By Dr Dan Be honest. When you read a novel, do you ever skip? Maybe your eyes slide past a long paragraph about the wallpaper, or you flip ahead to see when somebody finally says something. Almost every reader does it. Elmore Leonard, the crime and Western writer behind Get Shorty and Hombre, built one of the most useful writing rules ever printed around that simple habit. The advice In 2001, Leonard wrote a short piece for The New York Times series "Writers on Writing." In i