The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer, and Showcase Sunday is hosted by Books, Biscuits and Tea
and inspired by Pop Culture Junkie and the Story Siren. They're a chance to share news, a post to recap the past week on your
blog,
highlight our newest books and see what everyone else received for
review, borrowed from libraries, or bought.
Book stuff this week on Girl!Reporter
Top 10 Tuesday (#13) - most memorable secondary characters
Review - The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence
My week in books (#7) - a magnificent library, funniest fictional families, summer reading and Seamus Heaney
Books I added to my shelves
From the library I picked up Elmore Leonard's Djibouti, which looks fascinating. And from Books, Biscuits and Tea I won Talking to the Dead by Harry Bingham, which has a cool double cover (thanks Vicky!).
What have you been up to this week?
In honour of Elmore Leonard, who has died after having a stroke, I thought I'd take a look at his 10 rules of writing, so many of which I agree with wholeheartedly (especially numbers three and six).
Leonard was a talented writer who'll be missed, but he has left us with his lessons and words of wisdom, which will be around for a long time.
For a more detailed extract from his book 10 Rules of Writing, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, click here.
In the meantime here's a summary of the 10:
1 Never open a book with weather.
2
Avoid prologues.
3
Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4 Never use an adverb to modify the
verb "said".
5 Keep your exclamation points under control.
6 Never use the words "suddenly" or
"all hell broke loose".
7 Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8
Avoid detailed descriptions of characters, which Steinbeck covered.
9 Don't go into great detail
describing places and things, unless you're Margaret Atwood and can
paint scenes with language.
10 Try
to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
