Minimalism in writing

[Muphrid]

A friend of mine linked this 2001 article from the New York Times, a piece of advice from one writer to others.  While I don't completely agree with it, I thought it would be interesting enough to dissect and discuss.

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.

I admit, I'm not familiar with the author's work (Elmore Leonard).  Perhaps I should be, but I've never pretended I actually know about people and what they've done.  I do know a bit about this school of thought--a very minimalist sort of approach.  Unsurprisingly, Leonard talks about Hemingway, whom I admired when I was younger and initially wanted to imitate in writing.  In the interests of fair discussion, I don't follow minimalist approaches anymore.  It strikes me as leaving entirely too much for the reader to put together and infer.  Hit readers with a sledgehammer, I say.  Make your point unambiguous.  New writers trying to be minimalist end up being so minimal that they say nothing at all.  It is, I do think, something smart writers can pull off for a smart audience, but in trying to interpret such pieces, it runs the risk of becoming self-congratulating--the intended audience might get it, but others won't, and the process of getting that meaning out is like some kind of intellectual masturbation.

Anyway.  Where were we?  Oh yes.  There was supposed to be some advice in here.

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.

I agree with this, in the sense that starting with weather is trite and overdone.  People are important.  The setting is only so important as people react to it, sure.

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.''

I quibble over what a prologue is supposed to be, but I think the point is well-made.  The tendency of some writers to engage in long swaths of backstory exposition is something that should be fought, no matter where it should occur in a story.  That said, I don't see what this passage from Steinbeck has to do with it.  What does that tell us about when a prologue is acceptable?

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.''

I group these all together because they're all fundamentally stylistic, about putting words together to try to convey emotion rather than state it.  As with most things, I think there's a sliding scale in play here.  I personally lean mostly toward "said" and "asked" but I don't shy away from throwing in a different verb now and then.

Stephen King has expressed similar sentiment against adverbs.  I don't especially disagree with it, in that often what you convey with an adverb can be conveyed through the action verb, or through what is actually said in dialogue, but I do think sometimes it's better to be unambiguous, so that the reader doesn't have to focus on asking themselves what's really being said.

"But doesn't that mean you, the author, aren't saying things clearly in the first place?  No amount of adverbs will fix that."

Please.  Reader attention is limited.  Adverbs are cheap (but like many cheap things, too many of them can quickly bore you) and, in my mind, let the reader focus on what they should be focusing on.

I agree with Leonard that excessive use of exclamation points (in prose; dialogue is another story) tends to be artificial.  I only try to use them for sound effects, and rarely otherwise.  This is, however, something that comes off a bit better in first-person narration.  We have a few Haruhi writers here; I'm given to believe that Japanese uses more exclamation points than English would as a marker of sarcasm or to otherwise indicate that what is said is not really what is meant.  I feel like I've seen this leak into some of the translations as well, which, rendered in English, makes Kyon come off as a bit idiosyncratic in his writing (aside from other things that contribute to this impression).  Something to keep in mind.

And yes, let's keep all the apostrophes for dropped sounds out of the way.  Maybe nobody in a certain region or piece will say the final "g" in "running".  Let the readers keep that detail in mind themselves.  It's way too distracting otherwise.

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.

Well sure, there's definitely a tendency for people to overdo such description.

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.

This is something I found very provocative.  I know I tend to do this, and I put great emphasis on those paragraphs where I can try to build up insight and set the scene.  Yet I know in reading, I tend to skip over exactly such large paragraphs also.  Eyes gloss over, and you want to see something happening.  Even action scenes, if full of big paragraphs, can have that problem.

So does that mean big paragraphs should be avoided like the plague?  Perhaps.  But what is it that happens in these paragraphs that also contributes to them feeling skippable?  Leonard says stuff about the weather, or getting into a character's head.  "The reader either knows what the guy's thinking or doesn't care."  I don't think so.  Maybe they don't care, but if they don't, I haven't done my job.  If they already know, then the passage is indeed superfluous.

But this gets at a deeper idea, then: should what a character is thinking already be apparent through action and dialogue?  Ideally, perhaps.  But I think such narration can have a purpose, particularly if it describes a character's state of mind in a way that makes clear they don't even understand what's going on in their own head.  There
is a difference between what a character knows about himself or herself and what is true, after all.

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.

