WRITERS ON WRITING; Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle

Elmore Leonard, who passed away, with his rules of writing.

– Basically, yes to all of them. (Although, I may argue against the detailed description one.)

– Easy on the adverbs and fancy dialogue tags.

– I find myself wanting to use the word “suddenly” sometimes, but there is always a way to describe the “sudden” action in a way that conveys the “suddenness” of it with using the word.

– And the most important rule: “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” We all get clunky and awkward sometimes in our writing. And there are times when as readers and writers we see the “scaffolding” of a story – you know those moments when we notice the writer and see what they are trying do rather than what they are doing. Those are the times we need to go back and make ourselves disappear.

– There are few things like reading something you wrote and feeling like you didn’t write it. That somehow the story became something distinct from yourself and exists without you just fine.