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I was listening to someone quoting Elmore Leonard the other day – and then she laughed. And she’s right: he is funny. I mean, “Leave out the bits that readers tend to skip”? What does that mean? [...]

Elmore Leonard said: “Don’t write the bits that readers’ skip.” One reader* asks the obvious question: What are the bits that readers skip? On the face of it, it’s obvious: they skip the boring [...]

New writers often write too formally – as we were taught to write at school. Remember those ghastly business letters? They certainly couldn’t be accused of demonstrating any kind of writer’s [...]

When new writers are “using all their senses” to show us a person or landscape, they often neglect smell. And yet, it’s the most evocative of our sensory experiences. Emotions and memories are [...]

What do I love about Elmore Leonard’s dialogue? It’s terse, it’s droll, it’s economical. It punches above its weight. Take this sentence speech from Bandit: Jack said, “I’ve been to Carville. [...]