AVOID DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS OF CHARACTERS 9. DON'T GO INTO GREAT DETAIL DESCRIBING PLACES AND THINGS 10. TRY TO LEAVE OUT THE PART THAT READERS TEND TO SKIP * * NEVER OPEN A BOOK WITH WEATHER If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways than an Eskimo to describe ice and snow in his book Arctic Dreams, you can do all the weather reporting you want. * * AVOID PROLOGUES They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday, but it's okay because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like.
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