Leonard is right to say this rule sums up the others.  The whole minimalist ideal seems to be to have the writing be as little a distraction from conveying actions, emotions, and themes as possible.  Break the rules of English if it feels more natural and less forced?  Sure, I buy into that.  Don't engage in long stretches of pretentious writing?  Absolutely.  Don't try to force emotions into the piece (through obscure dialogue tags or adverbs)?  Makes sense.

Perhaps the point of this advice, sounding authoritative and all, is merely to stimulate a change in thinking.  No rules are really hard and fast, are they.

Still, I remember reading Hemingway and finding the experience very, very bare.  It was intellectually interesting to me, to see writing presented that way, but it also left me a little cold, in hindsight.  The characters felt more like paper cutouts that I was watching enact a meaningless play.  Perhaps I was too young to appreciate all the meaning that simmered beneath the surface, but still, I think I would like to err on it being clear what it is I mean to say, rather than risk someone mistake my work for saying nothing at all.

[Anastasia]

Nice article and thanks for the link. I'll throw in my two cents.

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.

I agree with this, in the sense that starting with weather is trite and overdone.  People are important.  The setting is only so important as people react to it, sure.

I've got to agree here, as long as it's understood that there are exceptions. 

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.''

I quibble over what a prologue is supposed to be, but I think the point is well-made.  The tendency of some writers to engage in long swaths of backstory exposition is something that should be fought, no matter where it should occur in a story.  That said, I don't see what this passage from Steinbeck has to do with it.  What does that tell us about when a prologue is acceptable?

This can't be said enough. Backstory and prologues are almost always (95%ish?) better off integrated into the story. You see this mistake in fanfiction so much. Backstory should be like buried treasure, used to entice and slowly uncovered over time. If you're deadset on having a huge exposition segment, you should put it off as long as possible. Build up to it and make the reader interested in finding out about it. I swear some writers are afraid of not telling the readers everything or want to show off what they did.

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.

I could not disagree with this one more. Now while I agree certain words are best not used since they show and don't tell, such as lied, I find overuse of said to be a sign of repetitive writing. Generally x said shouldn't be the primary way to convey emotions and what's going on, but used correctly it's a good way to build on what's going on. The same essential point applies to 4, won't rehash it there.

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.

A good rule of thumb! Ooops! Dammit!

Well, barring dialogue where it's appropriate to have one. A single one. Emphasis on one. Using more than one exclamation mark is one of my pet peeves. It's a sign of terrifically terrible writing.

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.

A fair point.

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.''

I'm guilty of this one in casual usage. I don't feel it's a problem so long it doesn't impede readability. I've found that's one hell of a big if.

Stephen King has expressed similar sentiment against adverbs.  I don't especially disagree with it, in that often what you convey with an adverb can be conveyed through the action verb, or through what is actually said in dialogue, but I do think sometimes it's better to be unambiguous, so that the reader doesn't have to focus on asking themselves what's really being said.

Yeah, agreed there. I don't disagree with the basic intent, but I do feel he takes too hard a line regarding it. It's been ages since I read that, so I could be wrong. It was in Danse Macabre?

"But doesn't that mean you, the author, aren't saying things clearly in the first place?  No amount of adverbs will fix that."

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.

Well sure, there's definitely a tendency for people to overdo such description.

True enough. That sort of description is best saved for when what you see would be worthy of that level of description.

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.

This is something I found very provocative.  I know I tend to do this, and I put great emphasis on those paragraphs where I can try to build up insight and set the scene.  Yet I know in reading, I tend to skip over exactly such large paragraphs also.  Eyes gloss over, and you want to see something happening.  Even action scenes, if full of big paragraphs, can have that problem.

So does that mean big paragraphs should be avoided like the plague?  Perhaps.  But what is it that happens in these paragraphs that also contributes to them feeling skippable?  Leonard says stuff about the weather, or getting into a character's head.  "The reader either knows what the guy's thinking or doesn't care."  I don't think so.  Maybe they don't care, but if they don't, I haven't done my job.  If they already know, then the passage is indeed superfluous.

But this gets at a deeper idea, then: should what a character is thinking already be apparent through action and dialogue?  Ideally, perhaps.  But I think such narration can have a purpose, particularly if it describes a character's state of mind in a way that makes clear they don't even understand what's going on in their own head.  There
is a difference between what a character knows about himself or herself and what is true, after all.

