s going on, and I\u2019m nowhere in sight.<\/p>\n What Steinbeck did in Sweet Thursday<\/i> was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. \u201cWhom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts\u201d is one, \u201cLousy Wednesday\u201d another. The third chapter is titled \u201cHooptedoodle 1\u2033 and the 38th chapter \u201cHooptedoodle 2\u2033 as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: \u201cHere\u2019s where you\u2019ll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it won\u2019t get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want.\u201d<\/p>\n Sweet Thursday<\/i> came out in 1954, when I was just beginning to be published, and I\u2019ve never forgotten that prologue.<\/p>\n Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word.<\/p>\n Complement Elmore Leonard\u2019s 10 Rules of Writing<\/i><\/b><\/a> with the 10 best books on writing<\/a> and the collected advice of other famous writers<\/a>, including Walter Benjamin\u2019<\/b>s thirteen rules<\/a>, H. P. Lovecraft\u2019<\/b>s advice to aspiring writers<\/a>, F. Scott Fitzgerald\u2019<\/b>s letter to his daughter<\/a>, Zadie Smith\u2019<\/b>s 10 rules of writing<\/a>, Kurt Vonnegut\u2019<\/b>s 8 keys to the power of the written word<\/a>, David Ogilvy\u2019<\/b>s 10 no-bullshit tips<\/a>, Henry Miller\u2019<\/b>s 11 commandments<\/a>, Jack Kerouac\u2019<\/b>s 30 beliefs and techniques<\/a>, John Steinbeck\u2019<\/b>s 6 pointers<\/a>, Neil Gaiman\u2019<\/b>s 8 rules<\/a>, and Susan Sontag\u2019<\/b>s synthesized learnings<\/a>.<\/p>\n _______________________<\/p>\n Brain Pickings<\/i><\/a><\/em> is the brain child of Maria Popova<\/a>, an interestingness hunter-gatherer and curious mind at large obsessed with combinatorial creativity who also writes for Wired<\/em> UK<\/a> and The Atlantic<\/em><\/a>, among others, and is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow. She has gotten occasional help from a handful of guest contributors<\/a>.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n![\"elmoreleonardrulesofwriting2\"](\"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/elmoreleonardrulesofwriting2-300x226.jpg\")
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