Help your biographer get it right

Biographers over the years have relied on letters as a source of information on their subject. These can be letters from the subject, letters to the subject, and letters about the subject by third parties. Sometimes both letters and replies exist, potentially even more useful to the biographer. Many of these will be to family members, if circumstances mean that they are separated by distance. Mozart would not have written so many letters to Leopold had they been living in the same place. But some are dashed off by inveterate letter writers.

For example, when Volume 5 of the “Letters of Ernst Hemingway (1932-1934)” was published, we learned that this was the latest instalment of an initiative to locate, fully annotate, and publish the nearly 6,000 surviving letters written by Hemingway, most of them previously unpublished. It is expected that the total number of volumes in the series would total seventeen. We are surely in the presence of an industry here.

But there are always pitfalls for the biographer. The writer may simply misremember details, even including the year an event took place. Or a given letter may be an attempt to cast the writer in a better light than justified by the facts. A writer may even, perish the thought, have an axe to grind.

In the case of a letter, this may be done in the expectation that only the recipient is likely to see it, but memoirs or autobiographies may be a further source of confusion, sometimes deliberate, and these are open to all.

In ‘Looking Back’ Maugham writes of this period, ‘The divorce had not been made absolute, and I could not have married Syrie just then even had I wanted to.’ But in fact it had and he could. (Selina Hastings)

Accepting these caveats, though, letters remain a valuable source of information. A model in this regard, or so it seems to me, is “Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music”, by Sergei Bertensson. There is hardly a statement in the book where the reader has to take Bertensson’s word for it, so well does he document Rachmaninoff’s life from letters. But he is only able to do this because the letters exist. What of the present age, where so many communicate by email and text? How can the biographer hope to deal with that?

At this point, it is tempting to trot out a phrase like “the art of letter writing” and claim it has died a death. But there will be some who compose an email as artfully as someone from the past might compose a letter. The problem then is how to access these emails. If the writer is still alive, he or she might make it possible. But if the writer has died, or the author is planning an “unauthorised” biography – essentially a hostile act – then the problem could be insurmountable. Password? Two stage authorisation? Facial recognition ID? An authenticator app? Accessing the material may be tricky, to say the least.

Comparing this situation to the past can be instructive. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote some 500 letters. One of the people he corresponded with was Hildegard von Bingen.

A correspondence of nearly 400 letters written in Latin has been preserved, exchanged between Hildegard and four popes, emperors, bishops, secular rulers, monks and nuns. Her correspondents came from all over Europe, including modern-day Germany, England, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Italy and Greece. (Fiona Maddocks)

Bernard died in 1153, Hildegard in 1179. And quite apart from their prodigious output, we have to marvel at the postal service of their time: covering most of Europe, it was very much better than we might suppose.

So if you want your life to be accurately documented when you pop your clogs, write letters to family, friends, colleagues, literary agents, editors, and publishers. And if you really want to cover the bases, write letters to your husband or wife as well – even though you live in the same house. We like to think your industry will be rewarded.

Writing or Speaking

I first came across this subject when young. I used to cycle out along the West Sands Road in St Andrews (Fife) early in the morning, and sometimes saw a man declaiming quite loudly while walking along. His name was the Reverend Wilfrid Hulbert and he belonged to one of the smaller Christian denominations, either Methodist or Congregational, I can no longer remember which and, many years on, still don’t know the difference.

He was doing one of two things; composing his sermon for the Sunday to come or, having composed it, was trying it on for size. If the latter, it was a good idea. Writing may look good on the page but may not read so swell when breath and voice are applied.

Someone else who composed on the move was novelist, Nigel Tranter. The following is a quotation from the Guardian obituary.

Each morning he would leave his house in East Lothian and begin a long walk over the nature reserve at nearby Aberlady Bay. As he stalked out along the shoreline he was an unmistakable figure. In stout boots, flat cap and sensible tweeds, he looked just like any other bird-watcher but for one oddity: in his hands he carried small sheets of paper, protected by a polythene bag in inclement weather.

He is said to have written some 1,000 words on each of his walks, and if composing by speaking is difficult, composing while walking along has got to be much harder. The writer would have to keep on stopping to write anything at all. There may be other authors who have used this technique, but I imagine they are small in number.