Oh God. This hits it dead on. I agree with you 100% here. Huge paragraphs can invite the eyes to slide on over, but they can be so important to setting things up. Speaking of Haruhi, the typical way Kyon narrates things and has people reply in dialogue is a neat trick to glide around this. I find that it encourages me to read everything.

Still, I remember reading Hemingway and finding the experience very, very bare.  It was intellectually interesting to me, to see writing presented that way, but it also left me a little cold, in hindsight.  The characters felt more like paper cutouts that I was watching enact a meaningless play.  Perhaps I was too young to appreciate all the meaning that simmered beneath the surface, but still, I think I would like to err on it being clear what it is I mean to say, rather than risk someone mistake my work for saying nothing at all.

Agreed here. Hemingway's a piss-poor writer in my estimation. His writing is like an empty skeleton shorn of flesh, organs and life. The only meaning in his works is what you inflect into it on your own. I suppose that might work when everyone's stewing in trauma from the world wars. I tend to dismiss him as a hack that was a product of his time, much like most art and literature from about 1910-1950. There's not much there to study anymore and that's his fatal flaw.

Elmore makes some good points here, but fundamentally, I can't agree with the conclusion. You're right that no rules are hard and fast and that is the point. This includes the rules in this article. If a piece of writing works as a final product, I don't feel it matters what the individual components are. Who cares if the rules of grammar get bent over so long as the story entertains?

[alethiophile]

I think that whether the actual goal per the article (writer gets out of the way) is appropriate varies depending on what you're trying to do. When I write, I'm often trying to work from inside some character's head; in that case, it's inappropriate to simply "get out of the way" and convey only actions and dialogue, because one significant point of the writing is to convey what it's like inside the viewpoint character's head. Their thoughts, internal reactions, and general stream-of-consciousness are a part of that. And it has nothing to do with "painting a picture with words" or whatever; it's not really about description at all.

About said-bookism and adverbs...I'm torn. In a lot of cases, it's a good idea just to get out of the way and let the dialogue speak for itself; use a bare 'said', or just skip dialogue tags. Particularly this is the case when the proposed embellishment doesn't add any additional information ('said' vs. 'uttered', 'replied'). But bare words are not anything like all that's important during a conversation; much information is conveyed by tone, posture, incidental actions, &c. &c., and this shouldn't be lost in transmission. The exact same utterance can be interpreted in diametrically opposite fashions depending on those; simply leaving them out doesn't work in such a case. And it doesn't help to say "just avoid dialogue like that", because that means you're having your characters act quite differently from the way real people act, just to make it more convenient to write. So I can't help but think "grumbled" and similar do have their purpose in conveying extra information.

[Empyrean]

I've started writing again. I've taken to skipping dialogue tags if I can, although I use them when I must. "Said" is preferred except in cases where the manner of delivery cannot be inferred from context, such as muttering or grumbling.

I am not a big fan of frequently using "said" since it only conveys that someone is speaking, which is the sort of thing that becomes evident due to the presence of quotation marks with words between. If I need to specify who is speaking in a group because it's not readily apparent otherwise, I'll use it. You can sometimes get away with skipping dialogue tags in a group by mentioning that a specific character is doing something and then having untagged dialogue after it, but too much of this makes your characters seem fidgety and breaks up the flow of dialogue.

[Ebiris]

I used to avoid using said a lot because I thought it repetitive and engaging, but since I read a similar bit of advice last year that basically said 'the brain just skips over 'said' and keeps going, but other adverbs momentarily bog it down' I've been trying hard to stick just to said.

[Muphrid]

Oh God. This hits it dead on. I agree with you 100% here. Huge paragraphs can invite the eyes to slide on over, but they can be so important to setting things up. Speaking of Haruhi, the typical way Kyon narrates things and has people reply in dialogue is a neat trick to glide around this. I find that it encourages me to read everything.

That's a great point.  Tanigawa's little trick there means you have to pay attention, and like a dog salivating when it hears a bell, doing this trick enough times ought to train the reader into paying closer attention, even when what's being presented isn't peppered with these responses.

