I have fallen in love with the word, hooptedoodle. It hit me quickly as I was reading Writer’s Almanac this morning. I had heard the word before, but I had never actually seen it written out. Because of this sudden infatuation, I thought I would share with you an excerpt of what I was reading:

Elmore Leonard has written more than 40 novels–as soon as he finishes one, he starts on another. He’s famous for his advice for writers. In 2001, he published a piece in The New York Times called “Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle.”

He gave 10 rules, things like “Never open a book with weather”; “Never use a verb other than ‘said’ to carry dialogue”; “Avoid detailed descriptions of characters”; and “Try to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip.”

He wrote: “Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he’s writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character’s head, and the reader either knows what the guy’s thinking or doesn’t care. I’ll bet you don’t skip dialogue. My most important rule is one that sums up the 10. If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”

You can read the full Writer’s Almanac post here.

As soon as I post this, I will be off to my favorite coffee shop to write. But please note that I am intent on not “perpetrating hooptedoodle,” no matter how much I love the word. Though I may try to work the word into a future novel just for the fun of it.

What’s your take on hooptedoodle? Like it? Love it? Could care less?

P.S. I am an ex-shrink who writes novels. Check out my books here. I plan to use the word hooptedoodle in one of my coming books.