READINGS IN LANGUAGE

29 best-selling fiction writers share their secrets to success

So you want to be a successful writer of fiction?

If you do, better read first the “Ten Rules for Writing Fiction,” a two-part article in the February 20, 2010 issue of the The Guardian of UK that puts together the advice of 29 successful fiction writers, among them such best-selling authors as Elmore Leonard (whose “10 Rules of Writing” had inspired the article), Neil Gaiman, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx, Margaret Atwood, Philip Pullman, and Jonathan Franzen.

Illustration by Andrzej Krauze, Guardian.co.uk

Here are the first four of Elmore Leonard’s prescriptions: using adverbs is a mortal sin, never open a book with weather, avoid prologues, and never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.

And here are Neil Gaiman’s first four: write; put one word after another; finish what you’re writing; and put it aside and read it pretending you’ve never read it before.

Annie Proulx’s first five: proceed slowly and take care; to ensure that you proceed slowly, write by hand; write slowly and by hand only about subjects that interest you; develop craftsmanship through years of wide reading; and rewrite and edit until you achieve the most felicitous phrase/sentence/paragraph/page/story/chapter.

Philip Pullman has only one: “My main rule is to say no to things like this, which tempt me away from my proper work.”

Want more of this interesting and intriguing stuff?

Read “Ten Rules for Writing Fiction” in The Guardian of UK now!

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