Then there is the interesting case of Edgar Wallace.

Edgar Wallance plaque, Nr. 107 Fleet Street

Then there is the interesting case of Edgar Wallace, who dictated his novels and short stories for his secretary to type out. At the time he was writing, or should we say speaking, this was more difficult than it is now. According to his Wikipedia entry, he spoke his words onto wax cylinders, which gives rise to a theory about his writing.

This may be why he was able to work at such high speed and why his stories have narrative drive. Many of Wallace’s successful books were dictated like this over two or three days, locked away with cartons of cigarettes and endless pots of sweet tea, often working pretty much uninterrupted in 72 hours. (Wikipedia)

Speaking for myself, I would fall at the first hurdle, the endless pots of sweet tea. Yet now, if an author wishes to speak rather than write, life is very much easier. As I type this, I notice a panel on the home ribbon which shows a graphic of a microphone with the word ‘dictate’ below it. I’ve never tried it but I’m told it works.

And then there are the ideas which enter our minds unbidden when we are cutting our toenails or boarding a bus. I used to write them down, but quite often now I use a Voice Memo app to record them. How nifty is that? Very, when I remember to replay them. Hand-written notes have a physical existence which reminds us that they should be read.

Setting the Scene

If you are an author who writes fantasy – talking bears, flying witches adept at airborne archery, you know the sort of thing – then setting scenes accurately is unlikely to concern you much. If nothing else is realistic, why would your locations be?

Moving on to those of us at ground level, decisions must be made. Starting with historical novelists, the approach will surely be researching what your chosen locations were like at the time your book is set. What was Naples like in1640 when your heroine, Artemisia, was active with oil on canvas? Not like the Naples we meet in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan books, we can be sure of that. Recourse to libraries in person or online will be called for. I am not a historical novelist, but I’m sure they cover their bases as well as they can and if they make the occasional mistake it won’t be for want of trying to get it right.

For authors whose work is set in present times, or near enough, there are two ways to go. Knowing that you’re writing a work of fiction, you think to yourself I might as well make up the settings as well with an occasional nod to actuality. In Paris, a reference to the Eiffel Tower, in Edinburgh to the Castle, or Arthur’s Seat and the Salisbury Crags. Yes, that should cover it. But not everyone will  be comfortable with that approach and here I can only speak for myself.

Three of my novels are set in Edinburgh, where I have lived for many years. Although I know the city well, I visited the sites which would figure in each book and took many photographs as an aid to memory. For example, Interleaved Lives.

Scenes set in Dublin and Traquair are  supported by photographs. One location within the city is a disused church.

The references to this building are detailed and accurate, though changes may have occurred since I finished writing it.

But the fourth book, The Ears of a Cat, never comes near my native city, and instead visits Berlin, Los Angeles, Hokkaido and Charmouth (a coastal town in the English county of Dorset). Of these places, I have only ever set foot in Charmouth, so where does that leave me in search of accuracy?

Were it not for the internet, it would leave me up the creek without a paddle. Now, though, I can travel far and wide without leaving the house. A major aid here is Street View, which not only enables the armchair traveler to visit a given street on the map, it also enables that traveler to see all its buildings.  And as if that were not enough, travelers who have actually been there are often kind enough to post photographs of their visit, a further source of reference. Without these aids, I could not have written the Berlin chapters of Ears. In one there is a reference to Leise Park and a gravestone there. The gravestone exists and the reference to the inscription is accurate. How amazing that such a thing is possible? When I was younger than I am today, it was not.

Click on the image for a tour of Leise Park.

LEISE PARK | quiet park

(I felt the first edition of the Ears of a Cat was unsatisfactory in some respects. A revised edition will be published early in 2023).

 

A Matter of Death and Life

My friend, Linda, bought me a book of this title. It was jointly written by Irvin D Yalom and Marilyn Yalom. Linda had read several of Irvin Yalom’s books whereas I had never heard of him although he is, according to the back cover, ‘an internationally renowned psychiatrist’. Because they have the same surname, I refer to them here as Irvin and Marilyn as if I know them. I don’t.