Agreed here. Hemingway's a piss-poor writer in my estimation. His writing is like an empty skeleton shorn of flesh, organs and life. The only meaning in his works is what you inflect into it on your own. I suppose that might work when everyone's stewing in trauma from the world wars. I tend to dismiss him as a hack that was a product of his time, much like most art and literature from about 1910-1950. There's not much there to study anymore and that's his fatal flaw.

Right, there's a certain numbness to his work, and to like-minded artists' work of the time, as if the only way to escape pain and suffering was to feel nothing at all.  I'm not sure that makes him talentless (he may very well be), but I agree that to modern sensibilities and tastes, such a mindset seems a bit foreign.

I've started writing again. I've taken to skipping dialogue tags if I can, although I use them when I must. "Said" is preferred except in cases where the manner of delivery cannot be inferred from context, such as muttering or grumbling.

I am not a big fan of frequently using "said" since it only conveys that someone is speaking, which is the sort of thing that becomes evident due to the presence of quotation marks with words between. If I need to specify who is speaking in a group because it's not readily apparent otherwise, I'll use it. You can sometimes get away with skipping dialogue tags in a group by mentioning that a specific character is doing something and then having untagged dialogue after it, but too much of this makes your characters seem fidgety and breaks up the flow of dialogue.

You know, it's interesting that you, Pax, as well as Ebiris have picked up on this aspect of the article that I kinda glossed over--mostly because it's something I've heard many times, perhaps too many times.  But I can see how it's still an issue that can weigh on a writer.

Certainly if every bit of dialogue is tagged, particularly if it's all tagged with "said," the piece can become repetitive and tortuous.  It's interesting you say that action -> untagged dialogue feels fidgety.  That's something that hasn't occurred to me.

In part, though, the need to tag dialogue repeatedly in large groups drives me to avoid large conversations among more than two people for long stretches.  If 3+ people need to interact, I try to minimize the dialogue going between all the parties.  If one person is speaking to a group of people, then this can sometimes be broken down into several successive 2-person conversations that are merely connected, for instance.  Anytime I can use a natural back-and-forth to make the speakers obvious, it makes things feel easier on me.

[Jason_Miao]

Was writing this up over lunch, but ran out of time before I had to get back to work.

(1) True, as far as it goes.  I think the broader point (even for non-minimalists) is that you don't usually get a second chance to make a first impression.  If your story is about people fighting against a hurricane, sure, write about the hurricane.  If it's a fight of heroes against the Demonic Whale, don't start with the hurricane.

(2) I agree as far as he discusses it (although I also don't know what his point was with the Steinbeck discussion).  I tend to take this as "you can use a prologue if you can justify why this info has to be a prologue." 

e.g, I rather liked the Game of Thrones Ninja-Scrollesque prologue, because it takes a cliche-filled genre of high fantasy and shows exactly what the author is going to do with those cliches.   Compare the fact that Bri is prone to calling the whole series Song of Ice and Everyone Dies.  What was in the prologue?  Lots of snow.  Everyone dying.  That's kind of hard to do in one line.

(3)-(7) eh, style.  There are so many different variations from people who write acclaimed stories, with explanations that make sense.

Adverbs...sometimes, you need them.  I've seen two actors practice speech by repeatedly saying "No, you're a whore" to each while emphasizing different syllables to change meaning of the line.  For actual aural dialogue, it's easy to convey that information.  But unless a writer is going to write emphasis by using all-caps or italics (and if a writer cares about style, is that honestly a better writing style?), emphasis like that is not so easy to convey.

I've tried writing with no scene description and trying to let the dialogue provide the details of both who is speaking (which doesn't even use the word 'said') and their environment.  Yay, minimalism! (<--except for that exclamation point)  It was worthwhile as an exercise, but pre-readers complained that it was generally confusing.  So I put some of it back, because why would I want to irritate the readers?

(8)-(9) Meh.  Who is the audience?  What's the genre?  If you're writing a romance, you'd better describe the characters (and yes, I'll agree that there's plenty of over-description of "stormy cerulean eyes" and such.  Swinging to the other extreme is not any better).  If you're writing a travelogue, the mystique and majesty of the different places is why people are reading the book.  "We went to the Sahara.  It was hot(oh wait, that's weather-like; I'd better take that out)" is not going work.

I think, perhaps, "Do not describe the characters or scenes in large and continuous series of artificially injected text" might be a better rule, but that sounds like (10).

