Writing Tips From Elmore Leonard, Kurt Vonnegut, and Neil Gaiman
Authors have different writing styles. To somebody who is halfway literate, Hemingway’s works are as different from Dan Brown’s as Mozart’s music is from Kenny G’s. It’s not surprising then that different authors have different writing advice. Compare the different advice given by these three great authors: Elmore Leonard 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. 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 ...