Seven Simple Rules for Writing

Since Elmore Leonard released his slim volume about his 10 Rules for writers to follow, it has generated reactions from bravo to derision. Right or wrong or in between, all writers have rules they follow. Tricks of the trade that help make their writing better.

Here is Elmore’s list (numbered, apparently, as originally presented; but the tech writer in me wants to make this a bulleted list) followed by my own list of seven:

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.

Instead of taking each of his points to task, I’ll just say to Mr. Leonard: Whatever works for you.

This is what works for me (with some overlap, where noted*):

• Kill the Cliché. I’ve said too much about the cliché. Yet, maybe not enough. This is the big one, and most amorphous of rules. But pay attention to the cliché; make note--rout, remove, lambast, and sequester it for future generations. Your writing will thank you. Your agent will thank you. Your wife will thank you. Your cat won’t care, but you’re not writing for an audience of cats (or are you?).
• Don’t describe concurrent action. “As Joe walked in the room, he took off his coat.” This forces the reader to backtrack within the same sentence. They may not notice, but in their brains the wheels and cogs will need to reread, as follows: “Let’s see, he walked in the room. Got it. Oh wait, he’s also taking off his coat. Let me start over.” Instead, place these actions one after the next: “Joe walked into the room and took off his coat.”
• When a character asks a question, don’t qualify it with asked: “Are you going to take off your coat as you walk in the room?” she asked. It’s redundant. The question mark already alerts the reader that this is a question.
• Don’t add paragraph breaks to a short story. They are mostly unnecessary, breaking the flow and deflating the tension you’re trying to create in a compressed time. If you often use breaks, try removing them and see if it reads better. Although, I admit I recently broke this rule at the suggestion of an editor. In my case it made sense to add a break because the story really did have two parts, with a thematic shift occurring in the middle. I tried to get away without a break, but it flowed more naturally with one. This rule depends on the story.
• *Don’t use suddenly. What’s wrong with suddenly? Where’s the love for this bastard word that was initially welcomed to the party but later scorned? The problem is this: It’s beyond cliché to use suddenly. Suddenly can be inserted in almost any sentence, you know, like fuck or fucking. It’s more than a place holder, it’s a plague. If a sentence or paragraph uses suddenly to propel action (“Suddenly he walked in the room as he took off his coat”), then the sentence/paragraph should be rewritten. Suddenly is a lazy state of mind. One begets the next until (suddenly) you’re writing a story or novel using tokens in place of actual emotion.
• * Start a story with action. Don’t start with dialogue, or worse, the weather. This is debatable. But I think the point is, introduce context to the reader before you throw dialogue or random atmosphere at them. It’s off-putting to read a line of dialogue when you don’t know who is talking.
• Don’t write dream sequences. Dream sequences are as much fun to read as they are to hear (except when described by your significant other). But writers love to write dreams because they tell so much about the inner life of their characters, more than the character is sometimes aware of. And therein lies the rub: dream sequences distance readers because the events aren’t actually happening to the character. After the dream ends, it’s back to the regular story. And if important events, memories, symbolism, exposition, etc., are exposed only through a dream, then it’s best to back the truck up and rethink you’re strategy. I know this. I’ve done this. I wrote a great dream sequence, where all the women in a character’s life were gathered in a room and discussed what they really thought about this character. It was great. I mean, how else to convey this information? Well, it shouldn't just come miraculously in a dream. I ended up cut the scene from my novel because it slowed the story to a bloodless crawl. And the scene before and the scene after had nothing to do with the dream. Cutting it was simple; there were no ripple effects. And that’s what dreams do to your story; they leave no ripple. They are anti-matter, anti-scenes that nobody needs.

Want more? Read The Guardian’s interviews of authors that give their own list of rules.
For a different view, here’s a seasoned reader’s list of rules for writers, in case they care to consider their audience while they write.
What rules have you adopted? What helps you get through your writing day?

Lost in the Details

I've spent two days writing a scene where one of my characters gets in a freight elevator and rides it up to her loft. Two days. Sometimes the descriptions that encompass small details, everyday actions, take the longest time to render. I might spend twenty minutes writing a paragraph that sums up the vagaries of the human condition. But what about when a character checks her email? Or makes a phone call? Or cooks dinner? These everyday details throw me. How do you describe the commonplace without sounding rote? Or harder still, how do you make these actions convey meaning specific to the character?

I look to other writers to guide me. The action in Stewart O'Nan's novella, Last Night at the Lobster, takes place over one day and (last) night. Because it's a short novel, about the closing of a franchise restaurant and how that affects the employees, there's no room for florid description or long, overheated sentences. Many times I was struck at how O'Nan concisely moved his main character, the restaurant manager, Manny, from point A to B:

"Manny strides to the far end of the bar, dips his hip at the corner, then squares, stutter-steps and shoulders through the swinging door." It's not just movement, it conveys something about the character. Manny's done this a million times before, it's rote to him, but O'Nan makes it feel fresh. It's worth quoting the next line: "It should be no surprise that his body has memorized the geometry of the Lobster, but today everything seems alien and remarkable, precious, being almost lost." We get the memorization part, and it's alien because the place closes for good at the end of the night, making the whole day take on a new quality.

