Hooptedoodle

Elmore Leonard's Top Ten rules for writers which can be summed up with a quotation from John Steinbeck that he references: "I don't want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story."

Dictionary.com suggests "hepatitides" as possibly being the word I meant when I asked for a formal definition of "hooptedoodle." When you get right down to it, dictionary.com might be close.

Hepatitides: Inflammation of the liver, caused by infectious or toxic agents and characterized by jaundice, fever, liver enlargement, and abdominal pain.

Hooptedoodle: inflammation of the story, caused by infectious or toxic writing and characterized by severe anacoluthon, embolalian engorgement, uncontrollable circumlocution, and runaway annomination.

research

This is the archive of my research log that run until the end of 2004 when I switched over to LiveJournal for the routine blogging. Links herein may no longer work.

Entry Navigation

Archive Links