elmore leonard's 10 rules of writing (2001)

his NYT piece from july 2001. the one about easing off the adverbs and especially the hooptedoodle

Never open a book with the weather.

Avoid prologues.

Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.

"said" is invisible, that's the actual argument. anything fancier is you doing a magic trick nobody asked for

Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said."

Keep your exclamation points under control!

the actual number he gives is two or three per hundred thousand words of prose. do the math on how many books blow past that

Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."

Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

he means it, patois written out on the page ages faster than almost anything else in a book

Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

Same for places and things.

8 and 9 are really the same rule: readers skip description, so trust them and get back to the story

Leave out the parts readers tend to skip.

his most important rule, sums up the other nine: if it sounds like writing, he rewrites it (check the attribution, often misquoted)

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