Showing posts with label Elmore Leonard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elmore Leonard. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Don't "Breathe" a Word :: The Perils of Lazy Dialogue

There are a half-hundred words that you can use when you're writing dialogue to describe how words were said.  Lines of dialogue can be shouted, screamed, whispered, thundered, blurted, whined, exulted, cried, clarified, called, uttered, ejaculated, exclaimed, declared, denied, crowed, and breathed.

Don't ever use any of them.  They're lazy and, more importantly,  they sound like writing.

To explain, I'll refer you back to this post about Elmore Leonard's iconic list of 10 rules for effective fiction writing.  I'd summarize the Leonard's list (and my own feelings on the subject) by saying "Don't be a lazy writer or assume you have a lazy reader."  

Leonard sums them up by saying "If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it." Which amounts to the same thing, really.

Rule number three on Leonard's list is "Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue".  Personally, I double the lexicon of acceptability by including "asked".  Just don't "breathe" a word. Say it.  Just say it... and then don't use an adverb to modify it (which is rule #4).

Why all the hate?

Because the word "said" is descriptive.  All the rest are prescriptive.

A descriptive word "said" or "asked" tells us what happened.  A prescriptive word like "breathed" or "exulted" or any of the rest tells us how to read the sentence that we just finished.  That's important: prescriptive words come at the end of sentences.  So if your reader obeys you, they have to go back and reread.  Talk about breaking the flow of the story.

Put another way, they're stage directions, and if you want to write stage directions, write a play.

The laziest thing a writer can do is tell the reader everything. The real work of writing is to decide what to leave out, and the real work of writing dialogue is crafting sentences that carry themselves, free of the need for phrases like "he responded snarkily" or "she shouted angrily". If you want a snarky, or shouty tone, use snarky, shouty sentences.
 

First of all, unless you overuse them., the exclamation point should tell your reader the character is shouting and the word choice and simple, short declarative sentence carries across the anger.  "Shouted angrily" is made redundant by writing the sentence correctly in the first place.

Does this mean you should never use "shouted" or anything else?  No. Like any rule, this is one that is meant to be broken carefully, wisely, and with malice aforethought.  But know that you're doing it and why.  In certain situations "whispered" might be necessary.  At times, I suppose "shouted" might even be necessary.  But I'll go out on a limb and say that the rest of that list isn't.  Not ever.

If you've read Howard Carter, you know that on some level I'm a stone thrower living in a glass house. Keep in mind that it was a first draft, but at least in that book, I seemed to be particularly fond of "whispered".

One of the first things I will do when going from that first draft you read to the second is remove those instances when I got lazy and gave too much stage direction.

The later it is at night and the more tired I am as I write, the more likely it is that these things are going to happen.  Which is why we have rough drafts that we don't show to anyone.  Because at some point we have to come back in the cold, clear light of day and find all the parts that sound like writing and rewrite them. 

Monday, August 10, 2009

10 Rules Redux

Last week we talked about the Ten Rules Elmore Leonard proposed for great fiction writing. Whether you're a reader or a writer, surely you too have some rules of thumb. Some measure of what makes writing good or even great... So what are your ten rules? Answer in comments.

Friday, August 7, 2009

Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules

Published: July 16, 2001
"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. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over..."
Hooptedoodle. You have to love any headline with "Hooptedoodle" in it.

If you're curious about the rest, you can read some of what he left out (because 13 rules didn't sound as cool, I guess) at his blog: ElmoreLeonard.com or in his book on writing also called Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules on Writing. (Sadly, the hooptedoodle was apparently left out of the book.)  

Caveat lector! Something I think about this every time I recommend a book on writing, whether it's Larry Block or Anne Lamotte or Stephen King. Reading about writing doesn't make you a writer, writing makes you a writer. There's a point where you have to stop reading books (or blogs) about how to write and actually sit down to do it.

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Scott Walker Perkins writes literary thrillers and novels of humor & suspense. His current novel is The Palimpsest and he is working on another tentatively titled 42 Lines.  

Email: swalkerperkins@gmail.com
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