WRITERS ON WRITING;
Easy on the Adverbs,
Exclamation Points and
Especially Hooptedoodle
By ELMORE LEONARD
(October 11, 1925 – August 20, 2013)
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. If you have a facility for
language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you,
invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules.
Still, you might look them over.
1. Never open a book with weather.
If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a
character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long.
The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are
exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to
describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather
reporting you want.
2. Avoid prologues.
They can be annoying, especially a prologue
following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are
ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and
you can drop it in anywhere you want.
There is a prologue in John Steinbeck's ''Sweet
Thursday,'' but it's O.K. because a character in the book makes the
point of what my rules are all about. 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. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way
he talks. . . . figure out what the guy's thinking from what he says. I
like some description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a
book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some
pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That's nice. But
I wish it was set aside so I don't have to read it. I don't want
hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.''
3. Never use a verb other than ''said'' to carry dialogue.
The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the
verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive
than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy
ending a line of dialogue with ''she asseverated,'' and had to stop
reading to get the dictionary.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb ''said'' . . .
. . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this
way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing
himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the
rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how
she used to write historical romances ''full of rape and adverbs.''
5. Keep your exclamation points under control.
You are allowed no more than two or three per
100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers
the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.
6. Never use the words ''suddenly'' or ''all hell broke loose.''
This rule doesn't require an explanation. I have
noticed that writers who use ''suddenly'' tend to exercise less control
in the application of exclamation points.
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
Once you start spelling words in dialogue
phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won't be able to
stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices
in her book of short stories ''Close Range.''
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway's
''Hills Like White Elephants'' what do the ''American 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, and
yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not
one adverb in sight.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
Unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes
with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even
if you're good at it, you don't want descriptions that bring the
action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.
And finally:
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
A rule that came to mind in 1983. 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.
Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to
go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the
sound and rhythm of the narrative. It's my attempt to remain invisible,
not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. (Joseph
Conrad said something about words getting in the way of what you want to
say.)
If I write in scenes and always from the point of
view of a particular character -- the one whose view best brings the
scene to life -- I'm able to concentrate on the voices of the characters
telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and
what's going on, and I'm nowhere in sight.
What Steinbeck did in ''Sweet Thursday'' was title
his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover.
''Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts'' is one, ''Lousy Wednesday''
another. The third chapter is titled ''Hooptedoodle 1'' and the 38th
chapter ''Hooptedoodle 2'' as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is
saying: ''Here's where you'll see me taking flights of fancy with my
writing, and it won't get in the way of the story. Skip them if you
want.''
''Sweet Thursday'' came out in 1954, when I was just
beginning to be published, and I've never forgotten that prologue.
Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word.
