[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 122 (Tuesday, September 17, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Page S6511]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       REMEMBERING ELMORE LEONARD

  Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, when Michigan novelist Elmore Leonard 
passed away on August 20, the world lost an irreplaceable voice, a 
witty creator of unlikely and unforgettable characters who, like their 
creator, knew the value of brevity.
  Leonard's novels took place in the American West, in the Everglades, 
in the Horn of Africa or the streets of Havana, but they always carried 
a little of his hometown, Detroit. His protagonists, like his hometown, 
were tough and gruff, but loveable and good-hearted, people of few 
words but bold actions. Like his hometown, Leonard's writing was 
without pretense or formality. ``If it sounds like writing,'' he said, 
``I rewrote it.''
  The New York Times accurately described Leonard as ``A Man of Few, 
Yet Perfect, Words.'' In 2001, he wrote for The Times a short essay on 
his tips for writers, titled, ``Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points 
and Especially Hooptedoodle.'' Their aim, he said, was to ``remain 
invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show rather than tell 
what's taking place in the story.'' His rules for writing are useful 
for all of us who write and want to be read, and I ask unanimous 
consent that they be printed in the Record. The world has lost a great 
writer. I have lost a friend.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                       [Published: July 16, 2001]

    Writers on Writing: Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and 
                        Especially Hooptedoodle

                          (By Elmore Leonard)

       These are rules I've picked up along the way to help me 
     remain invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show 
     rather than tell what's taking place in the story. If you 
     have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of 
     your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are 
     after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them 
     over.
       1. Never open a book with weather.
       If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's 
     reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. 
     The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are 
     exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more 
     ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all 
     the weather reporting you want.
       2. Avoid prologues.
       They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an 
     introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are 
     ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is 
     backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want.
       There is a prologue in John Steinbeck's ``Sweet Thursday,'' 
     but it's O.K. because a character in the book makes the point 
     of what my rules are all about. He says: ``I like a lot of 
     talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what 
     the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what 
     he looks like from the way he talks . . . figure out what the 
     guy's thinking from what he says. I like some description but 
     not too much of that . . . Sometimes I want a book to break 
     loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle . . . Spin up some pretty 
     words maybe or sing a little song with language. That's nice. 
     But I wish it was set aside so I don't have to read it. I 
     don't want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.''
       3. Never use a verb other than ``said'' to carry dialogue.
       The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is 
     the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less 
     intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once 
     noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with ``she 
     asseverated,'' and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.
       4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb ``said'' . . .
       . . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or 
     almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing 
     himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can 
     interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in 
     one of my books tell how she used to write historical 
     romances ``full of rape and adverbs.''
       5. Keep your exclamation points under control.
       You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words 
     of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers 
     the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.
       6. Never use the words ``suddenly'' or ``all hell broke 
     loose.''
       This rule doesn't require an explanation. I have noticed 
     that writers who use ``suddenly'' tend to exercise less 
     control in the application of exclamation points.
       7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
       Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and 
     loading the page with apostrophes, you won't be able to stop. 
     Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming 
     voices in her book of short stories ``Close Range.''
       8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
       Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway's ``Hills Like 
     White Elephants'' what do the ``American and the girl with 
     him'' look like? ``She had taken off her hat and put it on 
     the table.'' That's the only reference to a physical 
     description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know 
     them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.
       9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
       Unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with 
     language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. 
     But even if you're good at it, you don't want descriptions 
     that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a 
     standstill.
       And finally:
       10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
       A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip 
     reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have 
     too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he's 
     writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another 
     shot at the weather, or has gone into the character's head, 
     and the reader either knows what the guy's thinking or 
     doesn't care. I'll bet you don't skip dialogue.
       My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.
       If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
       Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I 
     can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt 
     the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It's my attempt to 
     remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with 
     obvious writing. (Joseph Conrad said something about words 
     getting in the way of what you want to say.)
       If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a 
     particular character--the one whose view best brings the 
     scene to life--I'm able to concentrate on the voices of the 
     characters telling you who they are and how they feel about 
     what they see and what's going on, and I'm nowhere in sight.
       What Steinbeck did in ``Sweet Thursday'' was title his 
     chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they 
     cover. ``Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts'' is one, ``Lousy 
     Wednesday'' another. The third chapter is titled 
     ``Hooptedoodle 1'' and the 38th chapter ``Hooptedoodle 2'' as 
     warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: ``Here's 
     where you'll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, 
     and it won't get in the way of the story. Skip them if you 
     want.''
       ``Sweet Thursday'' came out in 1954, when I was just 
     beginning to be published, and I've never forgotten that 
     prologue.
       Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word.

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