Elmore Leonard Rules! But Elmore Leonard's Rules...?

I don't like doling out writing advice. Oh, I do it from time to time. But it's something I'd really rather avoid. Partially, that's out of modesty. As many of you no doubt know already, I am the most wonderfully humble man in the entire world. BOW DOWN, MORTALS, AND WORSHIP MY AWESOME HUMILITY!!!

Also -- and I probably shouldn't admit this -- I'm not a big believer in writing advice from anybody. As that noted literary thinker James T. Kirk once said, "We learn by doing." Taking a class isn't going to teach you how to write. Reading a book isn't going to teach you how to write. Writing and writing and writing is going to teach you how to write. (This is something I shouldn't admit because it might come back to haunt me if I ever try to get a gig teaching writing. Note to future self: Delete this blog post before sending your resume to that community college.)

I didn't become the writer I am today -- the nearly broke but, I like to think, rather skilled one -- because of a subscription to Writer's Digest, just as Tiger Woods didn't master golf by reading 101 Ways to Hit a Little White Ball Into a Hole by Jack Nicklaus (as told to a rather skilled but nearly broke writer). No. Tiger Woods got where he is today through practice practice practice. Or he sold his soul to Satan. Either way, it wasn't because someone said, "Try hitting the ball a little...I don't know...harder maybe. It might go farther that way."

So I bring to all writing advice a grain of salt about the size of a watermelon, even when the writer doing the advising is one I respect as much as Elmore Leonard. I see Leonard's "10 Rules of Writing" cited a lot, and there's some real wisdom in it. Of course there would be. When it comes to modern crime fiction, Elmore Leonard is The Man.

But here's the thing: Leonard's list is misnamed. It's not 10 Rules of Writing. It's 10 Rules for Writing Like Elmore Leonard. If all you want to write are Get Shorty pastiches, well, this'll give you a great head start. But if you have any interest in your own voice as a writer -- indeed, having any sort of voice at all -- keep in mind that Leonard's commandments weren't written in stone by the finger of God. They were banged out on a Smith Corona by a dude in Michigan. Big difference.

I got to thinking about all this recently because I've been reading the most insanely entertaining book I've encountered in years -- decades even -- and it's constantly making what some gurus would tell you is a rookie mistake. The point of view bounces from character to character with no particular rhyme or reason. One minute we're in one guy's head, the next we're in another's, a paragraph later we're in yet another's. The author doesn't start a new chapter to indicate the switch and he doesn't use section breaks, either. He just jumps to a new perspective whenever the heck he feels like it.

This is a no-no grande -- a technique that would simply be labeled "incompetence" if you or I tried it. And it works beautifully. The book also breaks some of Elmore Leonard's Rules for Writing Like Elmore Leonard and is none the worse for it. The only rules the author followed were My Rules for Writing Like Me.

Those are the rules I follow, too. I figured out what they were by breaking them, a lot, and realizing that what I'd produced wasn't good. I won't bother mentioning what my rules are, because they're my rules. I need Steve Hockensmith's Rules for Writing Like Steve Hockensmith, but nobody else does. If you want to be a good writer, you need Your Rules for You.

Oh, and that author who can't keep his POVs straight? He's Larry McMurtry, and the novel in question is a little something called Lonesome Dove. It won a Pulitzer Prize. It also breaks one of my biggest rules when it comes to books: For god's sake, don't be over 500 pages long. Lonesome Dove is more than 1,000 pages -- and I'm enjoying each and every one.

Sometimes it pays to break your own rules, too.

Comments

[Owen Garratt]

I agree with you...and yet Elmore's cautions against exclamation points seems spot on! (Whoops)

[Eric Beetner]

Well said, sir. I've often felt arbitrary rules have kept me from sometimes writing in my own "voice" or at least, I've had editors correct the voice right out of me. Sure, some things I'm fond of aren't technically correct in all cases, but as you said, sometimes when the story is right and you're into a book, you forget Writing Class 101 and go with an author into the story.

[Jack Getze]

Great post. Thanks for cutting the competition. This advice should keep any newbie writers who see it from producing anything publishable. Forget about point of view, you people!

[Sally Carpenter]

One rule that I wished cozy writers would follow is this: don't make your heroine a stupid, clumsy dolt who bumbles around until the murderer holds her at gunpoint for ten pages in order to explain his scheme and give the police enough time to show up and arrest him.

[Steve]

Leonard's rule against exclamation points is one I agree with, Owen! They're fine in dialogue, but not in the author's voice! I've also been known to use them for comic effect in essays! And replies on my blog, of course!!!

I hear you, Eric. I've gone a few rounds with copy editors who didn't seem to get that "technically correct" isn't always the same thing as "good." There was one who tried to rewrite me every time I started a sentence with "and" or "but." The results were usually horrifying -- and instantly STETed. It reminds me of Winston Churchill's (possibly apocryphal) response when criticized for using a preposition at the end of a sentence: "This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put."

I'm not telling people to write like McMurtry did in Lonesome Dove, Jack. I'm just pointing out how one writer -- a masterful one -- broke a rule and still managed to produce something wonderful. Most of us aren't masters, of course, so coloring outside the lines can be risky. I'm certainly not going to be shifting POVs all over the place anytime soon. I don't think I could pull if off. But it can't be denied that McMurtry did.

