Danyl A. Doyle

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

Some writing advice takes a whole book to explain. Mark Twain needed one sentence and a joke about bugs. It may be the most memorable thing anyone has said about word choice, and it is just as useful now as it was in 1888. The advice "The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning." — Mark Twain, letter to George Bainton, 15 October 1888, published in The Art of Authorshi