Friday, 17 February 2006

Don't get hooptedoodle mixed up with your story

Novelist Elmore Leonard gives valuable writing advice. [Hat tip Stephen Hicks]

Top two tips for mine:
  • Try to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip. You know, the hooptedoodle.
  • If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.
Bad advice for a blogger:
  • Being a good author is a disappearing act.
A good novelist shold be invisible. True. Unless you're Truman Capote. For a columnist or a blogger however, being invisible is career poison -- if indeed there were such a thing as a blogging career path. Be visible. That's my own advice to writers of blogs: Let us hear your voice. And avoid passive verbs like the plague.

LINKS: Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing - The Official Elmore Leonard Website
When Passive Verbs Attack - Peter Cresswell

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