Elmore Leonard's ten rules for writing

[Eve]

I always tell my self that I will stick to his rules but I can't seem to stick to them.

Now, here's my shameful secret...I write romantic detective stories and thrillers, among other things. Can you use the great man's rules when you write romance?
Is there such genre as hard boiled romance, or have I just invented it?

One of his stories, at least, would work on Mills and Boon.

[John Dishon]

I agree with that. Prologues don't have to be explanation.

[Dana King]

"The prologue is the sequence before the credits roll"

I like that description. I think the correct answer to the prologue question, like it is with just about every writing question, is "it depends." In the book I'm currently trying to sell, a mob dies of a heart attack on his kitchen floor in the prologue. The rest of the book is about what happens because he died unexpectedly. I wanted that set off just a little bit.

I think Leonard dismisses prologues because he likes to drop you into the middle of a story that's already started and let you sort things out for yourself as you go. A prologue would be superfluous, and would, as Jude mentions here, remove you from the fictional dream Leonard is creating.

[Jude Hardin]

He also adds a kind of snarky proviso that I sort of agree with, which is that his rules don't apply to writers with facility for imagery, who also like the sound of their own voices--as if the two went necessarily hand-in-hand. Maybe they do--I expect Jude will enter this thread any minute now and tell us.

Thirty days in The Dildo Room for that, Jon.

[Jude Hardin]

Writing that calls attention to itself tends to pull me out of the story, out of what John Gardner calls the fidtional dream. Weather bores me. I skip long desriptive passages. Most dialogue tags aren't necessary. But that's just me. A lot of people enjoy indulgent rubbish, so it's good we have plenty of writers providing it for them.

[Jon Loomis]

Perfect!

[I. J. Parker]

Indulgent rubbish? Don't you write to please yourself, Jude?

[John Dishon]

That'$ non$en$e. You can't pay your$elf.

[Jude Hardin]

Don't you write to please yourself, Jude?

Not really, I.J. When I think I might have achieved a certain aesthetic, it makes me feel good for a few minutes; but, I'm seeking publication, so I'm always thinking about what might have a chance of selling in a market where not much is. If I want to please myself, I'll find a nice hobby.

[Eric Christopherson]

Art and commerce always intersect, it seems to me. The only reason Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa is because she had the scratch to pay for it.

Apparently, Edgar Allan Poe was far more driven by the marketplace than previously believed (and there is also an interesting hypothesis on how and why he invented detective fiction) according to the latest New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2009/04/27/090427crat...

[I. J. Parker]

Well, I've had a job I did because I needed the money. Frequently it made me unhappy. I'm not about to do this to my writing.

[Jon Loomis]

I can't imagine writing 300 pages of anything if it didn't please me aesthetically. If the scary parts don't scare me and the jokes don't make me laugh and the writing doesn't sound right to my ear, it's probably not going to work for anybody else, either.

[Jude Hardin]

True, Jon, but at some point you had to learn what makes a mystery a mystery, what agents and publishers and the book-buying public expect. I'm sure you've had times, like we all have, when it was necessary--for one reason or another--to "kill your darlings," those same darlings you found so aesthetically-pleasing while you were tapping away on the keys. Everyone gets edited for the sake of salability, even old F. Scott. I understand Maxwell Perkins drew heavy dark lines through quite a bit of his indulgent crap.