Here is a post from my website jimdefilippi.com:

Four Writers: The Blocks of Technique

Elmore Leonard:  “The first time I realized this slick stylistic trick of his, I almost fell out of my chair.  Writing in the third person, he uses the vocab and syntax of a specific character, and then switches this point of view throughout the book, from character to character.  He probably didn’t invent the technique, but he’s its master.  I use it all the time now.  Thanks, Dutch.”

George V. Higgins:  “One of my proudest moments as a writer was when this Boston genius blurbed my DUCK ALLEY as ‘a wonderful book,’ comparing it to A SEPARATE PEACE.  He told me, ‘If I didn’t like it, I would have wadded up the manuscript and tossed it in a corner.’ He did not mince words.  As a matter of fact, he used dialogue as well as any writer ever.  He taught me that a scene ‘overheard’ while sitting one booth down from a couple hard guys talking in a diner can be more dramatic than a scene splayed out at stage center with blood and guts flying.  You can always tell a book that was written with a movie deal in mind.  (A fistfight on top of a moving train is usually a flag.)  George didn’t do that.”

John leCarre:  “Most of us crime guys key off Hemingway, with those short, simple sentences, like a bass drum beating.  leCarre’s sentences go on to the near-breaking point, take two or three unexpected twists on their way to a final surprise ending on the last word.  Each sentence can be a short story.  Hard to do.  I try once in awhile.”

P.G. Wodehouse:  “Anybody can try to be funny.  Many can succeed.  But Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster (the Jeeves stories) is dead serious at all times, never cracks a smile or cracks wise, but is the funniest character ever created in literature.  I could only hope to be able to do this to a tiny degree some day.”