It is my very own lost cause.
Time after time I've taken to these pages to decry the idiocy of Elmore Leonard's inexplicably lauded 10 Rules of Writing, to absolutely no avail. No decent interval can pass before someone out there notes them approvingly, and I'm forced back to the keyboard to object.
The latest offender is Olen Steinhauer, who says the following in his recent review of Leonard's latest novel, Raylan:
In an essay that appeared in The New York Times in 2001, “Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle,” Elmore Leonard listed his 10 rules of writing. The final one — No. 11, actually — the “most important rule . . . that sums up the 10,” is “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” It’s a terrific rule. In fact, I liked it so much that I passed it on to a creative-writing class I once taught.
It's actually a silly, empty rule. If I were to put that rule in front of my students, here's what I'd tell them: That it's one of those bits of seemingly clever writing that, upon actual closer examination, says nothing at all. First of all, what - exactly - is "writing that sounds like writing"? Does Shakespeare sound like writing? Does Ondaatje? Does Zadie Smith? Does Faulkner? Does Pynchon? It is a useless measure.
What one presumes Leonard is saying, given the other dumbed-down rules on his list, is that he eschews what we commonly refer to, for want of a better term, as lyrical prose. One imagines he would have John Banville, Joseph O'Neill and Teju Cole busily erasing their manuscripts. On the other hand, if he doesn't mean that, perhaps he means writing that, because it fails - because it is, essentially bad writing - feels "written". So, basically, fix bad writing. Thanks a whole heap, Elmo.
The point, of course, is that these kind of lists, while sometimes amusing, rarely have anything to do with the real work of writing. (I prefer to paraphrase Deborah Eisenberg to my students - you can do anything you want, provided you can do it.) And it's dispiriting to see people who should know better trot these rules out yet again as some touchstone of great writing. They aren't. As the TLS so wisely pointed out about this list when it first appeared:
The eleventh rule is: If you come across lists such as this, ignore them. The rules may sound sensible enough, but, with the exception of No 5, each could be replaced with its opposite, and still be reasonable advice. Leonard complains that, while reading a book by Mary McCarthy, he had to "stop and get the dictionary" - as if it were a form of pain (William Faulkner, who broke most of these rules whenever he wrote, complained of Hemingway that he "never used a word you had to look up in the dictionary"). And what is meant by "leave out the part that readers tend to skip"? If every writer tried to be as exciting as Leonard, there would be no Brothers Karamazov, no Anna Karenina (remember those exquisitely boring sections on agronomy?), and the shelf reserved for Dickens or Balzac would measure about a foot. Banish patois, and we lose a library of fiction stretching from Huckleberry Finn to Trainspotting. As for dialogue, if Leonard samples Henry James, he will find "remarked", "answered", "interposed", "almost groaned", "wonderingly asked", "said simply", "sagely risked" and many more colourful carriers (these from a page or two of Roderick Hudson). Should they all be ironed out into "said"?
So what do you say, gang? Let's give the rules a rest for the rest of 2012? Because I have, you know, shit to do. I can't be here schooling you every time out. Peace out.
New to the blog and like what I've read. Studied with Walker Percy in a novel writing class at LSU and one of the best pieces of advice (really the same as Eisenberg said) was that writers make their own rules. That's the only rule a good writer needs.
Posted by: Raymond Cothern | February 06, 2012 at 04:29 PM
Nicely paraphrased: "you can do anything you want, provided you can do it".
Posted by: Keir | February 07, 2012 at 07:36 AM
Writers can be educated by almost anything they're willing to be smashed by.
But not by lists.
Posted by: Shelley | February 07, 2012 at 09:26 AM
no Anna Karenina (remember those exquisitely boring sections on agronomy?)
This is just silly. Tolstoy could have written Anna Karenina without the sections on agronomy. It would be essentially the same book since everyone skips those sections anyway.
Posted by: peep | February 10, 2012 at 11:44 AM
I had just finished Get Shorty and was about to write about it when I found your plea against the 10 Rules. I understand what you mean, and here's part of what I eventually wrote: "I can't help feeling that when Leonard attempted to articulate the reason behind his success in 10 Rules, he missed the mark entirely; his success has nothing to do with him rarely using an adverb, or cutting out all the parts that, he says, readers skip, it's a direct consequence of his voice and tone, and voice and tone are unique to each individual writer, you are born with them, they cannot be 'made' or 'learned,' or parsed into rules - they are each writer's intrinsic 'disease', of which our diction, dialect, pacing, and grammar are mere symptoms. Readers either like a writer's voice or they don't, it is the most subjective of responses to a book, and dangerous to use as a basis of literary criticism. Leonard describing the weather in detail would be as weird to me as William Trevor or John Banville failing to do so."
Posted by: Susan McCallum-Smith | February 15, 2012 at 10:35 AM
Thanks for this! I was getting sick of seeing Leonard's rules, too.
Posted by: David | February 16, 2012 at 10:31 AM
I think these lists are for mini-blips of inspiration, and useful if used as such.
In fact, I like Leonard's rule, because to me it means: stare down a sentence until it's perfect. Until it is what you intended to say in the voice you're trying to say it in.
The writing advice list that can fairly exist, and make an impact, is one word long: Write.
Posted by: Todd Zuniga | February 16, 2012 at 11:46 AM
Thank you for making a case against rule like this. It seems lists of rules for writing are only valuable to the person who makes them.
I also wanted to mention that Leonard claimed in an interview on NPR's Talk of the Nation that he originally came out with this list as a sort of joke. Perhaps it's best for everyone to see them the same way.
Posted by: Michael Weil | February 20, 2012 at 05:41 PM
Serendipity is always playing tricks--just this morning I wrote a rather sweeping bit of writing advice on my blog, and here I find the 10 Rules popping up again. But the thing is that a sweeping kind of rule sends people off to write and learn from the act of writing. And that tends to be bad for business, at least the teaching business. But then of course one can do a counter-post to justify why teaching is valid and how it relates to rules or no rules. And so on. It all seems like life on the Moebius band after a while, doesn't it?
I hadn't read the Patterson review. It was certainly a shocker. But you have lovely reviews in other places...
Posted by: marly youmans | April 10, 2012 at 11:55 AM
Writing sounds like writing. There can be no denying. Rewriting it is to make it better.Though you never know what you are doing when you write. It is others who know if it is good.
Posted by: krishna | July 09, 2012 at 01:48 AM
If nothing else, these lists are good for a laugh, though even the laughs get repetitive after awhile.
Posted by: Mathew | August 28, 2012 at 01:35 PM