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January 30, 2004

suggestions

filed under prose matters

Not so long ago I got cranky about at least one of Pat Holt's ten mistakes writers make (please note: I got a gracious email from her in response to my ping, and I'm feeling a little sheepish about just how cranky I really was). Then I ran into a series of crankinesses about Elmore Leonard's ten rules for writers, one of them from the Times Literary Supplement which ended with this bit of high-handed advice: "Our rule for the cultivation of good writing is much simpler: stay in, read, and don't limit yourself to American crime fiction." Addendum: The Elegant Variation has posted the entire TLS review in a comment here.

I'll admit that I thought Elmore Leonard's list was a bit vague ("10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. ") except where it was too specific ("3. Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue.")

So I'm going to list my suggestions (three at a time until I'm bored) and give other people a chance to bash at me. It's only fair.

1. When in doubt, read the passage out loud (1) to yourself (2) to somebody else you like (3) to somebody else you don't like. Take the average of all three reactions. If you still have absolutely no idea if the damn thing is any good, at least you will have succeeded in wasting another hour.

2. Hit a wall? Take a page-long scene with dialogue you like from a novel you admire. Write it out longhand, but switch all the genders of the characters. This will either paralyze you for a week or give you good ideas.

3. Take a random page from your manuscript and highlight every occurence of 'very' in yellow. Now go through and highlight every adjective in blue and every remaining adverb or adjective (in case you're not sure of the difference) in pink. If you've got rainbow-esque page in front of you when you are finished, delete all of the highlighted terms . Now put back only one out of ten. Choose carefully. (If you've got no pink, yellow or blue on the page, you're in a minimalist sink-hole and you'll need professional help to get out.)

January 30, 2004 06:09 PM

Comments

I like #2. I find that whenever I'm up against a brick wall in terms of plotting or characterisation it helps to ask myself the question: does person X have to be of that gender? What if they were male, instead of female? (Or vice versa.) Changing the gender of a character often completely changes the dynamic of a scene, or a relationship, and it always sparks off new ideas.

Posted by: Martin Sutherland at January 31, 2004 04:08 PM

I ran the TLS' response to Leonard in the comments section of this post:

http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/2004/01/elmore_leonard_.html

Posted by: TEV at February 1, 2004 02:35 PM

thanks for the link, TEV.

Posted by: sara at February 1, 2004 05:47 PM