Reglas para escritores [Por Docena]

Tras las '10 Reglas para Escribir' de Elmore Leonard, el periódico The Guardian publicó en dos partes [1] [2] los consejos que varios escritores británicos contemporáneos proponen respecto al oficio de escribir.

Las ideas, aunque repetitivas para algunos, son lúdicas en la mayoría de los casos. Vale la pena darles una leída, aunque reconozco que la extensión del artículo es exagerada y cansada.

Es por ello que a continuación les pongo los puntos que me llamaron la atención en cada una de las participaciones. Si confían en mi, les habré resumido las propuestas más interesantes/lúdicas; de otro modo, cada uno de los siguientes extractos puede funcionar como una invitación para que amplíen la lectura.

Una última advertencia: el siguiente contenido se encuentra en inglés. Si la barrera del idioma les representa algún inconveniente, pueden emplear la herramienta de Google Translate para que se den una idea de los siguientes párrafos.



Da click aquí para leer el contenido siguiente en español


Elmore Leonard

• Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character.
• My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Diana Athill

• Read it aloud to yourself because that's the only way to be sure the rhythms of the sentences are OK

Margaret Atwood

• You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you're on your own. ­Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.
• Don't sit down in the middle of the woods. If you're lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.
• Prayer might work. Or reading ­something else. Or a constant visual­isation of the holy grail that is the finished, published version of your resplendent book.

Roddy Doyle

• Do, occasionally, give in to temptation. Wash the kitchen floor, hang out the washing. It's research.

Helen Dunmore

• Don't worry about posterity – as Larkin (no sentimentalist) observed "What will survive of us is love".

Geoff Dyer

• Do it every day. Make a habit of putting your observations into words and gradually this will become instinct. This is the most important rule of all and, naturally, I don't follow it.

Anne Enright

• The way to write a book is to actually write a book. A pen is useful, typing is also good. Keep putting words on the page.

Richard Ford

• Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer's a good idea.

Jonathan Franzen

• Never use the word "then" as a ­conjunction – we have "and" for this purpose. Substituting "then" is the lazy or tone-deaf writer's non-solution to the problem of too many "ands" on the page.
• Write in the third person unless a ­really distinctive first-person voice ­offers itself irresistibly.

Esther Freud

• Don't wait for inspiration. Discipline is the key.
• Trust your reader. Not everything needs to be explained. If you really know something, and breathe life into it, they'll know it too.

Neil Gaiman

• Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
• Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.
• Laugh at your own jokes.
• The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you're allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it's definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it ­honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

David Hare

• Never complain of being misunderstood. You can choose to be understood, or you can choose not to.
• Style is the art of getting yourself out of the way, not putting yourself in it.
• Never take advice from anyone with no investment in the outcome.

PD James

• Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft. The greater your vocabulary the more ­effective your writing.

AL Kennedy

• Remember writing doesn't love you. It doesn't care. Nevertheless, it can behave with remarkable generosity. Speak well of it, encourage others, pass it on.

Hilary Mantel

• If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.

Michael Moorcock

• Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy their plots and characters in order to tell your own story, just as people learn to draw and paint by copying the masters.
• Introduce your main characters and themes in the first third of your novel.
• If you are writing a plot-driven genre novel make sure all your major themes/plot elements are introduced in the first third, which you can call the introduction.

Michael Morpurgo

• Ted Hughes gave me this advice and it works wonders: record moments, fleeting impressions, overheard dialogue, your own sadnesses and bewilderments and joys.

Andrew Motion

• Decide when in the day (or night) it best suits you to write, and organise your life accordingly.

Joyce Carol Oates

• Unless you are writing something very avant-garde – all gnarled, snarled and "obscure" – be alert for possibilities of paragraphing.
• Unless you are writing something very post-modernist – self-conscious, self-reflexive and "provocative" – be alert for possibilities of using plain familiar words in place of polysyllabic "big" words.

Annie Proulx

• Rewrite and edit until you achieve the most felicitous phrase/sentence/paragraph/page/story/chapter.

Philip Pullman

• My main rule is to say no to things like this, which tempt me away from my proper work.

Ian Rankin

• Learn what criticism to accept.

Will Self

• You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the awareness that this ghastly sensation will never, ever leave you, no matter how successful and publicly lauded you become. It is intrinsic to the real business of writing and should be cherished.
• The writing life is essentially one of solitary confinement – if you can't deal with this you needn't apply.
• Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long walks). Hold a Christmas party every year at which you stand in the corner of your writing room, shouting very loudly to yourself while drinking a bottle of white wine. Then masturbate under the desk. The following day you will feel a deep and cohering sense of embarrassment.

Helen Simpson

• The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-it on the wall in front of my desk saying "Faire et se taire" (Flaubert), which I translate for myself as "Shut up and get on with it."

Zadie Smith

• Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won't make your writing any better than it is.
• Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ­internet.
• Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
• Don't confuse honours with achievement.

Colm Tóibín

• No alcohol, sex or drugs while you are working.

Rose Tremain

• In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.
• Learn from cinema. Be economic with descriptions. Sort out the telling detail from the lifeless one. Write dialogue that people would actually speak.

Sarah Waters

• Don't panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends' embarrassment, the failing career, the dwindling income, the repossessed house, the divorce . . . Working doggedly on through crises like these, however, has always got me there in the end. Leaving the desk for a while can help. Talking the problem through can help me recall what I was trying to achieve before I got stuck. Going for a long walk almost always gets me thinking about my manuscript in a slightly new way. And if all else fails, there's prayer. St Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers, has often helped me out in a crisis. If you want to spread your net more widely, you could try appealing to Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, too.

Jeanette Winterson

• Be ambitious for the work and not for the reward.

Enlaces: Ten rules for writing fiction (parte 1) || (parte 2)