Years ago I took Elmore Leonard's 10 rules to heart, and I still delete adverbs (except when impossible to avoid), and limit my dialogue tags to 'he said, she said', except when I remove them altogether. I'm not sure about his thing about starting with the weather (don't) and I totally approve the "cut out the boring parts'. A rule we should all embrace, lol.
I agree! Especially about the "he said, she said" thing. It's insufferable reading "he exclaimed, she panted, he extolled, she pontificated..."
It's occurring to me that perhaps an even better definition is that it's okay to make our *own* rules -- the rules that work for us -- without inflicting them on others. There's no rule that you can't say "he gushed", but chances are, you're story won't get far if you do it too often...
Years ago I took Elmore Leonard's 10 rules to heart, and I still delete adverbs (except when impossible to avoid), and limit my dialogue tags to 'he said, she said', except when I remove them altogether. I'm not sure about his thing about starting with the weather (don't) and I totally approve the "cut out the boring parts'. A rule we should all embrace, lol.
I agree! Especially about the "he said, she said" thing. It's insufferable reading "he exclaimed, she panted, he extolled, she pontificated..."
It's occurring to me that perhaps an even better definition is that it's okay to make our *own* rules -- the rules that work for us -- without inflicting them on others. There's no rule that you can't say "he gushed", but chances are, you're story won't get far if you do it too often...
A new corollary, perhaps?
Thanks for listing yours!