Elmore Leonard Quotes

I'm very much aware in the writing of dialogue, or even in the narrative too, of a rhythm. There has to be a rhythm with it … Interviewers have said, you like jazz, don’t you? Because we can hear it in your writing. And I thought that was a compliment.

You become a great writer by writing.

If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.

I tend to overwrite; I need a good editor.

I tend to plan as I write. And I want to leave myself open and the character open to keep on going until it seems to be the time to stop.

Sometimes I'll be writing something, and I say to myself, 'Okay, that's definitely DTB,' or, 'It's definitely Strapping.'

I had originally been looking at writing, including fiction.

Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one’s fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

It's one of the things writing students don't understand. They write a first draft and are quite disappointed, or often should be disappointed. They don't understand that they have merely begun, and that they may be merely beginning even in the second or third draft.

Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done.

I'm not a speed writer. I write slowly and revise obsessively. The end result tends to be good. That's where my strength is.

The best reason for putting anything down on paper is that one may then change it.

I tend to elongate the sentences as I'm writing and editing, and there is just something about the feeling of writing longhand that I really love.

Epithets, like pepper, Give zest to what you write; And if you strew them sparely, They whet the appetite: But if you lay them on too thick, You spoil the matter quite!

I don't write easily or rapidly. My first draft usually has only a few elements worth keeping. I have to find what those are and build from them and throw out what doesn't work, or what simply is not alive.

You can just start writing, but you're gonna go off on 10 or 12 starts and weird tangents, and yeah you'll have those pages to use later - to gift wrap some fish for your mother - but either way you're gonna have pages.

Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn't work, throw it away. It's a nice feeling, and you don't want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need.

Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceeding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in . . . The edit.

I don't card out my screenplays ever. I just have an idea I just sit down and write I don't edit. Sometimes the first draft will come out at 200 pages. I think and think and I go, "um this story is about the brother that appears on page 178." I go back and I rewrite.

It feels like when I write, it's intuitive. This is true of Frances, and it's true of this [The Funniest Movie Of The Summer].

Remember, it is no sign of weakness or defeat that your manuscript ends up in need of major surgery. This is a common occurrence in all writing, and among the best writers.

Royal Young's writing is that rare blend of irony and beauty.

I don't spend the day writing. I'll maybe write fresh copy for two hours, and then I'll go back and revise some of it and print what I like and then turn it off.

Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.

I see myself as a first-draft writer, so when I sit down to write something, the first draft is usually pretty close to the end draft. There will be some tweaks along the way, but it's not like I'll go 20 pages and throw it out and start again.