Tag Archive for the writing process

Elmore Leonard’s Rules for Writing

October 13, 2008 / / No comments

As part of a series called “Writers on Writing,” published in The New York Times, Elmore Leonard penned a thought-provoking article that first saw print on July 16, 2001. Every once in a while I remember that it exists and go back to reread Leonard’s observations.

I’m sympathetic to Elmore Leonard’s basic vision. I mean to say, I think I could hang out with the guy. When he talks about writing, I tend to nod my head. Grateful, reaffirmed, inspired. He explains in the opening paragraph, “These are rules I’ve picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I’m writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what’s taking place in the story.”

A long time ago I decided that ego was the enemy of good writing. Thing is, that’s a tough dragon to slay. These days, I most admire writers who get out of the way (another way of saying, “remain invisible”) — who strive to eliminate any trace of “look at me, I’m so darned clever!” from their writing. (That tends to be the exact opposite of what we are taught to appreciate in college English courses, so most of my adult writing life has been about trying to unlearn aspects of my college education.)

Regarding Leonard: I like his everyday guyness, his plainspeak, his pragmatism, his unpretentiousness. Unfortunately, and oddly, I’ve never really gotten into his books. Maybe I’ve tried the wrong ones, or not tried hard enough. The thing is, I want to like his books more than I actually do. It may be worth noting that so many of his books have been made into movies precisely because he is such a “show, don’t tell” styled writer. Or maybe it’s because he’s okay with sex and violence.

Though I encourage readers to go back to the full article (linked above), I’ll only post the ten rules along with an indispensable additional comment or two from Leonard (in the article, he provides more background on each rule). Enjoy. And remember, when it comes to writing, there are no rules. But guidelines can be instructive.

1. Never open a book with weather.

2. Avoid prologues

3. Never use a verb other than ”said” to carry dialogue.

Writes Leonard: “The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in.”

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb ”said” . . .

Says Leonard: “To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin.” For what it’s worth, there are a ton of adverbs used exactly this way in the Harry Potter books.

5. Keep your exclamation points under control.

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.

And here comes my personal favorite:

10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

Leonard comments: “Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he’s writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character’s head, and the reader either knows what the guy’s thinking or doesn’t care. I’ll bet you don’t skip dialogue.

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

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”

I love that phrase, “perpetrating hooptedoodle.”

NOTE: For more posts that touch on the writing process, click on the “writing process” icon on the right sidebar, beneath “CATEGORIES.” I’m trying to do more of this kind of thing on this blog, in the hopes that it might sell books, urm, be helpful to teachers, or to writers of any age!

ANOTHER NOTE: I lifted that sound, urm, from the legendary graphic novel, The Watchmen (soon to be a major motion picture). A character in there says it a lot, just a variation on “um,” but I like it.

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Category: Greatest Hits, Readings, the writing process / Tags: , , , ,

The Writing Process: Theft (and Tom Chiarella)!

October 8, 2008 / / No comments

I was reading an article in Esquire this morning, “How to Be a Sweet-Talker” by Tom Chiarella. He’s a fine writer and I’ve read his work for several years. I came across this sentence:

I spent the great flood lying in front of my television like a bag of dirty clothes, listening to the rain, watching Runaway Train on DVD.

I was struck by that image — like a bag of dirty clothes. I was impressed, envious. That was good writing, a perfect image, you can see him there, lazing on the couch. And I thought: I might steal that line someday. No, not exactly, not word for word. I thought of Bystander (Feiwel and Friends, Fall, 2009), a manuscript that I had been discussing last night with my editor, Liz. There’s a scene where a boy is sprawled on his bed, deep in thought. But no, not there. Probably another time, another place, I don’t know when, or even if ever.

If I do end up borrowing that image, I’ll change it out of respect for Mr. Chiarella, and in the service of my character. For starters, I don’t think a kid would come up with that exact image. A pile of dirty clothes maybe? A pile of rags? A bag of bones? I don’t know. It’s entirely possible I won’t ever use it. It’s likely I’ll forget the exact words that Chiarella used. But I suspect the image will remain (especially now that I’ve written about it).

My main point is about reading. All writers admire things in books; we all learn our craft by reading (and, of course, by writing). While that’s true of everyone, there’s a distinction. As an author, someone who appreciates good writing, I read with active sympathy for the writer. I’m aware of the person behind the text, that somebody sat down and wrote this, selected those exact words. I don’t think all readers do that, especially young readers. The emphasis is more often on plot: what happens next, and then what, and then what. But I notice punctuation, the use of a semi-colon, the shape and rhythm of sentences. That’s how you learn. It’s also why I’m such a ridiculously slow reader.

