For those who missed it, here's the Elmore Leonard essay from
the NYTimes.
Jean Heller
Easy on the Hooptedoodle
By ELMORE LEONARD
These are rules I've picked up along the way to help me
remain invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show
rather than tell what's 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 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 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 Steinbeck's "Sweet
Thursday," but it's O.K. 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.
. . . figure out what the guy's 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's nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don't
have to read it. I don't want hooptedoodle to get mixed up
with the story."
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 to get 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 flavor 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,
and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of
voice, with not one adverb in sight.
9. Don't go into great detail describing
places and things.
Unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with
language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison.
But even if you're good at it, you don't want descriptions
that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a
standstill.
And finally:
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, he's
writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another
shot at the weather, or has gone into the character's head,
and the reader either knows what the guy's thinking or
doesn't care. I'll bet you don't 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 can't allow what we learned in English composition to
disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It's 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 — the one whose view best
brings the scene to life — I'm able to concentrate
on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and
how they feel about what they see and what's going on, and
I'm nowhere in sight.
What Steinbeck did in "Sweet Thursday" was title his
chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they
cover. "Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts" is one, "Lousy
Wednesday" another. The third chapter is titled "Hooptedoodle
1" and the 38th chapter
"Hooptedoodle 2" as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck
is saying: "Here's where you'll see me taking flights of
fancy with my writing, and it won't get in the way of the
story. Skip them if you want."
"Sweet Thursday" came out in 1954, when I was just
beginning to be published, and I've never forgotten that
prologue.
Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/16/books/16LEON.html?ex=996395730&ei=1&en=1d35b
913e386067b
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