Ever imagine, as a kid, how it might feel to be invisible? Now that you spend at least some of your time doing just that, how does it feel? It might sound funny, but as a writer, a lot of work goes into making sure that you remain invisible and behind the curtain of your story. While some of us may pour quite a bit of ourselves into our characters, there is a fine line that we walk each time we sim here at Starbase 118; a line that defines what we write as ‘In Character’ and who we are ‘Out of Character’. To maintain that line, keeping ourselves invisible in the story is imperative.
But there is more to staying behind that curtain than the simple RPG rules that we follow such as keeping OOC knowledge away from your character. We also have to think about how we show readers what’s going on in our sims, rather than just telling them the story. That’s why the New York Times’ writer Elmore Leonard put together this handy list of rules to consider when writing. Among them, some handpicked solely for the purpose of helping other writers remain invisible. Take a look and see if you can implement some of these suggestions and hide behind that curtain better than the old wizard from the city of OZ.
Elmore Leonard’s list would eliminate some of the world’s greatest writers. It is, for the most part, a dreadful list.