(Not every little twinge of satisfaction is suspect вЂ“ it's the ones which amount to a sort of smug glee you must watch out for.)ДЎ Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Almost always it turns out that they'd be better dead. My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.Д®lmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing is published next month by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.ДЎ Read it aloud to yourself because that's the only way to be sure the rhythms of the sentences are OK (prose rhythms are too complex and subtle to be thought out вЂ“ they can be got right only by ear).Дў Cut (perhaps that should be CUT): only by having no Вinessential words can every essential word be made toВ count.ДЈ You don't always have to go so far as to murder your darlings вЂ“ those turns of phrase or images of which you felt extra proud when they appeared on the page вЂ“ but go back andВ look at them with a very beady eye. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them.

You don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.ДЎ0 Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. In Ernest Hemingway's 'Hills Like White Elephants', what do the 'AmeriВcan 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.Д© Don't go into great detail describing places and things, unless you're ВMargaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavour of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories Close Range.ДЁ Avoid detailed descriptions of characters, which Steinbeck covered. Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with aposВtrophes, you won't be able to stop. I have noticed that writers who use 'suddenly' tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.Д§ Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. This rule doesn't require an explanation. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.Д¦ Never use the words 'suddenly' or 'all hell broke loose'. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances 'full of rape andВ adverbs'.ДҐ Keep your exclamation points Вunder control. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with 'she asseverated' and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary.Д¤ Never use an adverb to modify the verb 'said'. But 'said' is far less intrusive than 'grumbled', 'gasped', 'cautioned', 'lied'. The line of dialogue belongs to the character the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. I want to figure outВ what heВ looks like from the way he talks.'ДЈ Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue.

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. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday, but it's OK because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. But these are ordinarily found in non-fiction. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways than an Eskimo to describe ice and snow in hisВ book Arctic Dreams, you can do all the weather reporting you want.Дў Avoid prologues: they can be Вannoying, especially a prologue Вfollowing an introduction that comesВ after a foreword. The reader is apt to leaf ahead lookВing for people. If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a characВter's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. Elmore Leonard: Using adverbs is a mortal sinДЎ Never open a book with weather.

Not even wrong book