Marilyn had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma (a cancer) and the idea was to write alternate chapters concerning how this diagnosis affected them both. At a certain point about two thirds of the way through the book, Marilyn was unable to continue and Irvine had to finish it himself. They had been married for sixty-five years so this was never going to be easy.

I found this book unnerving since I had recently lost my wife, Audrey, to cancer of the throat and it turned out that both Irvin and myself had a problem in common with atrial fibrillation and were on the same anticoagulant drug, apixaban, not a drug to be taken lightly.

Though both knew that her cancer was terminal, Marilyn tried two different approaches to fending it off. Neither of them worked but both of them left her feeling dreadful. And this led to a desire on her part to take a medical way out of life – something which is possible in California if two medical practitioners agree. Irvin was reluctant to accept that she felt this way since it would involve losing her entirely but, to put a stop to her suffering, he had to agree with her in the end that her life was no longer worth living.

The book struck a chord or two. The first was the similarity in our situations. The second was another point in common. Both Irvin and myself have been subject to irrational responses and thoughts. The one which struck me most was a constant desire to talk to my wife, knowing full well she was dead. In part, this was because in the later stages of the disease she was house-bound and I reported back to her even more than usual. But I continued to talk with her anyway. Which also brings up the subject of photographs, and here I note a difference. Irvin had a photograph of Marilyn printed, but found it too painful to look at and turned it to the wall. I had three made and look at them all the time.

This desire to talk to my wife, which I often give way to, is plainly irrational, yet Audrey had told me often in the past that I relied too much on logic so, who knows, she might approve of this development. Can these conflicting aspects of character be reconciled? Irvin believes they can and quotes the views of a professional contact (unnamed).

Memory is no longer believed to be a unitary phenomenon, rather, memory is comprised of distinct systems that can work independently, have different neuroanatomic loci, and can even work at odds with each other. He describes the dichotomy between “explicit”  (or “declarative”) memory versus “implicit” (or “procedural”) memory.

Explicit memory is conscious and is dependent on medial temporal lobe structures as well as the cortex of the brain.

Implicit memory is largely unconscious and often underlies skills, habits, and other automatic behaviors. It is processed in different parts of the brain: the basal ganglia for skills, the amygdala for emotional responses.

These two kinds of memory can operate independently, almost unaware of each other, and can even be in conflict with each other. (P 178)

This would explain, for example, why I keep on wanting to tell Audrey things, and often do, despite the fact that I am only too well aware that she has died. It would also give each one of us an out if we were embarrassed by our irrationality. It’s not me, doc, it’s my brain!

A third point of contact is that both Marilyn and Audrey were looked after by their husbands for many months, both wished to die at home, and both did. But that leaves Irvin and I on our own. If we develop a terminal illness there are no wives left to look after us as we looked after them. Personally, I would hope to pop my clogs by going to bed one night and not waking up the next morning. What I would want to avoid is a lengthy illness during which I would have to be looked after. Who would fulfill this role? There is no one I would wish to inflict this on, so how to leave the departure lounge if the need arises? Well, fortunately for people like me, Irvin has given us a detailed account of how this might be achieved. This is part of it.

Dr.  P first gives her some medication to prevent vomiting and then prepares the lethal drugs in two glasses. The first glass contains 100 milligrams of digoxin, enough to stop the heart. The second glass contains morphine 15 grams, amitriptyline 8 grams, and diazepam 1 gram. (P140)

Digoxin is available here in the UK by prescription only. It is derived from digitalis, so those of us wishing to use this method may have to grow our own foxgloves.

It is only to be expected that this book will deal with grief, and it does. Technically, I know what this word means but I have no feeling for it; if a word must be used at all, I am happier with the word ‘anguish’. However that may be, there are two occasions at least when it is suggested that we who are left behind can get over it in one, maybe two years. Inhabiting the irrational end of the spectrum as I now do, I find it surprising that anyone would want to get over it. I regard grief as my friend, keeping my wife’s memory fully alive. I realise, though, that if the person left behind is much younger than I am, they might want to marry again, or whatever it is people do these days, in which case getting over it might be a desired outcome, allowing them to ‘move on’.