How do characters act when they fight? What is it about their postures and gestures that suggest their inner works? In Richard Yates' modern-novel template Revolutionary Road, Frank and April Wheeler are having another fight. Frank has stopped the car at the side of the road at night, and both are out. April won't tell Frank why she's mad at him. In reaction: "His arms flapped and fell; then, as the sound and the lights of an approaching car came up behind them, he put one hand in his pocket and assumed a conversational slouch for the sake of appearances." Frank feels powerless to understand April's anger (flapping falling arms) and even in the dark feels compelled to keep up appearances.

Richard Russo, a master of small town moments, writes well of cooks and the workings of restaurants and diners. In his first novel, Mohawk, Russo frames some of the story about the denizens of the town of Mohawk, New York at the Mohawk Grill. It's the start of the novel, and Harry, who runs the Grill, is starting his daily ritual, as Wild Bill looks on. "'Hungry?' Harry says. Wild Bill nods, and studies the grill, which is sputtering butter. Harry lifts a large bag of link sausages and tosses several dozen on the grill, covering its entire surface, then separates them with the edge of his spatula, arranging them in impressive phalanxes...(Wild Bill) watches hypnotized as the links spit and jump." It's a nice touch to see an everyday activity through the eyes of the one person in town who appreciates it. We've all seen the spit and jump of cooking food. It's this attention to detail throughout Russo's writing that makes you feel like you're looking through a door propped open by the only person who knows how.

What about recreating a specific historic moment? In Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin, he configures the small human and mechanical gestures of lower Manhattan on the morning in the early 70s' when Philippe Petit walked between the Twin Towers: "Around the watchers, the city still made its everyday noises: Car horns. Garbage trucks. Ferry whistles. The thrum of the subway. The M22 bus pulled in against the sidewalk, braked, sighed down into a pothole. A flying chocolate wrapper touched against a fire hydrant. Taxi doors slammed. Bits of trash sparred in the darkest reaches of the alleyways. Sneakers found their sweetspots. The leather of briefcases rubbed against trouserlegs. A few umbrella tips clinked against the pavement. Revolving doors pushed quarters of conversation out into the street." Without following one character or sticking to one event, McCann places the reader at a real moment in time with a specificity of place.

Sometimes these descriptions are what genre writers do best; economically flicking through a character's movements to get them to the next scene of action or romance or suspense. Take this nugget early on in Dashiell Hammett's The Dain Curse, as we first meet the Continental Op, looking for evidence in a front yard: "I put (the diamond) in my pocket and began searching the lawn as closely as I could without going at it on all fours." He doesn't have time or inclination to crawl around, but needs to get close enough to rut around the grass just the same.

So, what about my character taking the elevator? I can take a lesson from Frank Wheeler, on his way up to his dreary job: "...he obeyed the pointed finger of the elevator starter without quite being aware of it, nor did he notice which of the six elevator operators it was who sleepily made him welcome...Pressed well back in the polite bondage of the car, he heard the sliding door clamp shut and the safety gate go rattling after it, and as the car began to rise he was surrounded by the dissonant conversation of his colleagues."

It's not about showing what a character does, it's showing how she does it.

Creative Writing 101: Kill the Cliché

Much of my time writing is spent eradicating clichés in my prose. This is the core of good writing, the non-cliché. Clichés suck the life out of your writing, filling your sentences and paragraphs, and eventually entire manuscripts, with useless words.

Why the vitriol? Why not? I’ve read far too many published novels, articles, and memoirs filled with vast stretches of nothingness, empty calories of words that act as stand-ins for actual writing. Every time I read a cliché I get angry. Especially when it’s in my own work: I should know better. I have to.

What is a cliché?

Clichés are boilerplate phrases; overused terms and maxims that have become part of popular vernacular. Sayings that you use and hear everyday. Familiar shorthand born of laziness. Clichés are an easy out: why write what you really mean when there are stand-in words that resemble the same thing without you having to personally commit to them? There’s no emotional outcome or repercussions for the reader because you didn't give them anything real. It’s nothing personal because it doesn’t mean anything to begin with. Plug and play. Live and learn.

Clichés work in the real world because that’s the way people talk. Dialogue in prose is allowed to be rife with clichés, as long as the narrative drive of the story or novel does not rely on cliché, sentence to sentence.

