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The Dickens of Detroit (Elmore Leonard)

May 9, 2012 by Scott W. Smith

Since for the last few days I’ve been kicking around Michigan on this blog I thought I’d pull a quote from Detroit writer Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty, 3:10 to Yuma). In the above video Leonard talks about how he usually starts writing based on characters. (As opposed to Stephen King who usually starts with a situation, or Rod Serling who said he started with theme.)

“Who’s good in this [story] and who’s bad ? That’s the fun of it. Just figure out what’s going to happen. But I do it as I’m writing, so that I don’t stop and try to outline a whole book because that’s a waste of time. Because you’re going to get better ideas much later on…I don’t ever know all the way through what’s going to happen.”
Elmore Leonard

Leonard’s not a great role model if you’re looking for excuses not to write. Have a job? So did Leonard when he was starting out, so he’d wake up at 5 AM to write for a couple of hours before going to his day job. Don’t have the best writing software or even a computer? Leonard started out writing with a pen and a yellow pad—and that’s still how he writes. Check out this link, Elmore Leonard—Schedule and Process.

And as a bonus here’s the first part of a series on Leonard from the TV program World Class Detroiters:

Related posts:

Writing Quote #24 (Elmore Leonard)
Screenwriting Software vs. Ballpoint Pen
The Breakfast Club for Writers

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Posted in Miscellaneous | Tagged Elmore Leonard | 3 Comments

3 Responses

  1. on May 9, 2012 at 11:06 am Screenwriting From Iowa » The Dickens of Detroit (Elmore Leonard)

    […] Since for the last few days I’ve been kicking around Michigan on this blog I thought I’d pull a quote from Detroit writer Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty, 3:10 to Yuma). In the above video Leonard talks about how he usually starts writing based on characters. “Who’s good in this [story] and who’s bad ? That’s […] Original Source… […]


  2. on May 9, 2012 at 1:01 pm mypenandme

    I enjoyed this video. Thanks for posting it. Very useful, as always. 🙂


  3. on May 9, 2012 at 1:13 pm Scott W. Smith

    The good ones always make it sound easy, don’t they? Like, just follow a character into interesting places. That’s where the old brain tends to divide all writers.



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