Is this a good book? On one level it is; it is a well written account of two people facing the end of their relationship, how each of them deals with it, and how the survivor, Irvin, copes with his loss. Does it help others in the same or a similar situation? I can only speak for myself here, but the answer is no. How could it?

To Publish or Not To Publish

Margaret, a friend of my wife, used to write quite a bit. She told us once that I figured in one of her stories but despite that fact – or perhaps because of it – she wouldn’t let us read it. In fact, she wouldn’t let us or anyone else, read anything she’d written. Which gave rise to the question, why had she written her stories in the first place? We both asked her this but got no clear answer. So we have to assume that she wrote for her own satisfaction because, when you come to think of it, she did have one reader. Herself.

I am not suggesting that Margaret is typical in this respect. Or in many others. For example, she disputed that there was such a thing as poetry. When I wasted a couple of hours drafting a response to her view, she replied along these lines: I take these points but I still think . . . Putting it another way, she didn’t take these points at all. Her view was that poetry was an invention of people in the upper classes who were pulling a fast one on their social inferiors. You could call this approach Marxist insofar as it rested on class distinctions. And this  was odd in itself, because she was very well off.

With the exception of the Margarets of this world, most people would assume that writing is a form of communication with the greater world, though there are a few exceptions. Those who keep diaries might well prefer that others don’t read them, allowing them to communicate their thoughts and feelings to the page, paper or electronic, without fear of contradiction or exposure. Some are so apprehensive about it that they resort to code (for example, Samuel Pepys  and Anne Lister). Then there are those who write memoirs of their lives for which the only intended audience is their children and grandchildren, and who would have a problem with that?

But Margaret was not writing a diary or a memoir. She could have chosen to publish her stories but had no intention of doing so. But at least she had the choice. There have been some who have been obliged to have their writing circulate in manuscript, passed from hand to hand. An obvious case of this was samizdat in the Soviet Union – which might well make a return under the oppressive regime of Vlad the Vicious. This approach was forced on writers such as Mihail Bulgakov who were frowned on by the authorities. Of course, those same writers would probably have chosen to publish in the traditional way had they been able to do so.

Moving to the realm of music, it is interesting to compare the reputations of Joseph and Michael Haydn. It is almost always the case that mention is made of ‘Haydn’ as if only Joseph wrote music.

In fact, his brother Michael wrote music of great quality and a lot of it. But where Joseph made sure his music was published, Michael made no attempt to publish his.

This did not prevent his reputation reaching far and wide during his lifetime. His work was commissioned by the Spanish court (Missa Hispanica) and he was honoured in Sweden. Mozart, who had some trouble with sacred music when it came to style, wrote to his sister asking for copies of Michael’s work. And Leopold Mozart, while doing his best to undermine him in favour of his son in public, privately expressed a true appreciation of Michael Haydn’s talent.

When Michael died his achievements gradually faded from view. There are probably two reasons for this. As was recognized during his lifetime, he excelled in sacred music, and some people prefer symphonies and concertos, though he wrote quite a few of them as well. But a major factor will have been that his works, never published, were not easily available. It was necessary to search them out.

We are fortunate now that they are being sought after and performed, often to a very high standard. Discographies may not reflect this much, but there have been many live performances in recent years, some of them exceptionally good. Which is where Youtube comes into its own and where you can find them if you look.

The following performance is outstanding.

(The wonderful Hanover Girls Choir on this recording should not be confused with the Hanover Choir based in London, which is named after Hanover Square and includes male voices.)

Accuracy or Invention of Character

This post concerns these two approaches when it comes to fiction. (I like to think that writers of non-fiction don’t resort to invention.) It is also restricted to my own view on this subject without prejudice to what any other writer might do.

I have written six novels, two of which I have not attempted to publish. In one case the reason was that the book might have been deemed defamatory, though had this happened my defence would have been accuracy. Despite the fact that the subject is now dead, I would follow the same principle. I don’t consider it acceptable to defame someone, even if they are dead, for the purposes of fiction. There are no doubt many examples of this, but one which comes to mind (my mind, at least) is Antonio Salieri. This poor man has been traduced several times, for example, by Alexander Pushkin, Rimsky-Korsakov (after Pushkin) and most egregiously in the play Amadeus by Peter Schaffer, later made into a film. 