(10) Yeah, although...I do skip dialogue.  But maybe that's just because some fanfics are that repetitive.

[Arakawa]

I dunno about the whole 'avoiding detailed description' part. If I'm tempted to skim over a piece of description, or dialogue, or whatever, it's because it isn't very interesting. In which case the author writing the exact same thing, but more minimally, amounts to having the story try to skim over the stuff for me, when the advice should be 'figure out why this isn't interesting, and figure out how to write something interesting'. Often enough this could be accomplished by paring down the scene to focus on the stuff that is interesting; but if there's nothing like that, you may have to actually add stuff. There's nothing in these rules about that....

A lot of these rules are not only broken by some of the great writers, but they're broken consistently and egregiously, and it's far more interesting to study why their writing works anyway. There's something to be said about trying to imitate great writers once in a while, even if the result turns out flagrantly awful instead of consistently okay....

That said, lists of rules are also helpful to have if you're staring at a piece of writing and can't figure out what's wrong; then there's a chance of seeing 'oh, this particular rule would make this particular passage work better'. In that sense, totally contradictory lists of rules might in fact be even better :-P

[alethiophile]

I guess in that case they become less lists of rules and more lists of random things to try.

[Arakawa]

I guess in that case they become less lists of rules and more lists of random things to try.

Lists of suggestions?

Really, I think style is just another dimension of creativity. If you think about it, not that different from say, plot. There are certain well-worn story arcs and patterns (tropes) that you can and should reuse to help build your story instead of trying to be different just because, because these tropes work and are familiar (help orient the reader), but if you've reduced your writing process in that dimension to a list of rules for generating plots and cramming tropes together, that's a warning sign that you might be edging towards uninteresting hack-dom. Style is similar.

i.e. creativity absolutely needs structure to not result in a mess, but structure is not the primary active ingredient.

[sarsaparilla]

Hmm ... rules. I see them a bit like cooking recipes.

Blindly following a recipe should allow even the worst cook to avoid being completely awful. However, the ability to follow a recipe represents only the most superficial understanding of the process.

A decent cook would know how to improvise, and see recipes more as sources of inspiration than something to be rigidly followed.

A great cook would make her own recipes.

Even then, the rules here look like something that could be used to make decent pasta puttanesca, but what if one wanted dim sum instead?

Concerning prologue, I think that the article is trying to say that prologue is okay when it isn't backstory. On this issue I tend to agree. In my own prologues, when I use one, I try to build them as a Teaser or Cold Open, something to establish the setting or main theme and to hook the reader into getting involved with the actual story. To that effect, a prologue should be as short as possible, and necessarily contain an unexpected turn of events that is left unresolved. To make it even more pointed, I have an inclination to start the prologue itself with a single sentence with those same qualities.

I seem to remember having recently read the obituary of the author of the article in question, in which it was claimed that the author made the genre of detective fiction a part of high literature, so apparently there is some support for the suggested rules.

[Muphrid]

I seem to remember having recently read the obituary of the author of the article in question, in which it was claimed that the author made the genre of detective fiction a part of high literature, so apparently there is some support for the suggested rules.

I think this goes well with what Jason said about a romance novelist being expected to describe characters in great (and perhaps, obsessive) detail (and similarly with your remark about pasta vs. dim sum).  It's easy to lump all writing together like it's one monolithic thing, but it's not, and different genres have different conventions or expectations that are placed upon the author.

In the context of detective fiction, I can actually understand a bit more about what Leonard is saying here.  Spending less time developing the detective in such a story makes it easier for the reader to project himself or herself onto that character and thus feel engaged in the story.  (On the other hand, I'm sure there are well-developed detective characters in such stories.  It's been years and years since I read Christie, but perhaps Poirot could count as one, if only for his detailed mannerisms.)

A lot of these rules are not only broken by some of the great writers, but they're broken consistently and egregiously, and it's far more interesting to study why their writing works anyway. There's something to be said about trying to imitate great writers once in a while, even if the result turns out flagrantly awful instead of consistently okay....

So we can consider these "rules" to be things that, say, a beginning writer should probably do until they get their feet wet enough that they can understand the shortcomings of these suggestions and improve upon them in their own way?

I mean, I agree with breaking so-called rules every now and then.  If you like a given rule or idea in principle, however, you shouldn't break it lightly, only if you have Good Reason to do so.