Elmore Leonard dies at 87

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http://cnn.tv/2013/08/20/showbiz/elmore-leonard-obit/index.html

Not sure who he is, but CNN saw fit to send me an alert.

EDIT: I guess he wrote the novels that were the basis of the movies "Get Shorty" and "3:10 to Yuma", and the basis of the TV series "Justified".

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Type: Discussion • Score: 2 • Views: 902 • Replies: 10

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@oralloy,

One of my favorite writers.

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@roger,

Me too. Michigan boy. Tight writing.

1 Reply

@PUNKEY,

And really good dialog.

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I am familiar with Hombre and 3:10 to Yuma through the movies based on them. I have heard of Get Shorty. Aside from that I am not familiar with his writing. I did like his westerns, based on how I reacted to the ones I mentioned. The remake of 3:10 to Yuma destroyed some elements that made the old version work. One criticism, Glenn Ford's character starts out by shooting through one of his own gang members to kill a law man. From that point on, the story works to make him a sympathetic character and in the end he heroically does the right thing. Silk purse/sow's ear

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@roger,

mine too. Ive actually tried to emulate his style in my professional writing. I try to use a narrative with action instead of laong bothersome descriptive paragraphs.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

I like his "10 rules of writing".
He is one genre writer that is taken seriously and his writing is actually taught in MFA coursework at elites.

Quote:

What’s Leonard’s secret to being both popular and respectable? Perhaps you’ll find some clues in his 10 tricks for good writing: *
1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it

1 Reply

@farmerman,

Outstanding, especially #10. That final rule sounds like the actor doing the role of a busboy. The director told him he looked like a pretty poor actor. The actor told him he thought he was supposed to look like a busboy - not an actor.

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@roger,

A fine, fine writer. He started out writing mainly Westerns (most of which were made into movies) then graduated to crime fiction (some of which was made into movies).He had a real gift for both dialogue and for describing situations in a way that became totally believable in the reader's mind, no matter how unlikely they might have been in real life.

I know 87 is a ripe and decent old age but I will miss not seeing new titles by Elmore Leonard.

1 Reply

@Lustig Andrei,

Look what they did with that novel that was supposed to be the last one by Robert Parker but instead was cobbled together from Parkers notes by some douche bag who was hired by Parker's executor to finish for publication. It was a POS.

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@farmerman,

Yes, much like most of Hemingway's posthumous works (which I assiduously refuse to even read). There's a reason why a dead author's unpublished works should stay unpublished. They weren't ready for publication, needed more work. Otherwise the author would have submitted them to his/her editor/publisher already.

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Elmore Leonard dies at 87

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