for writers: Elmore Leonard Makes Writing Simple

Do not dismiss this posting as only useful for mystery or cowboy writers. "Yup, I reckon, this here posting is helpful to anyone who wants to write well." 

Do not dismiss this as good advice for men writers. Elmore Leonard was a writer's writer. He was asked to write an article about writing for the New York Times, and it was so well received, that he turned it into a book, Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing, which sold successfully. If you don't like buying from Amazon, here is the link to Alibris, or use this link to booksamillion. A copy of this tome should never rest on the top shelf of a writer's library, where it cannot be reached at a moment's notice. It is a frequent flyer for a writer who wants to communicate to his audience. 

The New York Times asked him to write the article because, he writes well - and across many genres. He knows his subject, and he is smart enough to know what his audience wants. And then he sells it to them in an honest way so they want to read his works. 

He was known as the master of dialogue, and young writers are always told to read him to see how he makes his dialogue realistic. 
I will save you $11 bucks and briefly list his 10 rules, although just listing them does not have the same educational value, as reading his book.

He calls them tricks to good writing:

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.

These rules were excerpted from his New York Times article. 

I am not 20% of the writer he is but I also know rules are made to be broken when that breakage serves a very good purpose. So before you write against the above rules one through nine, think hard and think long and never think suddenly. He said assuredly.  

The only rule that should never be broken is number ten. It is worth repeating. "Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. They are going to skip them anyway, why waste the ink?  

My added warning, especially to writers who have done extensive research and need to amortize their time and energy, be careful. You are walking on creative quicksand. Extraneous, show-off unimportant/insignificant knowledge {all knowledge that does not move the story forward or let the reader know vital information.}, no matter how seemingly appropriate, is just showing off. It slows us down, and makes us wonder if we understand the story. 

Readers hate a show-off. Readers hate being bored. Our answer is something an author does not want to hear. We put down the book, and worst yet, they bad mouth your style.

The best you can hope for is we give you a reprieve and just skip that section, and keep reading. But how many times can we give you a pass. Three strikes and you are out in baseball. When I read, you only get two strikes.  

Some setting and description of place and such is certainly appropriate, but every time a character twitches, we don't need to know the scenery in detail, and described ad-nauseum. If we wanted to read a travelogue, we would have bought one.  

In particular, I have started the book, the Alienist, twice (over the last 18 months), and cannot get past the first thirty-five pages. 

Maybe it is me.

Is it you too? 

Caleb, please, buy Elmore's book and read it. Not so much weather and less of the scenery, fewer hansom rides and more action early please. We know who Teddy Roosevelt was and what he became, but is that so fascinating that it can carry the story? 

I think my answer is clear.  

That's my opinion, what is yours?

-- L. Preschel author of the Sam-Cath mysteries.

For a Reader

My Favorite Mystery Novel of the Second Half of the 20th Century

When I read mysteries, I read as an author as well as for enjoyment. I am always trying to learn how the author created the atmosphere or the red herring or the golden coin in the story. In that way, I am learning the art of mystery writing. 
I have read and therefore been taught by many of the best mystery writers of the English language and that includes those translated into English. (If I did not have a lead tongue, and a mind that refuses to learn another language, I might have been tempted to read some of these famous mysteries in their native tongue.)
I learned reading from Michael Connelly, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Lawrence Block, Lee Childs, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sue Grafton, J. D. Robb, James Lee Burke, Janet Evanovich, and many others that I cannot remember at the moment.
Pacing, distraction, logic, presentation, and characterization can be learned from reading others's writings. Flaws and mistakes are present even in the works of the greatest authors, and an alert reader can learn from others missteps.   
But only one manuscript affected me to the point that I remember it as the best mystery novel written after 1950. 
That book is The Poet by Michael Connelly. 
Although some less than kind reviewer stated the characterizations were not deep, I believe that reviewer to be too picky.  
If this manuscript were an old house with many rooms, the same reviewer would say it was too dusty to appreciate. If you walk through this old house, you would note doors you never saw or noticed from a distance. If you opened these doors, they reveal facts and views that you could not have suspected. After passing through the door, you realize the views could be anticipated prior to venturing in the room. They were not because the architecture hid the clues in the woodwork and the furniture. That made them difficult to see, but the facts were there. While you focused on walking, you missed all that was around you.    
Connelly does not surprise you with twists of logic once or twice in The Poet, he flaunts and parades twists, as if his writing were a Twizzlers factory. He even ends the book in this manner.
And that leads to The Narrows, a later novel involving many of the same characters, some of whom were presumed dead.  
He also makes the reader sense all the fear of his characters from the safety of our chair. Combining these two accomplishments so flawlessly makes this a masterpiece of a novel. It did win an Anthony and the Dilys award in 1997.
I believe that people read mysteries not just to solve the puzzle. But  in The Poet, the puzzle is well conceived and the logic is tight. That helps the reader suspend his disbelief. But the level of evil encountered in this book, is so high, that one reviewer called the villain a comic book evil. However, that reviewer forgot that just prior to the book, it was discovered that the Internet was being used by pedophiles to accomplish their ends. The book transports a mutated reality onto the page. No comic book was ever this evil. No hero was ever this real to the reader. 
Readers want to realistically but safely experience true danger and true evil.  Thankfully few of us will meet or experience a Hannibal Lecter in our lifetime, or a pedophile like Eidolon, but through the pages of a novel, we can live with these criminal for a short time and quite intimately and still live to tell about it.
In The Poet, Michael Connelly let us live with a murderer who is also a member of a ring of predators and just when you think it is over, it is still on. Wow.  

What is your favorite mystery novel and why?

-- L. Preschel author of the Sam-Cath mysteries.