Most fiction writers want readers to get so captivated while reading a story that they forget someone wrote it. If invisibility is the effect you want, you might want to read these eleven rules of Elmore Leonard–author of 45 novels–from 20 years ago.*
Rule 1: Don’t open a passage with a weather report. People read novels to learn about people, not the weather.
Rule 2: No prologues. Prologues usually contain backstory which can be added later as the story unfolds.
Rule 3: Use “said”—nothing else—when a character speaks. “Said” is almost invisible, but any other word—asserted, warned—distracts the reader from the action to the author.
Rule 4: Don’t use adverbs to describe “said.” Adverbs distract from the story action and remind the reader that an author wrote this story.
Rule 5: Limit exclamations marks to almost zero.
Rule 6: Don’t use “suddenly.” If you say, for example, “Suddenly, he fell,” the reader knows something is about to happen before the story’s character does.
Rule 7: Rarely use regional dialect. That requires apostrophes and weird spellings. Once you start, it’s hard to stop. And hard to read.
Rule 8: Keep descriptions of characters brief. Let their dialog conjure images in the reader’s mind.
Rule 9: Keep descriptions of places and things brief. Descriptions of anything slow down or even stop the forward action of a story.
Rule 10: Skip long paragraphs without dialog. Readers do.
Rule 11: Don’t use proper diction if it sounds unnatural, or if it slows down the action.
*These rules are paraphrased from the July 16, 2001, edition of The New York Times, Section E, page 1. I recommend you read Leonard’s original words. They’re a hoot.
English Writing Teacher 