Writing rules from Elmore et al
September 2nd 2008 04:13
Elmore Leonard: You are allowed no more than two or three exclamation marks
per 100,000 words of prose. (Picture: Laurie Roberts, www.laurieroberts.net )
per 100,000 words of prose. (Picture: Laurie Roberts, www.laurieroberts.net )
George Orwell's rules for writing are probably the best-known, but others have created lists to guide aspiring scribes. Some are more useful than others, and some are less serious than others. In the case of lists by Mark Twain and William Safire, they are both humourous and serious.
Most of all, they are illuminating, and worth re-reading regularly to remind ourselves that the simple rules of good writing can be difficult to follow.
My personal favourite is Brad Berens' second rule: "There is never a reason to use the word 'very' in prose." If you do not understand why this is important, I challenge you to remove a few instances of "very" from a piece of your writing, and then consider what difference has been made to the meaning.
Don't rush this - it is an important lesson on the road to developing the writer's ear which will be a recurring theme in this blog.
Elmore Leonard: Rules of writing novels
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 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 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.
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. 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.
Brad Berens: Rules for online writing LINK
1. Don’t use adverbs unless the sense of the sentence changes without them; if it does, you should probably rewrite the sentence.
2. There is never a reason to use the word “very” in prose … just think of Lucy in the old “Peanuts” cartoon using 75 verys to complete a 100-word essay.
3. Unless you are quoting a person or book or referring a term or phrase as a noun (see the word “very” in quotes in the preceding rule), don’t use quotation marks. This is particularly true if you are using them the way certain insecure speakers use air quotes. If you can remove the quotes and the sense of the sentence is unchanged, do so.
4. Never mistake informality for imprecision: the web and email may be relaxed writing environments, but the more specific you can be about what you are saying the better your prose will be at accomplishing your goals.
5. Emoticons are only acceptable in Instant Messenger.
Former New York Times columnist William Safire (left): "Proofread
carefully to see if you words out."
carefully to see if you words out."
William Safire: Rules for writers
1. Remember to never split an infinitive.
2. The passive voice should never be used.
3. Do not put statements in the negative form.
4. Verbs have to agree with their subjects.
5. Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
6. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be by rereading and editing.
7. A writer must not shift your point of view.
8. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.)
9. Don't overuse exclamation marks!!
10. Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
11. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
12. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
13. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
14. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
15. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
16. Always pick on the correct idiom.
17. The adverb always follows the verb.
18. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives.
Mark Twain: Rules of writing
(These rules were part of an essay lampooning the "literary offenses" of James Fenimore Cooper LINK )
1. A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere.
2. The episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help develop it.
3. The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.
4. The personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there.
5. When the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say.
6. When the author describes the character of a personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description.
7. When a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a Negro minstrel at the end of it.
8. Crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader by either the author or the people in the tale.
9. The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausably set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable.
10. The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones.
11. The characters in tale be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency.
An author should:
12. _Say_ what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.
13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.
14. Eschew surplusage.
15. Not omit necessary details.
16. Avoid slovenliness of form.
17. Use good grammar.
18. Employ a simple, straightforward style.
I hope that proved illuminating (and congratulations on getting this far). I have only one quibble with the vast amount of knowledge and experience above: Brad Berens' fifth rule could read, "Emoticons are only acceptable in Instant Messenger and Orble comments."
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Comment by Lara M
Love Speaks
Food Slate
I'll have to come back to this again. Thanks for sharing
The "very" rule is so very true
Comment by Chris Champion
LettersToNorm
moneywhither
Vyoos
Zoomies
Bloggercises
The Blog of Lists
Newly Old
Oh dear, that's two exclamation marks in one paragraph. Elmore won't be happy.
The Ezra Pound quote in the earlier post, "Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree," is relevant here (oh, I so wanted to put a "very" before "relevant"), including for those of us writing something less than literature.
I think what Pound means, and what you proved with your perfect illustrative sentence on the redundancy of the word very, is that there is unlimited originality and innovation available in simple language. The hard part for anyone trying to unlock the magic is realising that casual use of long words, buzz words, exotic foreign phrases etc is heading in the wrong direction.
Great writers find original ways to use everyday words. No wonder it's hard.
Regards,
Chris