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.
My most important rule is one that sums up the 10. If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
And just out of interest - here is a dream job if ever there was one -
Elmore Leonard's Legman.
1 comment:
I agree with all these rules except maybe the one about prologues. The best fantasy novels I've read have had great prologues which have really built up the anticipation factor. But I guess it depends on the length of the prologue. Ten pages is great, but I've read prologues that were over fifty pages long (Robert Jordan) and I was left thinking, "Let's get to the story already." When I re-read Robert Jordan 'The Wheel of Time' series I actually skipped all the prologues (there's eleven books in the series).
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