Elmore Leonard, or “Dutch” to his fans, started out writing pulp westerns in the 1950s before turning to crime fiction, perhaps influenced by real-life headlines about Bonnie and Clyde while growing up. One of modern America’s most popular and prolific writers, Leonard has written over two dozen novels, including ‘Glitz’, ‘Get Shorty’, ‘Maximum Bob’, and ‘Rum Punch’—most of them bestsellers.
Many of his novels have been made into films, most notably ‘Get Shorty’ (1995) and ‘Rum Punch′ as ‘Jackie Brown’ (1997) and ‘Out of Sight′ (1998). On the numerous adaptations of his work, the author commented that ‘Get Shorty’ was the first to “get it,” to demonstrate that you can “deliver ‘funny’ lines in a movie without reaction, without the character knowing he or she was being funny.”
In real life Leonard is as pithy and wry as his characters. Often asked by fans and aspiring writers how to go about getting an agent, his standard response is to suggest that they learn how to write, and an agent will find them.
Is there a secret to his writing success? He claims there is, and it lies in pleasing himself first: “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.”
In the current internet and computer age Leonard is something of an anachronism in that he still writes with a pen and on paper, just as he has for the last fifty years, and has a researcher maintain a website and weblog for him. Sounds like the kind of character you would find in an Elmore Leonard novel…
Unlike most ‘genre’ writers, Leonard is taken seriously by both literary critics and fellow writers, often commended for his gritty style and strong dialogue; he sometimes takes liberties with grammar in the interests of speeding along the story. So true to life are his settings, Leonard is often asked if he has ever been in prison prison inmates often write to him and ask how he knows so much about their mindset, their lives or prison life? His response: “I listen, I study, I talk to convicts, and I do my homework.”
Leonard has been called “the Dickens of Detroit” for his intimate portraits of people from the world’s motor capital his ear for dialogue and ability to render it to written word praised by writers as diverse as Saul Bellow and Martin Amis, the latter commenting that Leonard’s prose “makes Raymond Chandler look clumsy.”
How long did it take him to develop his trademark ‘sound?’ Aspiring writers may want to skip the answer, as it reveals that behind (almost) every successful author there is an awful amount of hard work: “Ten years. It took about ten years before my sound emerged. That’s about a million words.”
So how does Leonard manage to be popular ‘and’ respectable? The answer may be in his ten tips for good writing:
1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than “said″ to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said”…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don′t go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
And his favourite rule? It’s the one that sums up the previous ten:
“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
John Gillespie is a New Zealand based designer and writer with a love of writing and a practise of meditation. A member of the srichinmoybio.co.uk/sri-chinmoy-centre/index.html Sri Chinmoy Meditation Centre, he isn’t yet popular but tries to be respectable.
John’s Blog: sensitivitytothings.com/ sensitivitytothings.com