The Rules of Writing

As I begin my sixth month of thesis work, I realize how many tricks of the trade that I use daily which have come from both authors and mentors, from both reading and writing.

At Northeastern University Joe DeRoche told me to never use an exclamation point because “If your prose isn’t exciting enough then no amount of exclamation points will help you out.” I have used exclamation points now and again, but Joe’s genteel admonishment always rings loudest when I consider doing so.

Elmore Leonard is my favorite writer of dialogue. All of his characters have their own sound, rhythm, and cadence. They read like we sound when we talk.

The Zip was quiet, maybe trying to guess what was in Raylan’s mind. He seemed curious. Finally he said, “Okay, what do you want to tell me?”

“Here’s the deal,” Raylan said. “I’m giving you twenty-four hours to get out of this county and never come back.” Raylan looked at his watch. “That means you have until…two-fifteen tomorrow afternoon to clear out. If I see you’re still around after that, I won’t hesitate to shoot you on sight. You have any questions?”

― Elmore Leonard, “Pronto”

Two decades ago Leonard shared his ten tricks of good writing with the unsuspecting world. The list is here:

1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said”…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Excerpted from the New York Times article, “Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle” July 16, 2001, Section E, Page 1.

The full article is here. It is well worth your valuable time.

During my residency at Harvard University author Rachel Kadish taught us that “Plot is what happens, character is why we care.” I have always been a strong proponent of strong characters but Rachel summed it up better than I ever did. The characters that she crafted in her brilliant novel The Weight of Ink are prime examples of this.

Rachel also said to “start a scene as late as possible and get out of it as soon as possible.” This idea grafted itself to my writer’s soul. To follow this instruction I find that I usually have to write the whole scene first and then take a knife to it, removing the fat and leaving the meat of my prose. My writing is tighter because of this simple yet not as easy as it sounds instruction.

“Plot is what happens, character is why we care.”

―Rachel Kadish, author of The weight of Ink, From a Sealed Room and Tolstoy Lied: a Love Story, as well as the novella I Was Here.

As an aside, Rutger Hauer did this with the Tears in Rain monologue in the movie Blade Runner. This was the speech in the original screenplay:

I’ve seen things… seen things you little people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion bright as magnesium… I rode on the back decks of a blinker and watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments… they’ll be gone.

According to the Channel 4 documentary On the Edge of Blade Runner, Hauer described this as “opera talk” and “hi-tech speech” with no bearing on the rest of the film, so he “put a knife in it” the night before filming, turning the monologue into this:

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

Amazing.

Finally, I have learned more than a few meaningful lessons from Seth Harwood during my studies. He showed me Frank Conroy’s “reader/writer zone” which, simply put, means the writer has to write just enough to engage the reader without overloading them with details. Conversely, too few details make the reader work too hard to fill in the empty spaces left by the writer. Basically, this makes the reader a co-creator of the narrative, allowing them to fill in details as they read along. Writers must create prose in such a way that we receive the active participation of the reader’s mind and imagination. If not, our stories will always fall short.

One of Seth’s simplest pieces of advice is to allow yourself as a writer to make a mess of our work. Dive in and write, create scenes, write dialogue, describe action and, if it doesn’t work on a re-read, delete it. Throw it away and start again. Make a mess and then clean it up. This was freeing for me. By allowing myself to make a mess I have discovered that I’m a good writer and a great re-writer.

“Make a Mess.”

―Seth Harwood, author of JACK WAKES UP, four additional novels, as well as two collections of short stories, and a novella in the world of Kurt Vonnegut.

I have certainly learned more about writing than there is time to recount here. Suffice to say that I agree with Stephen King who wrote: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.” King is correct. Before pursuing writing as a serious endeavor I never realized before how much of an amalgamation that I am of the writers that I have read over the years. Somewhere along the way I found my own voice by reading books for the vast majority of my whole life.

Reading and writing go hand in hand. And, if you pay attention, you might just learn something about your own writing as you’re reading.

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For the writers reading this, whose writing has had the most influence on your own? For the readers, whose work has just blown your socks off?

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