Dragaera

OT: a great ten rule

Thu Feb 26 16:40:01 PST 2004

Warlord wrote:

>Found this browsing through boingboing. I was amused.
>Just passing it along.  Page link is http://www.boingboing.net/
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>Elmore Leonard's ten rule for writers. Brilliant.
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>10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
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>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.
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>(this is my third link from Teresa Nielsen Hayden in one day, which has to
>be some kind of record) Link (via Making Light) posted by Cory Doctorow at
>10:09:25 PM
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Which implies that Leonard should have left out rules 1-9.

Steve