- Never open a book with weather.
- Avoid prologues.
- Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
- Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
- Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
- Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
- Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
- Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
- Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
- Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
4 comments:
I've been skimming through some Harry Potter lately in an effort to find out exactly what it is that bugs me about the writing style, and here's one that I came up with:
Never use an adverb or adjective that's redundant with something you've already described, or are about to describe.
Example: She jumped at the startling sound of a rock crashing through her window.
We don't need to be told that the sound of a rock crashing through a window is startling. "Crashed loudly" is something I find myself wincing at fairly frequently in prose also.
In a nutshell, if you paint the picture right, you don't have to stick labels on it pointing out the details to the person viewing it. So it is with writing.
"Suddenly, all hell broke loose!!!" the tired, bedraggled homeless, shoeless, starving hobo shouted wildly during the dark and stormy night.
I dunno...I think it's kinda catchy, don't you?
@pentamom:
I'm so glad I'm not the only heretic who is vaguely bothered by the writing itself. I've never been able to put my finger on it, other than Harry's excessive petulance. I have no objection to wizardry, fantasy, and all of that. Some of the stories have been better than others, but mostly it's just less painful to watch the movie and skip the book.
"1. Never open a book with weather.
Avoid prologues." I agree with the part about weather, at least to some extent. Why no prologues? They're often very useful for telling something that happens a long time before things in the rest of the book.
"2. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue." That's a ridiculous rule! It's perfectly fine to use other words (sparingly).
"3. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely." Ummm, not quite sure what this one means.
"4. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose." Don't agree with this one, especially if it's in dialogue.
"5. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose." Ha ha :D But why can't I ever use the word 'suddenly'? I find it a useful word, in moderation.
"6. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly." Only if the patois is really difficult to follow, and not integral to the story.
"7. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters." Not sure I agree with this :)
"8. Don't go into great detail describing places and things." If you do this, then the reader won't know what things look like. Sorry, but this is one of those pieces of advice that I choose to ignore.
"9. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip." That depends on why they skip them. Maybe it's just because they're lazy readers. If it's truly boring, unnecessary stuff, then, yeah, keep it out!
I don't like it when people try to give hard and fast rules about writing. For every author that follows these 'rules', there are a lot more who don't, and pull it off very well. I aspire to be in the latter group :D
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