text: Elmore Leonard: 10 Rules Of Writing - Farnam Street
  Writing|Reading Time: 4 minutes
  Elmore Leonard, crime-fiction writer, died on August 20th at the age of 87.
  In July 2001, Leonard wrote a short piece for The New York Times on his ten rules for writing that was eventually adapted into a book: Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing.
  His preface to the list is worth noting.
  They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck's "Sweet Thursday," but it's O.K. because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: "I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. . . . figure out what the guy's thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That's nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don't have to read it. I don't want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story."
  (↬ @kathrynschulz, JA, and Detroit Free Press.)
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