{"id":175,"date":"2010-02-22T21:39:22","date_gmt":"2010-02-23T02:39:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/?p=175"},"modified":"2010-02-22T21:41:29","modified_gmt":"2010-02-23T02:41:29","slug":"the-guardians-top-ten-rules-for-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/the-guardians-top-ten-rules-for-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Guardian’s Top Ten Rules for Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Those Brits at The Guardian.\u00a0 Always coming up with lists, aren’t they?\u00a0 100 Books That, If You Haven’t Read at Least 50, You’d Better Get Cracking.\u00a0 Or the 10 Best Films of the Decade and By The Way You Should Like the Coen Brothers.\u00a0\u00a0 This time, though, they’ve done something marvy: compiled the top ten pieces of writing advice from some truly excellent authors<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They started with Elmore Leonard, probably because his 10 are so pithy, but I’m going to veer off course for a moment and say\u00a0I am sick of Elmore Leonard.\u00a0 Sick of his hoopdetootle!\u00a0 (You can only be wowed so many times by the word hoopdetootle.)\u00a0 Sick of his maniacal opposition to adverbs!\u00a0 As one of my educations profs used to say, most either\/ors are usually both\/ands.\u00a0 Phonics vs. Whole Language?\u00a0 Who said there can’t be both?<\/p>\n

I am digressing, I know, and that’s probably\u00a0enough dumping on Elmore, although\u00a0I’ll also sneak in the fact that I don’t think anybody reads his fiction, so I don’t know why we listen to him.\u00a0 But the reason I really came here was to nominate my favorite piece of writing advice in this stack:<\/p>\n

From Anne Enright, Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand<\/span>.<\/h2>\n

I like this because frankly, I have a hugely hard time writing description.\u00a0 Well–not of what people do when they talk; that comes alarmingly easily, as if I’m describing a screenplay.\u00a0 (ps, Hi, Elmore–I just used two adverbs, and I think they worked great!)\u00a0<\/p>\n

No, I have a hard time describing the background.\u00a0 Oy.\u00a0 What’s going on behind, around, and in front of the characters?\u00a0 Don’t always see it right off and definitely, at first, do not care.\u00a0 Yes, of course what’s happening on the street can enhance the action; why, in ch. 4 of Nice and Mean<\/em>, poor Sachi is almost hit by a taxi, and it’s all metaphorical and nifty.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But aha–that’s because, a la Enright,\u00a0I’ve found a place for her to stand.\u00a0 It’s not just, “Oh, the air was humid and cars rushed everywhere….”\u00a0 Snooze.\u00a0 I don’t think Sachi cares.\u00a0 If it’s already hot, though, and a car lunges for her and stops close enough that she can feel the heat off the bumper–I think she’d care.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It took me a long time to figure this out.\u00a0 I’m still trying to picture things around the characters more than I already do.\u00a0 But I also think I’ll do better if I stand where I usually stand–in their shoes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What’s your favorite (or least favorite) piece of advice from the list?<\/p>\n

Good night, Elmore!<\/p>\n

(Good night, Gracie.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those Brits at The Guardian.\u00a0 Always coming up with lists, aren’t they?\u00a0 100 Books That, If You Haven’t Read at Least 50, You’d Better Get Cracking.\u00a0 Or the 10 Best Films of the Decade and By The Way You Should Like the Coen Brothers.\u00a0\u00a0 This time, though, they’ve done something marvy: compiled the top ten […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,5],"tags":[13,15],"class_list":["post-175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-niceandmean","category-writerly-monday","tag-nice-and-mean","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions\/179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}