Quote

If you take a few days to write an outline, you're just making up scenes that you think will work, that you think will be interesting. But as you write it, other ideas occur - better ideas that have to do with what you're writing.

Elmore Leonard

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Elmore Leonard
Age: 87 †
Born: 1925
Born: October 11
Died: 2013
Died: August 20
Author
Film Producer
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
New Orleans
Louisiana
Dutch Leonard
Elmore John Leonard Jr.
Write
Outline
Ideas
Outlines
Better
Occur
Take
Scenes
Writing
Scene
Work
Days
Think
Interesting
Thinking
Making

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I focus on characters as individuals with attitudes and write each scene from a particular character's point of view. That way, even narrative passages take on the character's sound. I don't want the reader to be aware of me, writing.
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I don't want the reader to be aware of me as the writer.
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I want the reader to know what's going on. So there's never a mystery in my books.
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My purpose is to entertain and please myself. I feel that if I am entertained, then there will be enough other readers who will be entertained, too.
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At the time I begin writing a novel, the last thing I want to do is follow a plot outline. To know too much at the start takes the pleasure out of discovering what the book is about.
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It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to sound like it does.
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Don't worry about what your mother thinks of your language.
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There's nothing like work to take your mind off your worries.
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I won't read a book that starts with a description of the weather. I don't read books over 300 pages, though I'll make an exception for Don Delillo.
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Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
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Everyone has his own sound. I'm not going to presume how to tell anybody how to write.
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Skip the boring parts.
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Bad guys are not bad guys twenty-four hours a day.
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My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: when you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.
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I don't judge in my books. I don't have to have the antagonist get shot or the protagonist win. It's just how it comes out. I'm just telling a story.
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What do you tell a man with two black eyes? Nothing, he's already been told twice.
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Don't go into great detail describing places and things, unless you're ­Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language. You don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.
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A man can be in two different places and he will be two different men. Maybe if you think of more places he will be more men, but two is enough for now.
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There are cities that get by on their good looks, offer climate and scenery, views of mountains or oceans, rockbound or with palm trees. And there are cities like Detroit that have to work for a living.
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Not dreams but night changes, not destiny but path changes, always keep your hopes alive, luck may or may not change, but time definitely chages.
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