Novelist Elmore Leonard passed away this month, leaving behind forty-some books and his “Ten Rules of Writing.” I agree with every one of his rules (if you disagree, leave a comment, and we’ll chat), and have printed them below. My favorite is his tenth, a tip I heard years ago: try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. Yes, Elmore! Thank you.
But first, a caveat about Leonard’s rules: they apply to the polishing stage, not the drafting stage. While we’re working on a first draft, we should break these rules with abandon.
When I was young, I didn’t appreciate the vast difference between first drafts and finished manuscripts. If my high school teachers understood writing as process, they didn’t let me in on it. They gave me writing assignments, and I gave them finished pieces. Period. Some were decent, and some not, and along the way, I figured I’d never make it as a writer because my stories didn’t measure up to my standards. As crazy as this sounds to me now, I used to think people were either born to write or they weren’t, and I wasn’t.
Marion Dane Bauer
Now I know that writing can be taught. In a blog post this month, author Marion Dane Bauer refutes the old truism that “you can’t teach writing.” You can! Over the past decade, I’ve learned a ton from awesome teachers who are also writers of fiction. One difference between an MA program in literature and an MFA in writing is that in addition to critiquing fiction, MFA students must write it.
Many of today’s teachers get that writing is a process, and they’ll often ask to see a first draft. Later they’ll request a revised version, and some time after that, a finished story or essay. This is a good thing. When you let a piece of writing rest, your brain keeps working on it. What appears brilliant one day might sound awful a week later. Words you thought perfect, you later recognize as downright wrong (I used to confuse ambivalent and ambiguous, and rarely caught the misuse in a first draft). But no problem, right? We have computers. The problem comes when writers think they don’t have the time or fortitude to handle the revisions.
So I give you Leonard’s ten rules, but if you’re currently in the process of drafting new scenes, you should stop reading right now. Come back when you’re ready for the revision stage.
I found this version of Leonard’s rules on the website of St. Louis TV station KSDK. Leonard elaborates a little on each rule, so click here to read more. Happy writing, y’all…
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.”
5. Keep your exclamation points under control.
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.
IN SUMMARY: “If it sounds like writing, I re-write it.”
Looking for Alaska, for example. He intentionally deviates from the classic climax-and-denouement structure with brilliant results. Early chapters are labeled “before” and later chapters “after” and the life-changing moment occurs in the middle, leading to a denouement that at first glance appears too long. But no. The climax is not that moment-in-the-middle, but comes when the protagonist realizes he can’t live fully if he remains stuck on life “before Alaska” and “after Alaska.” The structure Green has given to his novel is the very structure the protagonist is struggling to escape.
