Quote

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.

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.
Things
Scene
Describing
Unless
Detail
Bring
Scenes
Story
Description
Language
Details
Action
Paint
Standstill
Stories
Flow
Descriptions
Great
Places
Margaret

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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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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.
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To me, a book is a book, an electronic device is not, and love of books was the reason I started writing.
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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.
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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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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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Skip the boring parts.
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If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
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All the information you need can be given in dialogue.
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Bad guys are not bad guys twenty-four hours a day.
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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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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.
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I don’t think writers compete, I think they’re all doing separate things in their own style.
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I still read Hemingway. I still read his short stories because they're so good. He doesn't waste any words.
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Never use the words 'suddenly' or 'all hell broke loose.'
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I do have fun writing, and a long time ago, I told myself, 'You got to have fun at this, or it'll drive you nuts.'
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I'm very much aware in the writing of dialogue, or even in the narrative too, of a rhythm. There has to be a rhythm with it … Interviewers have said, you like jazz, don’t you? Because we can hear it in your writing. And I thought that was a compliment.
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It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to sound like it does.
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