Merry Christmas.
ELMORE LEONARD’S 10 RULES OF WRITING
All rules, of course, can be broken:
-adapted from “Easy on the Hooptedoodle,” first published in the NYTimes
click here to hear Dutch read the whole article
LEONARD’S PRESENT PARTICIPLE
…the essence of Elmore is to be found in his use of the present participle. What this means, in effect, is that he has discovered a way of slowing down and suspending the English sentence – or let’s say the American sentence, because Mr. Leonard is as American as jazz. Instead of writing ‘Warren Ganz III lived up in Manalapan, Palm Beach County’, Mr. Leonard writes: ‘Warren Ganz III, living up in Manalapan, Palm Beach County’. He writes, ‘Bobby saying’, and then opens quotes. He writes, ‘Dawn saying’, and then opens quotes. We are not in the imperfect tense (Dawn was saying) or the present tense (Dawn says) or the historic present (Dawn said). We are in a kind of marijuana tense (Dawn saying), creamy, wandering, weak-verbed. Such sentences seem to open up a lag in time, through which Mr. Leonard easily slides, gaining entry to his players’ hidden minds. He doesn’t just show you what these people say and do. He shows you where they breathe.”
– Martin Amis’ review of RIDING THE RAP
GEOGRAPHY OF THE WRITER’S MIND
“The trouble with life (the novelist will feel) is its amorphousness, its ridiculous fluidity. Look at it: thinly plotted, largely themeless, sentimental and ineluctably trite. The dialogue is poor, or at least violently uneven. The twists are either predictable or sensationalist. And it’s always the same beginning; and the same ending…
My organisational principles, therefore, derive from an inner urgency, and from the novelist’s addiction to seeing parallels and making connections. The method, plus the use of footnotes (to preserve the collateral thought), should give a clear view of the geography of a writer’s mind.”
– Martin Amis, from his memoir, EXPERIENCE
THE KULESHOV EFFECT
page from an old notebook: more about Kuleshov and the actual movie
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