10 CLASSIC TIPS FOR WRITERS

Hello WEPers. Thank you for posting such excellent entries for the last challenge. There are many memorable ones - just to remind you...who will forget Lisa fell in love with her husband's picture before she met him? Who will forget Sally's picture-filled story? As always, I loved reading your posts and always look forward to each challenge. I do wish we could convince more to join us, but it seems difficult (most of you excluded) for people to commit to anything permanent these days, or commit to posting more than once.

I have added some more links to my USEFUL LINKS tab in the sidebar. There are some great links to help improve your writing, but I know most of us ignore links, which is why I'm pointing them out. This article is so good I'm reprinting it with some of my own edits, but it is a fine example of the caliber of the links. This one is especially useful to novel/short story writers.

10 CLASSIC WRITING RULES 

By ELMORE LEONAR

We, the writers, need to remain invisible when we're writing. This helps us 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

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. Words can get in the way of what you want to say. (Figure that out).

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, 

I've never forgotten that prologue.

Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word.

_abcdabcdabcdabc

I hope you find the above tips helpful.

Denise

Don't forget AUGUST'S CHALLENGE - TAKING CHANCES. Hopefully you will help me 

publicise the challenge by copying the image into your sidebar and perhaps mentioning 

it in a social media post. 

As I say on the Current Challenges page: Begin or end your story with these words…

’There was once a chance I didn’t take.’ If posting photos, let the photos tell 

the story.