"Full Of Rape And Adverbs"

By Pat Browning


Elmore Leonard says that using adverbs is a mortal sin. Whether or not you’re an Elmore Leonard fan you can’t argue with his success. I’m especially interested in Leonard’s exceptions to his rules.

The Guardian, a British newspaper, recently ran a lengthy article on Leonard’s 10 Rules for Writing, followed by rules offered by British authors. You can read the entire article at:
http://tinyurl.com/yksnu69

10 Rules For Writing Fiction from The Guardian, Feb. 20, 2010, beginning first with Elmore Leonard’s rules:
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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 than an Eskimo to describe ice and snow in his book Arctic Dreams, 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 non-fiction. 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 OK 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."


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 and go to 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 flavour 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.


9) Don't go into great detail describing places and things, unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language. You don't 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. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them.


My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
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Inspired by Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing, The Guardian surveyed some established British authors for their tips on successful writing. Here are brief comments from some of them.
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Margaret Atwood
You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but -essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.

Geoff Dyer
Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.


Anne Enright
Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand.


Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.


Esther Freud
A story needs rhythm. Read it aloud to yourself. If it doesn't spin a bit of magic, it's missing something.


Neil Gaiman
Finish what you're writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.


Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.


David Hare
Style is the art of getting yourself out of the way, not putting yourself in it.


The two most depressing words in the English language are "literary fiction".


PD James
Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.


Al Kennedy
Write. No amount of self-inflicted misery, altered states, black pullovers or being publicly obnoxious will ever add up to your being a writer. Writers write. On you go.


Hilary Mantel
First paragraphs can often be struck out. Are you performing a haka, or just shuffling your feet?


If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.


Michael Moorcock
Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy their plots and characters in order to tell your own story, just as people learn to draw and paint by copying the masters.


Introduce your main characters and themes in the first third of your novel.


If you are writing a plot-driven genre novel make sure all your major themes/plot elements are introduced in the first third, which you can call the introduction. Develop your themes and characters in your second third, the development. Resolve your themes, mysteries and so on in the final third, the resolution.


For a good melodrama study the famous "Lester Dent master plot formula" which you can find online. It was written to show how to write a short story for the pulps, but can be adapted successfully for most stories of any length or genre.


Carrot and stick – have protagonists pursued (by an obsession or a villain) and pursuing (idea, object, person, mystery).


Michael Morpurgo
It is the gestation time which counts.


By the time I sit down and face the blank page I am raring to go. I tell it as if I'm talking to my best friend or one of my grandchildren.


Joyce Carol Oates
Keep a light, hopeful heart. But expect the worst.

Ian Rankin
Get lucky.
Stay lucky.


Will Self
Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea forever.


Live life and write about life. Of the making of many books there is indeed no end, but there are more than enough books about books.


By the same token remember how much time people spend watching TV. If you're writing a novel with a contemporary setting there need to be long passages where nothing happens save for TV watching: "Later, George watched Grand Designs while eating HobNobs. Later still he watched the shopping channel for a while . . ."


Helen Simpson
The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-it on the wall in front of my desk saying "Faire et se taire" (Flaubert), which I translate for myself as "Shut up and get on with it."


Zadie Smith
Don't romanticise your "vocation". You can either write good sentences or you can't. There is no "writer's lifestyle". All that matters is what you leave on the page.


Don't confuse honours with achievement.


Colm Tóibín
Finish everything you start.


Stop feeling sorry for yourself.


If you have to read, to cheer yourself up read biographies of writers who went insane.


Rose Tremain
In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.


Respect the way characters may change once they've got 50 pages of life in them. Revisit your plan at this stage and see whether certain things have to be altered to take account of these changes.


Sarah Waters
Writing fiction is not "self-expression" or "therapy". Novels are for readers, and writing them means the crafty, patient, selfless construction of effects. I think of my novels as being something like fairground rides: my job is to strap the reader into their car at the start of chapter one, then trundle and whizz them through scenes and surprises, on a carefully planned route, and at a finely engineered pace.


Don't panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends' embarrassment, the failing career, the dwindling income, the repossessed house, the divorce . . . Working doggedly on through crises like these, however, has always got me there in the end.


Jeanette Winterson
Never stop when you are stuck. You may not be able to solve the problem, but turn aside and write something else. Do not stop altogether.


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