[Steve]

Good rule, Sally. I have a feeling there are writers who only avoid breaking that one on a technicality.

"Well, my villain only took *eight* pages to explain his evil plan, so this doesn't apply to me."

[bar1scorpio]

Er, I made the mistake of checking out the audiobook of Telegraph Days. Wow, what a disappointment that was.

[bar1scorpio]

Yeah, don't agree with these "Rules" at all. You take out half the potential for wit & double entendre with those first five rules alone.

Detailed descriptions in people, places & things is a good portion of Sci-Fi and Fantasy writing, as well. In those genres, you're required to take a person to another world. By necessity, you have to give your reader as much context as possible to structure the foreign world they're walking into.

Forms of dialect can also be important for characterization.

[Steve]

Leonard would probably say that wit and double entendre shouldn't be in your book anyway, unless it's subliminal or in dialogue. He's a proponent of the so-called no-style style that a lot of crime writers subscribe to. I think that's a valid choice, and Leonard certainly gets a lot of mileage out of it. But I don't like the assumption that it's the only legitimate style. Both in my writing and my reading, I tend to prefer stories with a strong, unique voice. Hey -- Kurt Vonnegut is my favorite writer, so obviously I don't mind an authorial presence. Leonard would say the author should always be invisible.

Good point about the special expository challenges in SF and fantasy. I think China Mieville, say, would have a tough time writing what he writes if he had to keep his prose as stripped down and spare as Leonard's. On the other hand, a lot of SF and fantasy writers could probably benefit from a little Leonard. Just imagine what ol' Elmore would have to say about the rampant info dumping you get in so many SF stories?

Too bad about Telegraph Days! I will consider myself forewarned. Not that I'm looking for any new books at the moment. I am a slooooooooow reader, so it's going to take me weeks just to get to the end of Lonesome Dove.

[MacEvoy]

Great post. Totally agree:

http://www.shelfactualization.com/2013/01/what-bugs-me-wednesday-war-on-style.html

[Levi Montgomery]

I've actually toyed for some time with the idea of starting up a wiki (first I have to go figure out how and where to do that) where, for every such "rule" ever posited, there will be a long list of postings showing well-educated, widely read, widely respected professional authors "breaking" that "rule."

Bonus points for wiki postings where Author X breaks Author X's own rule.

[Steve]

"Great post" right back at ya, MacEvoy! Folks -- you should check out how MacEvoy approaches the question of style in modern fiction. It's a great angle. And I agree with the upshot: Too much emphasis is placed on the no-style style (particularly in the crime fiction world, I'd say). There's nothing wrong with having style! I think it's a lot worse to be boring, flat, impersonal or unoriginal.

Great idea for a wiki, Levi! I'd thought about doing just that -- hunting down examples of famous authors breaking writing "rules" -- but...well, I was too lazy. So I'll provide you with an easy-to-find example right here.

NEVER, EVER USE ALL CAPS!!! IT MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A PUTZ!!!

[Daisy]

I believe it was that modern cinema classic, Pirates of the Caribbean, that gave us the line, "They're more like guidelines, really."

Nerd that I am, I prefer to look at it in terms of statistics. That is, if you want to write a 1,000-page book with constantly switching POV, the odds are high that it will suck donkey doots, and vanishingly small (but still non-zero) that it will be Lonesome Dove. So you can go ahead and roll those dice, but you should be aware of your chances, and also that Lonesome Dove has already been published.

My personal favorite rule to break is "no footnotes in fiction," but I don't think Vegas is with me on that one.*

*I tried to find a way to include this as a footnote, but I couldn't think of any. Also, I'm not sure the gambling analogy is really holding up.

[Julia Robb]

Good blog. I put this on facebook. But one caveat; I recently read a well-known author who inserted two pages of a new character's pov, then abandoned that character, never to mention that character again. I had a hard time with that. McMurtry's characters (and their pov's) run through the entire novel.

[Steve]

I like your statistical approach, Daisy. The problem is that some writers won't even know they're stacking the deck against themselves. McMurtry was making an interesting choice, but I'm guessing a lot of other folks who write 1,000-page opuses with 1,001 POV switches don't even realize they're breaking any rules to begin with.

Me, I don't mind the occasional foray into a minor character's head, Julia. My novel Dreadfully Ever After features a chapter from the point of view of a zombie we've never seen before and will never see again, and it's one of my favorite parts of the book. But I can understand why some people would find that jarring. You're right about McMurtry: Whether you love or hate his approach, at least he's consistent!

[Sam]

Leonard jumps around from character to character POV a lot as well. If I remember right, he mentions it in his Rules.

[Steve]

I didn't see anything about POV in Leonard's rules, Sam, but then again I wasn't looking at the full version (which originally appeared as an essay in the New York Times). Here are the rules in list form:

http://www.writingclasses.com/InformationPages/index.php/PageID/304

I don't doubt that Leonard shifts point of view a lot (I haven't read him in a while), but I'd be surprised if he does it the way McMurtry does in Lonesome Dove. The classic approach is to set off a new POV with line breaks or by starting a new chapter. McMurtry just jumps into a new head with no warning, spends a few sentences there, then jumps along to the next when the mood strikes him. You almost never see that done in contemporary genre fiction. I think most editors would just assume you were screwing up....