When Elmore "Dutch" Leonard died last week, it was prominent front page news in the New York Times. It was a gladdening sight on a sad day, because I always thought that despite his (late-earned) notoriety and reputation for pitch-perfect dialogue, he was under-appreciated for the other qualities that made his books much more than stylish pop thrillers. In fact, his books were rarely thrillers and rarely plot driven.
He was all about character and morality. And by creating so many amoral characters, he revealed more about the nature of human existence than many writers who take the more direct route. His early westerns (Hombre, Valdez is Coming, The Law at Randado and dozens of short stories) are uniformly terrific, and politically, socially and psychologically more complex than most of the contemporary crime novels that followed. But he wrote 45 novels, and there's not a bad one in the bunch...well, maybe Djibouti, but he was already past 80 with that one and had set the bar so high, he was bound to come up short eventually. I think I've read everything he wrote, and my memory isn't what it used to be, but if I were to try and pick some favorites they would be :
The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories
When The Women Come Out to Dance (Short Story collection)
“I'm very much aware in the writing of dialogue, or even in the narrative too, of a rhythm. There has to be a rhythm with it … Interviewers have said, you like jazz, don’t you? Because we can hear it in your writing. And I thought that was a compliment.”
“I started out of course with Hemingway when I learned how to write. Until I realized Hemingway doesn't have a sense of humor. He never has anything funny in his stories.”
"If an adverb became a character in one of my books, I'd have it shot. Immediately."
Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing
1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
R.I.P.
"If an adverb became a character in one of my books, I'd have it shot. Immediately."
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