Let’s take a look at a cliché, something I read in a book just today, in a mystery/police procedural (a genre I don’t usually read, but I’m reviewing it for this blog). “He was lying of course, it was written all over him.” Can you spot the cliché? The overused term, the shorthand for what the author really meant to say? Sure, it’s “…it was written all over him.” We’ve all heard this a thousand times. We’ve said these words in this order. We’ve heard it on TV and in movies. Why is this a cliché? Because it doesn’t say what the author intended. It wasn’t actually written all over him. If it were, it would be on his forehead, and down his arm, and across his stomach. What was the author thinking? He wasn’t. He dropped it in there as a placeholder, and never bothered to rewrite it.

Why is this a bad thing?

“…it was written all over him,” is a bad way of writing because it’s lazy. Instead of describing what is actually happening to the character, the author is plugging in generalities that he hopes the reader will reflect her own feelings onto. “…it was written all over him,…Oh, dude. That means this guy couldn’t hide a thing, he spilled the beans, he was an open book.” Really? Well what the hell does that mean? Generalities are prose death. Writers had better write what they mean, or it won’t mean a thing. Limp words, fake motivations, obvious emotions, ending in a whole lot of nothing.

Instead of writing the words “…it was written all over him,” what words should the author have used? Good question. When I use cliché placeholders, I anticipate taking out the cliché when I revise the work. Meaning, during the first draft I come up with the feeling, the emotion at the moment, even though I may not know what words to use to convey the feeling. Later, I’ll come back with clinical, objective eyes, and cut these words down to what is really happening. Slice it to the bone. Hopefully I will evince the true emotional complexity of the characters in the scene without falling back on cliché.

Let’s take another look: “He was lying of course, I could tell by the way he blinked as he answered my questions, rubbing his arms red.” I have no idea if this is how you tell if somebody is lying. But, in the fictive world of this detective, it is how I’ve chosen to convey lying. Why wouldn’t the author take the extra time and word count to describe this? Because the author is lazy. Or he is writing on a deadline, has already spent his advance, and doesn’t have time to make his writing as good as it should be.

When a cliché is okay to use

Normal people talk in clichés. Your characters are more than welcome to talk in clichés. That’s, well, normal. Clichés in internal monologue are okay too, but don’t overdo it. In general, cut them all out.

Sometimes clichés are borderline. How about, “She burst into tears.” Is this a cliché? Should you let this stand or rewrite it? Well, that’s a tough call. I might let it stand. People do spontaneously cry. The downside of trying to eradicate all form of cliché is overwriting, which is just as bad or worse. How do we rewrite the above sentence? “Suddenly her eyes watered, and she forced out a shriek as her body rhythmically convulsed to the waves of tears she seemingly had no control over.” Well, aside from the mortal sin of using suddenly, it’s not successful on most levels. A time waster for all involved. The writer probably took way too long to come up with alternate ways of saying, “She burst into tears.” And the reader; well, if she hasn’t put your book down already, is giving it some deep consideration after this.

Time, the cliché’s biggest enemy

Unsure if you write in clichés? What kind of books do you read? Genre fiction writers tend to use more clichés. Are they bad writers? Difficult to tell. It’s hard to write a good book when you have to deliver one book every year or two. When a manuscript is tucked away in a drawer for a few months or a year instead of getting sent directly to an editor after a few drafts, it has time to gestate. And so does the writer.

Time away from a story gives you a distance that allows you to come back and look at writing with a clinical eye. You forget the emotions you experienced when you originally put your words to paper. You can see more clearly when plot, dialogue, and other devices aren’t working. The sentiment you were working hard for is gone, and you can see plainly what works and what doesn’t. Dialogue that you knew was meaningful yet realistic now comes across as hackneyed, pointless. Your writing will be truer, higher quality, when you take more time to write it.

Clichés are afraid of time. Clichés want you to finish your book in six months and send it off with minimal revision. That way you are more apt to stick with the generalities that you devised the first time around. But, when you spend more time revising, you can eventually wash out most clichés, staying true to your story.

What Do I Mean By True?

All good writers are honest. Clichés are dishonest. Have I gotten my point across? Still lost? Still pissed off at me for insulting you or at yourself for recognizing how often you use them? Think of it this way: clichés represent the worst form of writing because they rob the reader of a true reading experience. It’s a Big Mac instead of filet mignon. It’s all gristle, nothing tasty. It’s artificial sweetener, not pure sugar.

It’s describing a character as being “gorgeous,” and having all the other characters agree, without describing this perfect creature. What makes somebody gorgeous? One man’s gorgeous is another’s meh. Say what you mean. Describe how this woman is attractive to the narrator. “When she smiled, dimples danced, and her eyes crinkled to happy almond shapes. Her laugh was guttural, real, and just for me. She curled her hair around her finger, at once nervous and anticipatory.” I don’t know, you take it from here.

But you get the picture. Take your time, write what you mean. Your future readers will thank you for it.