There was undoubtedly some rivalry between Salieri and Mozart, but there is also evidence of Salieri’s support for Mozart on several occasions, and also much evidence of Salieri’s kindness to others. When it came to teaching his speciality was singing – not an area Mozart ever entered – and it is known that he gave tuition free of charge except to the wealthy. Then there was his reaction to the death of his student, Marianna von Auenbrugger, at the age of 23. Marianna composed as well as played and when she died Salieri, at his own expense, published her Sonata in E-flat as a memorial to her. He was obviously deeply affected by the death of this talented young woman. 

Making things up is clearly a contentious subject and very much with us today. When the film Titanic aired, relatives of the first officer, William McMaster Murdoch, took exception to the portrayal of this gentleman, apparently with some reason.

But in case this has been forgotten, there are more recent examples. Over the past few years, a series called The Crown has been aired on Netflix. Unless the writers were flies on private walls, grouse moors and many other places on numerous occasions, the dialogue between members of the monarchy and those associated with them is invented. Okay, so the exact words were made up, but perhaps they bear accurate witness to the thoughts and feelings of those involved? For the most part, there is  no way of knowing. And some of these people are still with us today, notably Charles and Camilla who, I read, will shortly hit our screens in the forthcoming series of The Crown. The fact that some of us don’t consider this a good idea does not make it illegal: if it were, injunctions would surely be flying. For my part, it amazes me that writers can legally put words into the mouths of living people like this.

And what do we make of the series, Blonde, based on the  biography of Marilyn Monroe by Joyce Carol Oates? I could, of course, follow the fashion of the times and insert an image of Marilyn at this point but prefer not to do so. What would it add? Most people already know what she looked like. 

To me this subject raises a number of question. For example, when we die, does our reputation die with us or is everyone free to trash it? Or how about this: can novelists and screen writers just make us up?

 

The Teahouse of the September Moon

There are far more coffee shops where I live than there were twenty years ago. Many of these are run by chains such as Costa, Starbucks and Caffè Nero. But there are independents too, some of them excellent. In the past, patrons used to gather in coffee shops and discuss burning issues of the day – the use of gas for street lighting, the benefits of laudanum in the creative process. On occasion, they even discussed books. But now, as far as I can tell, the emphasis is on coffee, pastries and other such delectables.

These three Chinese girls are at the counter of my favourite independent, the Kilimajaro in Edinburgh, clearly suffering from the existential agony of choice. So many goodies to choose from, what should we have?

And did I just mention Chinese? In the past three or four years, there has been an noticeable increase in the number of tea shops here. This is very evident in the part of the city I inhabit, the south side. And I am amazed to find the great variety of teas on offer.

The reason for this increase in tea shops seems clear. The south side is home to the University of Edinburgh which, every year, recruits a large number of Chinese students. And where there is a market, someone will try to cater for it.

So the next time you visit us here in Edinburgh, don’t hesitate to pop into one of our new tea shops. You don’t have to speak Mandarin or Cantonese, you can always point to the picture of your brew of choice.

Lost Skills

Some skills are not so much lost as replaced by others. In this case, I’m thinking of audio recording. I used to record a lot, mainly actors and theatre SFX, and greatly enjoyed it. In times past, which is where I belong, people like me would use open reel tape decks both in the studio and on location. They were very well engineered and a joy to work with. The power they produced when rewinding and fast forwarding was amazing. You could feel the draught on your face.

There weren’t so many portable open reel machines, but they were good. You could tape an interview on location, edit it with a splicing block, razor and chinagraph pencil, and the edited version was of broadcast quality. The leader in the field was Nagra, wonderful machines but expensive. If you didn’t have that kind of money you could always use a Uher. They were excellent too and cost a bit less.

Although a few people used open reel decks in the home they were by no means common. For two reasons. The first was size: they tended to be large and heavy. The second was the fact that the user had to thread the audio tape from the full spool to the empty spool to start recording or replaying – and taking the correct route to get there required a little knowledge and a modicum of physical skill. Oh, and did I mention leader tape?

