Here’s another paragraph on writing that really influenced me. This is from Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules for Writers. Some of these rules I agree with more than others, but this is the one that’s really stuck with me:
Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip … 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.
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