[Stu]

Just read through the thread and thought I'd throw out some random musings:

• Elmore Leonard is probably used as the starting point of the article 'cos he's well known and his list of rules has been around for awhile. The journalist probably just found it on the internet and said, "Hmm, I wonder what rules other writers use."

• I've not read Michael Moorcock for ages but I really enjoyed Colin Greenland's book-length interview with him, Death is No Obstacle, in which he talks about his writing; covering such topics as the Lester Dent Master Plot. I found the whole book facinating and very helpful with my own writing.

• Along with pretty much anyone else who has commented on Neil Gaiman in this thread I love Sandman but am underwhelmed by his prose work. That said, I am toying with the idea of purchasing his second short story collection Fragile Things as I've been told it marks a turning point in his prose style.

• Normally I try to avoid using "uttered", "muttered", "exclaimed" etc. I also try to avoid using "said". Just the dialogue, plain and unadorned. Comes from personal preference and trying to keep short stories as tight as possible so I don't exceed the word count. Obviously there's nothing wrong with the above words and I do use them on occasion. Offhand the only writer I can think of who successfully eliminated all dialogue tags was James M Cain but I'm sure there are others.

• I find that my own "rules" for writing can be very helpful on occasion but other times they can be quite stifling and even quite damaging to my stories if I try applying them in situations where they're not really applicable. That over-reliance on rules also spills over into my reading -- if I've spent ages formulating a a specific technique to overcome a particular problem and am now completely convinced that it was the best solution then I feel everyone else should use the same technique. It gets to the point that if I see another writer apply a different technique I find that instead of saying, "Oh, they found another way around that problem. Good for them" I tend to scream, "They've done it wrong! How can this other technique possibly work when I've spent so long deciding that it doesn't? This person isn't a real writer, they're a charaltan! All their books should be burned! Indeed I shall start with this very copy that I hold in my hands!" Which probably explains why I've been banned from my local library.