[SKRIVA] Guardians skrivartips
- From: Ahrvid Engholm <ahrvid@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: skriva@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 05:20:00 -0400 (EDT)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one
Tips fr en rad skribenter. Utdrag av Elmore Leonard:
"1 Never open a book with weather. If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a
charac?ter's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The
reader is apt to leaf ahead look?ing for people. There are exceptions. If you
happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways than an Eskimo to describe ice and
snow in his book Arctic Dreams, you can do all the weather reporting you want.
2 Avoid prologues: they can be ?annoying, especially a prologue ?following an
introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in
non-fiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in
anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday, but
it's OK because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are
all about. He says: "I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have
nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out
what he looks like from the way he talks."
3 Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue
belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But
"said" is far less intrusive than "grumbled", "gasped", "cautioned", "lied". I
once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with "she asseverated" and
had to stop reading and go to the dictionary.
4 Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" ... he admonished gravely. To
use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now
exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the
rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used
to write historical romances "full of rape and adverbs".
5 Keep your exclamation points ?under control. You are allowed no more than two
or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with
exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful."
--Ahrvid
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