Ten Rules for Writing Fiction

Writer friends are passing around an amusing link that's actually two links. First we've got Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules for Writing Fiction. With the preamble that "using adverbs is a mortal sin," he offers such sound advice as "never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue" and "use regional dialect, patois, sparingly." It's a good list, I recommend it; people shell out big bucks for MFAs and this is basically what they learn.

But then there's Ten Rules for Writing Fiction (Part Two) i...