So these ‘problems’ were addressed by manufacturers having an eye on the mass market, Phillips, for example, and they came up with the audio cassette. The audio cassette was, and still, is very small, so the machine used to record on it or replay it could also be small. And they went down very well with the public at large since these neat little audio cassettes came ready spooled. At a stroke, the hassle was removed!  As a result, cassette machines really took off. People could be seen jogging along pavements with their Walkmans and they became a standard feature of cars for many years. But the price paid for this user-friendly miniaturisation was a big reduction in recording quality (explained in a note below).

In fact, the real cause of the loss of open reel recording skills was not the audio cassette but the rise of the computer, which allowed us to dispense with tape altogether. We have now moved from the analogue era (tape) to the digital (computer recording and editing). The program I used at work was Pro Tools, which was and still is a sophisticated recording and editing package.

So, what’s it to be: analogue lor digital? When I recently suggested a solution to an audio problem it was soon pointed out to me that my solution involved straying into the analogue domain. This was true, but with it came the assumption that digital is inherently superior to analogue. It’s certainly superior to the audio cassette format, but is it superior, say, to an open reel machine recording at 15 inches per second? I don’t think so.

You could argue that a good analogue recording gives us the whole wave where the digital recording gives us samples of it. So many that we almost have the whole wave, but it can never give us the wave in its entirety. So how is that better? And it’s worth pointing out that we all have analogue ears!

Where digital recording scores, though, is when it comes to editing, as the previous clip showed. Lifting part of a recording and relocating it is easy, stretching the on-screen representation of the wave to find a precise edit point is easy, deleting part of a recording is easy.

And these are just three examples of how wonderful it is to edit using good software. There are many more. But there is a downside. With on-screen editing it is possible to make a singer or an actor sound much better than he/she actually is. I know because I’ve done it.

So, as technology develops, we replace old skills with new ones because it’s the obvious thing to do and we old timers are left on the shore watching the tide go out. But that’s OK. We can live with that.

Note on Audio Cassettes

One thing cassettes cannot do is make recordings of broadcast quality. There are two reasons for this: the width of the tape and the speed at which it passes the record/replay heads. The size of a cassette tape is determined by the size of the cassette. The width of the tape is only 0.15 inches (3.81mm). This narrow width has to accommodate four tracks – the left and right channels of Side A and the left and right channels of Side B. And here we meet a misconception arising from the use of the word ‘Side’. All four tracks are actually on the same side of the tape because audio tape is only recordable on one side.

As if this isn’t demanding enough, each of these four tracks has to be separated, otherwise the listener would experience crosstalk – two tracks being played at once and one of them might be heard backwards. In short, very little tape is available for each track. So let’s come up with an idea which makes this bad situation even worse. The tape crawls past the heads at a mere 1 7/8 inches per second. The result is noise, because too much information is being crammed onto too little tape.

Compare this to an open reel machine using one or two inch tape passing the heads at 15 inches per second. Here there is ample room for the information being recorded, it is no longer crammed onto tiny amounts of tape and there is no problem with noise.

Noise reduction systems were designed deal with the cassette noise problem. The best known of these by a long way are the various versions from Dolby Laboratories, founded by Ray Dolby. They are very ingenious, though to my ear the results, while far less noisy, don’t quite correspond to the original sounds being recorded. But few people buying a commercially recorded audio cassette of the Grateful Dead have ever heard the original so they aren’t likely to notice.

 

 

A Crowded Marketplace

At this time of year where I live, you can hardly walk along the street without dodging people with suitcases on wheels, many of them young. Quite a few of these seasonal visitors are hoping to make a name for themselves by showcasing their talent, which often involves trying to be funny. But however good they are, this can only work if people come to see their show. And so we have a serious outbreak of posters.

These railings at St Patrick’s Square bear a heavy load, as do many other places such as Chambers Street and the South Bridge.

Those responsible for marketing and publicity often try to make their charges stand out from the crowd by having them adopt a zany expression and even zanier posture. But sometimes they do come up with an arresting image.

