“These are the rules I’ve picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I’m writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what’s taking place in the story.”  —Elmore Leonard

I was listening to The Bestseller Experiment this week and one of the two Marks mentioned Elmore Leonard and his ten rules of writing.  I looked up these rules and they’re great, although I’m definitely guilty of breaking one or two of them from time to time. (Like just now, I had to go back and remove and overenthusiastic exclamation point from that last sentence. I do get points for having never opened a book with the weather or a prologue, but lose many for my ardour for using adverbs alongside the verb “said”.)

This article from Brainpickings expands on these rules far better than I ever could or you could always read Leonard’s book on the subject.