The New York Times has an an oh-so New York Times series of advice articles by successful established authors to aspiring writers. I find the premise irritating for a whole slew of reasons which probably stem from my irritability more than anything else. But that aside, I was genuinely baffled by Elmore Leonard’s tidbit #10:

10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

A rule that came to mind in 1983. 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.

Do people skip parts in books? I never, ever do. If the shit’s getting tedious, I quit the book. Is this not the norm?