Break Elmore’s Rules by Matt Rees
Elmore Leonard has 10 rules for writing. They don’t cover most of the important points of writing. They could really be called: Ten Rules for Writing That Isn’t So Bad, Even if You’re Not Much of Writer.
Still the rules have been turned into a book and are quoted with something a little more mystical than simple reverence by crime writers when I go to crime conferences.
Some of the rules are pretty silly. No adverbs? Well, if you’re a crappy writer who dumps adverbs all over the place, then you ought to get rid of adverbs. But someone who writes well ought to be able to use all the tools of language. Would you tell a great composer not to write in B minor? Or not to use C sharp?
When I mentioned this on stage with a couple of other writers earlier this year (just after the pro-Elmore symphony had been sounded) I registered a degree of hostility on the part of at least one of the others on the panel rather akin to my having told a bunch of Orthodox Jews that they ought to expand their palate to include pork.
When Elmore goes deeper into his rules, he usually says something like “Don’t do X unless you’re Margaret Atwood [or some other writer], who can do it without sounding like shit.” In other words, if you’re a good writer, don’t follow Elmore’s rules for writing.
But what about breaking them all at once? The National Post has a competition running in which it asks readers to write a single sentence that breaks all Elmore’s rules.
It’s a little tricky, because some of Elmore’s rules (eg. Avoid prologues) aren’t really sentence-specific. But here’s my attempt:
Rain threatened suddenly, as it had for days and would go on doing, over the art-deco red-brick main street with its hardware store, candy store, video store and tattoo parlor, no matter how much the delicately featured red-headed woman with the up-turned nose opined tartly that the weather “would turn out just ticketty-boo, bejasus!” while she was on a visit from Ireland to complete her studies in a subject irrelevant to the book or her role in it.
I think that also proves that Elmore’s rules aren’t rules for good writing. They’re just rules to avoid being totally crap. Which is worthwhile…he said, hopefully.
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The wait for a successor to Amadeus is over. MOZART’S LAST ARIA by Matt Rees www.mattrees.net
www.themanoftwistsandturns.com/
January 26th, 2012 at 10:04 am
You are right, Matt. There is no one-size fits all set of rules. Writing novels attracts the rule-makers. Their promise to tame the unruly beast of imagination by turning the writer into a student with a school book of grammar exercises. Letter perfect, clinical perfect prose are to be admired. But lifeless story telling is the cold death that no grammar rules can breathe life into. If the narrative is powerful, insightful, and original the road through that forest can break all kinds of formal rules of construction and the reader could care less.
January 26th, 2012 at 3:56 pm
So let’s hear your entry in the National Post competition, CGM. After all, an exercise in writing badly can remind you what good writing might be…
January 26th, 2012 at 4:04 pm
I always considered writing rules more as guidelines, to be followed generally, but not always. Sometimes, a piece can break these guidelines and still feel “right.” It all depends on the context, the characters involved, and the talent of the writer.