rules - two

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Other Writers’ Rules …

I swear I’ve been in at least four different writing seminars where the person conducting the session told us “Elmore Leonard’s first rule of writing is never use adjectives!”

But did Elmore really say that?

Let’s take a look at Elmore Leonard’s genuine list of rules for writing:

      Never open a book with weather.

     Avoid prologues.

     Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.

     Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.

     Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or 

               three per 100,000 words of prose. 

     Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."

     Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

     Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

     Don't go into great detail describing places and things.

     Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

and above all …

     If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.

Well! He certainly says to avoid “detailed” descriptions, and never to use adverbs to modify the particular verb “said”. But nowhere does he say never to use adjectives. Just use them intelligently in a way that won’t bore readers.

And how about that final and most important rule? If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.

Yeah!

What does writing sound like?

Maybe George Orwell has the answer, in his list of rules:

      Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing 

                in print.

     Never use a long word where a short one will do.

     If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

     Never use the passive where you can use the active.

     Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an 

               everyday English equivalent.

and above all …

     Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

I’m hearing a lot of common sense in both these sets of rules. Be spare, stick to the point, respect your reader, don’t indulge yourself, and if your writing is full of clichés, then it probably sounds like writing. And you don’t want that.

Although what writing sounds like when it doesn’t sound like writing is still a bit of a mystery to me … Does writing that doesn’t sound like writing sound like Elmore Leonard? Or are there a few other hats we might toss into the ring here yet? How about …

Oh, I don’t know, maybe Kurt Vonnegut! One time icon of my generation! Here’s Kurt’s list:

     Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time 

               was wasted.

     Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

     Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

     Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.

     Start as close to the end as possible.

     Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful 

               things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made 

               of.

     Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so 

               to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

     Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with 

               suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going 

               on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should 

               cockroaches eat the last few pages.

All right …

Once again, some excellent advice. Much respect for the reader, I couldn’t agree more. But don’t try to please everyone. Have characters that are worth cheering for. Give them desires and problems people can see them test themselves against, I like that bit.

But … give up suspense? Entirely? Tell them the whole story in the first chapter, if you can?

Then why would they want to read the rest of the book!

To be honest, I’m not that worried about cockroaches eating the last pages. Especially if people are reading my stuff on the computer. So let’s see if I can sum up what I’ve learned here.

Your writing shouldn’t sound like writing. It should sound like Elmore Leonard.

Break every rule you’ve read if using them means you’re going to end up saying something ridiculous. Hence, why rules I wonder?

Throw everything at the reader as soon as possible, so they can fill in the rest of the blanks without necessarily having to read the rest of the book.

I can’t tell if these guys are losing themselves in the details or really providing something that might work. If they really followed these rules, then the lists did work for them personally no doubt. But is there, I don’t know, a somewhat more holistic approach that might be beneficial to everyone? Let’s try one more. As holistic a writer in his approach as you’re going to get.

Jack Kerouac:

     Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy

     Submissive to everything, open, listening

     Try never get drunk outside yr own house

     Be in love with yr life

     Something that you feel will find its own form

     Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind

     Blow as deep as you want to blow

     Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind

     The unspeakable visions of the individual

     No time for poetry but exactly what is

     Visionary tics shivering in the chest

     In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you

     Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition

     Like Proust be an old teahead of time

     Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog

     The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye

     Write in recollection and amazement for yourself

     Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea

     Accept loss forever

     Believe in the holy contour of life

     Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind

     Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better

     Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning

     No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge

     Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it

     Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form

     In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness

     Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better

     You’re a Genius all the time

     Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

Hey. It doesn’t sound like writing.

Next Week: Even More Rules

**********

REALITY FICTION!

What comes next?

That’s the question to be answered this Friday at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

Reality Fiction and Reality Fiction Too! have come to an end. So does the winner of Reality Fiction Too! actually get her prize? A full length story with that character at the centre of it? And what finally did happen with the winner of Reality Fiction One, for that matter?