{"id":152,"date":"2010-02-21T23:16:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T05:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/elmore-leonards-ten-rules-for-writing-fiction\/"},"modified":"2010-06-05T17:51:10","modified_gmt":"2010-06-05T23:51:10","slug":"elmore-leonards-ten-rules-for-writing-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/elmore-leonards-ten-rules-for-writing-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Elmore Leonard&#8217;s Ten Rules for Writing Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"tweetbutton152\" class=\"tw_button\" style=\"\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattdebenham.com%2Fblog%2Felmore-leonards-ten-rules-for-writing-fiction%2F&amp;text=Elmore%20Leonard%26%238217%3Bs%20Ten%20Rules%20for%20Writing%20Fiction&amp;related=&amp;lang=en&amp;count=horizontal&amp;counturl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattdebenham.com%2Fblog%2Felmore-leonards-ten-rules-for-writing-fiction%2F\" class=\"twitter-share-button\"  style=\"width:55px;height:22px;background:transparent url('https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-tweet-button\/tweetn.png') no-repeat  0 0;text-align:left;text-indent:-9999px;display:block;\">Tweet<\/a><\/div><div id=\"fb_share_1\" style=\"float: right; margin-left: 10px;\"><a name=\"fb_share\" type=\"box_count\" share_url=\"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/elmore-leonards-ten-rules-for-writing-fiction\/\" href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php\">Share<\/a><\/div><div><script src=\"http:\/\/static.ak.fbcdn.net\/connect.php\/js\/FB.Share\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/div><p>This has been passed around a bit already, but I&#8217;m going to post it here in case you haven&#8217;t seen it yet:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2010\/feb\/20\/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one\">Elmore Leonard&#8217;s Ten Rules for Writing Fiction<\/a><\/p>\n<p>These are pretty hard to argue with. &nbsp;The article also features several other writers&#8217; lists &#8212; most of which aren&#8217;t as good as Leonard&#8217;s, but there&#8217;s still some very good advice there. &nbsp;(Even from Jonathan Franzen, who could stand to take some How Not to Sound Like a Cock lessons.)<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s another good rule, which I heard at a Richard Bausch lecture:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you have a character give a big ideological speech, make damn sure you don&#8217;t believe a word of it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>(My addendum: Ignoring this advice results in a narrative problem known as Sorkening.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div id=\"tweetbutton152\" class=\"tw_button\" style=\"\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattdebenham.com%2Fblog%2Felmore-leonards-ten-rules-for-writing-fiction%2F&amp;text=Elmore%20Leonard%26%238217%3Bs%20Ten%20Rules%20for%20Writing%20Fiction&amp;related=&amp;lang=en&amp;count=horizontal&amp;counturl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattdebenham.com%2Fblog%2Felmore-leonards-ten-rules-for-writing-fiction%2F\" class=\"twitter-share-button\"  style=\"width:55px;height:22px;background:transparent url('https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-tweet-button\/tweetn.png') no-repeat  0 0;text-align:left;text-indent:-9999px;display:block;\">Tweet<\/a><\/div><p>TweetShareThis has been passed around a bit already, but I&#8217;m going to post it here in case you haven&#8217;t seen it yet: Elmore Leonard&#8217;s Ten Rules for Writing Fiction These are pretty hard to argue with. &nbsp;The article also features several other writers&#8217; lists &#8212; most of which aren&#8217;t as good as Leonard&#8217;s, but there&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":312,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions\/312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}