 

So what do we make of this one? It’s a steam iron, no dloubt, but on this occasion Miss Clarke is supplying the steam. Are we hooked? Just in case the image isn’t sufficient, someone called Jordan Gray is quoted as claiming that the Sian Clarke Experience is a “Funny and Terrifying Anus Tightening Mind F*ck.” I don’t know about you, but I can get along just fine without Miss Clarke having this effect on my anus. Ultimately, though,  the only way to know if this advertising is effective is to discover how many people turn up for the show each night.

For those of us who write books and try to sell them the process, though not so obvious, is similar. We don’t compete with each other by displaying large clover blow-ups side by side on railings, but our titles can be found next to each other in bookshops and – more akin to the St Patrick’s Square situation – side by side on web pages.

Rules for Writers

Over the last few years there have been many posts on this subject. Usually, the emphasis is on what to avoid. For example, the aspiring writer should avoid adjectives, adverbs, verbs ending in ‘ing’ and the passive voice. It has also been suggested that question marks should be avoided, so presumably questions should too. Not so helpful when your detective is interrogating a suspect.

In some cases, writers are pulling our legs with their suggestions. For example, Margaret Atwood tells us not to take a pen on a plane because it might leak. So we should take a pencil. Which she then qualifies by saying we should take two in case the first one breaks. Mildly witty, but not so helpful. Stephen King’s advice to writers is well known and easily found online, so let us consider instead what Elmore Leonard has to say on the subject.

His first rule is never to open a book with weather. This may be well advised since the weather, in daily life, is often relegated to small talk. Those with nothing else to say, comment on the wind and rain.

His second rule is to avoid prologues. Some prologues are clearly designed as hooks to lure the reader in, but Leonard would probably say ‘just get on with it.’ There will be exceptions, but this advice is probably good.

His next rule concerns the handling of dialogue. ‘Never use a verb other than said to carry dialogue.’ There is something to be said for this one too if it discourages us from using verbs at one remove. ‘I give up,’ she sighed. Maybe she did sigh but she definitely spoke.

Next, on an associated topic, he advises us never to use an adverb to modify the verb said. ‘I’m cashing in my chips,’ Victor said vehemently. Leonard would strike the ‘vehemently’. You can too if you like. One group of people who have taken this advice to heart, though in the worst possible way, is tennis players who, when interviewed, often state their intention to ‘play aggressive.’ This habit of reducing adverbs to adjectives is never recommended in indirect speech, though it might occasionally happen that one of your less-well-educated characters speaks in this way. Tennis, anyone?

His next rules deal with excessive use of exclamation marks, avoidance of words such as ‘suddenly’, and limiting the use of regional dialects. Then we have his injunction to avoid detailed descriptions of characters, places and things. Why? Well, we don’t want so much detail that the narrative flow grinds to a halt. On the other hand, some writers (not very many) are masters of descriptive writing, so if you are in this select group you might water down this advice.

Referring to the essay in which he expounded these rules Leonard said: “My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” Note that he said ‘sounds’ like writing, not ‘reads’ like writing. This is important for two reasons. The first is that what we write should read well. If you have trouble reading out loud a passage you have written there is more work to be done. If you are aiming for an audio book as well this is even more important.

The second reason why this matters is punctuation. There is a set of conventions governing punctuation of the written word, but I have usually found it helpful to mark up scripts for reading aloud, and as often as not these punctuation points diverge from the convention. For example, my version of Word often tells me that a comma isn’t needed at a certain place. Well, strictly speaking it may not be, but if it helps the talent reading it to the mic it can save several takes.

Another habit your software may have is pointing out that a certain phrase might be more succinct: where you have used five words three would be enough. And this may be the case, but your slighter longer expression might carry an emphasis which the shorter version lacks. And then there is the question of rhythm. The shorter version may lack the rhythm of your original. Ultimately, these are questions of style and are, or should be, under the control of the author rather than software.

How relevant are rules for a writer hoping to be published? While some might cite the old adage that rules are there to be broken, this would not be safe at the outset of a writer’s career. Keeping to reasonable rules is more likely to result in a marketable product. No publisher would consider a book which shows a lack of competence in, and respect for, basic writing skills.

But, as was pointed out at the beginning of this post, rules for writers are forever telling you what you should avoid. What they never tell you is what you should actually do. The truth is, we must all work this out for ourselves.