And no, I don’t really think it’s stealing. We are all, as Sir Isaac Newton said, standing on the shoulders of giants and, yes, midgets. (We learn what NOT to do, too.) Everything I’ve ever read goes into the blender and informs the blank, glowing screen of my computer. But maybe what I learned most of all from Tom Chiarella, or re-learned, was to keep trying to make my images fresh, to stay away from sleepy cliches, to reach for something new. And, hey, if anyone wishes to steal a turn of phrase from me, please be my guest. I gladly grant permission. After all, as readers and writers and lovers of the language, we’re all in this together.

Endnote: In writing this, and poking around, I learned that Tom Chiarella has written a book called Writing Dialogue. I immediately ordered it. So at least he’ll get some royalties out of the deal!

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Category: Fun Clips, the writing process / Tags: , , ,

Writing Process: Six Innings

September 18, 2008 / / One comment

I’ve never had a particularly good memory. Most of the details are lost, but essences remain. As a writer, those essential feelings are what feed my books.

However, when it comes to baseball, I do have startlingly vivid recollections. Here’s one of my favorites:

When I was little, I used to throw a rubber Spalding ball against the back of my house for hours at a time. I filled notebooks with imaginary lineups and kept score. I pitched against all the legends of the game, past and present. One week my grandparents came to watch over the horde (remember, I was the youngest of seven) while my parents were away. Now let it be known that Grandpa needed his afternoon naps. But whap, whap, whap, there was little Jimmy throwing that ball all day long.

Instead of getting mad, or forbidding me from doing what I loved, Grandpa went out and shocked me by buying a brand-new pitchback. It was the most beautiful, unexpected gift I ever received. Sploing, sploing, sploing — now I hurled hard baseballs, real baseballs, almost soundlessly against the net. While Grandpa napped contentedly.

Like many boys, I played out fictional games in my imagination. And I talked to myself in a half-whispered mumble, announcing the action: “Jerry Koosman into the windup . . . it’s a hard smash back to the box . . . Koosman snares the line drive . . . inning over . . . the Mets win!”

Reflecting back, I realize those were the first stories I ever told, the beginnings of my life as a writer, working through a fictional narrative, juggling a variety of characters, with the game itself neatly providing its own beginning, middle, and end.

In Six Innings, I gave that experience to a minor character, Max Young, who finds himself on the mound during a crucial spot in the 6th inning:

The relief pitcher, Max Young, is not nervous. He has been in spots like this hundreds of times before . . . with one important difference. It was never the real thing.

For years, Max stepped into his backyard, walked off the proper distance from his pitchback, and entered the limitless realm of his imagination. He played fantasy games in his very own field of dreams. And all the while, Max talked to himself, taking on the voice of the radio sportscaster. Somehow the words made it real. In a barely audible whisper he’d murmur: “Leading off for the Legends team, it’s Tyrus Raymond Cobb. The Georgia Peach . . . .“

I’m convinced that hundreds of thousands of boys have done and still do the same thing. I see them on driveways everywhere, bouncing a basketball, looking up at the net, their lips moving, the hushed words bringing a story to life.

Later in the book, with everything on the line, there’s Max again, with a touch more poetry:

One last time, Max is alone in his daydreams, throwing against an imaginary hitter in a game of his own invention. He is the author and the instrument, the pitcher and the ball, the beginning and the end.

Max rocks back into his windup, he drives forward, the ball leaves his fingertips, comes in high and hard and true.

Angel Tatis hits nothing but air. Swing and a miss.

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Category: Greatest Hits, Six Innings, the writing process / Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Backstory: A Sense of Smell

September 16, 2008 / / No comments

Like most people, I have a nose. But mine doesn’t seem to work very well. Smells don’t really register with me on a conscious level. I mean, sure, I get the big unavoidable ones, like fresh brownies in the kitchen or dirty diapers on a toddler. But I’m not a guy who is going to smell a glass of wine or a bowl of soup; I just throw that stuff down the gullet and move on. I’m sure that on an unconscious level I respond to many smells. Who knows, on some animal level I’ve probably formed personal likes and dislikes, felt attracted or repelled, based on odors — not that I’d know it.

Good writers, I think, strive to engage all the senses in their writing. For me, when it comes to the sense of smell, that means work. It doesn’t come naturally. When I was writing from Trey Cooper’s point of view (POV) in Along Came Spider, I knew that I was writing about a sensitive kid. A boy who smells things. The book loosely alternates POV between Trey and Spider Stevens. In Trey’s chapters, I made an effort to bring the sense of smell into the descriptive passages. Part of his affection for crayons comes from that comforting odor, that sweet olfactory sensation, entangled in childhood memory, the smell working on him on some deep level. Crayons feel safe. Therefore in this book, when Trey encounters people, smell is often part of the description.

Of the classroom aide, Mrs. Mowatt: “She was large and overflowing and smelled of cocoa butter.”

Of Ryan Donovan: “Ryan was loud and his face was too near and his staring eyes hurt and his mouth smelled like garlic.”

