Thank you for cutting through the crap and giving it to me straight. I’m working on a novel… struggling with the notion that there’s ‘not enough description’. I always felt it was wrong to linger too long with descriptive passages when the voices of the charachters swept the story along. Now you’ve confirmed it.
Cheers, Peter

I think that I’ve read them all, some twice or more, bewitched.  I have never tried writing but suggest to those who want to, to “read Him”.  There is an explosiveness in the narrative that is driven by the characters, not the writer.  One must have an ear for the language employed by the characters, which is exposure, experience and memory.  His characters are their language and acts.  Admire that.  There ain’t an author telling you what.

Appreciate your 10 Rules, though I’ve more than likely broken every one.

I skip dialogue, actually.

I enjoyed reading The Ten Rules, and especially the notations that there are exceptions to them. Everybody to their own style. I, too, have never forgotten Steinbeck’s prologue, but I tend to like hooptedoodle (the verbal gymnastics of Tom Robbins comes to mind). Too bad the musical version of “Sweet Thursday,” “Pipe Dream,” was such a flop. Anyway, the rules are great for writers who want to remain invisible, but some great ones (Dickens, Hugo, Twain) are both narrator and commentator, passing remarks about the characters and their actions, and I also like that approach. I guess the best rule is one Robbins came up with: If you can make it work, do it. Or words to that effect.

I’ve been reading and enjoying “The Hot Kid,” and love the historical references, but one, I think, is wrong. On pages 44 and 86 Al Jolson is referred as Al Jolsen. I don’t believe he ever used “en” at the end of his name. Even his birth name, Yoelson, ended with “on.”

Ok, guy above me, see a doctor and do something about that stick. 

First time reader, caught you on The Advice G blog page and so far I like.  Agree with you too, I have always skipped the description and never tell what my characters look like.  I assume that my readers have imaginations and that, sometimes, they like to put their own face on the characters.  It makes the story more real.
But I’ve yet to suffer through a whole paragraph of someone describing one g* damn tree.
I do confess that I am an exclamation point junkie.  I love doing ?! because I hate having to add ‘she shrieked/ he yelled’ etc…

Lia wrote: “I do confess that I am an exclamation point junkie.  I love doing ?! because I hate having to add ‘she shrieked/ he yelled’ etc…”

Per Elmore, it’s not one or the other. Thinking that way leaves you with a choice between bad and very bad. Instead, I think Elmore would say describe the speaker’s face, movements, tone,  from the POV of another character. What does it look like when someone shrieks? What does the other character see?

That way you see the action, learn something about the other character, and avoid the ?!‘s, etc., that take the reader out of the story.

Thanks for this whole thing, which I’ve printed out to take to work. I’ve been in newspaper work all my life, and have told more than one young person that adverbs are amateurish. The worst I ever saw was “slightly intense.”
The best advice I ever got from an editor was “Don’t make your sentences work so hard.”
I love your books.