On the night sky: “The air was cool and smelled of pine and moved like a panther from rock to rock.” And: “The smell of decayed leaves and the corpses of flowers filled his nostrils.”

On the library: “Trey glanced at the shelves that lined the walls, the new books, the smooth polished tabletops that smelled of Lemon Pledge, the chairs tucked in and neatly arranged.”

And so on. It was just a little thing I did to build character, nothing major, one attribute that I gave him which seemed consistent with his condition. He smelled things . . . even if I didn’t.

By the way, my daughter Maggie has a heightened sense of smell. She’s always commenting on various odors (some of which her father carries, alas, and Maggie frowns upon — she hates peanut butter breath). We were in the car the other day; I was driving Maggie and a friend to gymnastics. The subject of the mall came up. Maggie stated that she did not like the mall. Her friend, Katie, an enthusiastic shopper, was surprised: “Why not?”

“I don’t like the way it smells,” Maggie said. “It’s all . . . buttery.”

Funny, right? But then you think of those pretzel shops that are everywhere, and the movie theaters with buckets of popcorn drenched in a yellow liquid vaguely butter-ish something, and the overall pungent queasy smell that pervades, and realize that Maggie is absolutely right.

The nose knows!

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Category: Along Came Spider, the writing process / Tags: , , , , , ,

More Backstory: Writing Spider

September 9, 2008 / / One comment

Teachers often ask about “the writing process.” That’s an uncomfortable thing for me, since it seems fertile ground for pretentiousness. But to answer the question honestly, “my” writing process is the only one I can speak about with any author/ity. I can’t really talk about IT without dragging MYSELF into it. So apologies in advance if I come off as just another self-absorbed, belly-gazing ninny. I’m not, really. Honest. I mean it!

So in the interest of discussing “the” writing process, I have to talk about my own. When I began Along Came Spider, I started by sitting in on a fifth-grade classroom (previously discussed here). At one point, after a few months, I tried a different classroom of fourth-graders taught by Mary Martin at Glenmont Elementary. Now one of the things I love to do is look at everything hanging on the walls. I copy a lot of it down, word for word. One of the posters I found, evidently penned (markered?) by Mary, was this:

CREATING SOME SMILES

Say Something Nice to Someone

You look nice * Hello! * Thanks for your help * Way to go! * Nice day, isn’t it? * A-OK * Bravo! * Well done * You are awesome * Keep up the good work * Remarkable * You rock * I know you can do it * How are you? * Super * You’re the best * Cool!

Somewhere along the line I combined that poster with a specific character and a specific event. The character was Trey Cooper, a boy who struggled with social cues. I imagined what he might make of such a poster, how he might interpret it, find it helpful, or possibly confusing.

Then I remembered a moment in Chris Porter’s classroom, something I had scribbled about in my notebook weeks previously. This is exactly what I wrote on 2/2/07 while in that classroom, here in it’s crude form, lifted from a spiral notebook:

Here’s Ms. Porter getting the class’s attention for a social studies lesson. She’s explaining something when — whirrrrr — you can see the eyes spin in her head like the wheels of a slot machine. She stops and looks, there’s Lee , sharpening a pencil. Ms. Porter had a rule about that, and it made her crazy when it was broken. She gave her students a lot of freedom — they were fifth-graders after all, the crowned kings and queens of Erstwhile Elementary, and, in turn, Ms. Porter expected her students to behave maturely, to act further along the evolutionary spectrum than the chimpanzees they sometimes resembled.

Of course, none of that survived even the first draft of the book — except for the basic dynamic of the scene. Here’s how that scene actually concludes in the final version, Chapter Two, pp. 14-15. Note that I moved the point-of-view closer to the character (now named Trey, not Lee), and away from the adult teacher’s perspective:

Mrs. Wine was looking intently at him, hands on her hips, lips tight, like she was sucking on a Sour Patch Kid. The tips of her ears had gone bright red. Three rhyming words — hips, lips, and tips — all signaled Mrs. Wine’s unhappiness. Trey was getting better at figuring these things out. Hips, lips, tips. Hips, lips, tips.

“Are you finished?” she asked.

Trey thought for a moment, considering Mrs. Wine’s question. He decided that it was a trick question, one that he had better not answer (since, of course — obviously! — he was not finished, nowhere close, for he still had seven pencils to go). At the same time, she expected a response of some kind. Mrs. Wine stood looking at him, that sour expression still on her face, waiting for something.

Thinking of the poster, Trey blurted, “A-OK!”

“Excuse me?”

“Super!” Trey exclaimed, beaming.

“Please take your seat, Trey. We’ll discuss this later.”

“Mrs. Wine,” Trey answered, “you are awesome . . . and you rock!”

Strange, Trey thought as he made his way back to his seat. Mrs. Wine didn’t smile back.

Something must be wrong with that poster.

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Category: Along Came Spider, the writing process / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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