I never thought of Leonard’s writing as “clippy,” although it certainly is dialog-heavy. I try to emulate that part of his style, which works for me since dialog is my forte.
What I like about Leonard’s writing is how I immediately become immersed in the story. His sparse description and masterful use of indirect speech creates an intimacy with the reader, even in the third person.
Another aspect of Leonard’s writing which I have learned is to make the antagonists complex. I have had readers tell me how attached they became to the bad guy in Collateral Crimes. And I’m glad about that because I never set out to make him as mean as I did. It’s just that the story demanded it.
I’m not concerned about contracts. My goal is to write each story better than the last, and I have built into Collateral Crimes enough continuing character arcs, interesting back stories, and sequel possibilities to keep me busy the rest of my life.
I’m not knocking his style at all, obviously he has millions of diehard fans. My point is that there is a wide range of techniques, and fans (and critics) of each one.
One thing I found helpful before my first novel was to get paperback copies of a few of my favorite novels by a variety of authors. Then I used different colored markers to mark them up in the margins, bracketing dialogue, narrative, POV shifts etc. Then, by flipping through the marked up books, I could get a feel for the different technical styles. Once this was done, I found a solid mid-range that would not put me too far out in any direction, but in a sweet-spot where most successful novelists find their voice.
On average, a couple pages of narrative at most, and a bit more dialogue. Dialogue is easiest to write, it writes itself, so I don’t limit how long it goes if it’s effective.
In my multi POV novels, I only have one voice per scene, with a clear shift in POV indicated by a triple line break. Even in my 500+ page novels (250K words) I only have 6 or 7 POV characters. If there are two or more POV characters in a scene, I never jump between POVs rapidly. They can share, but the shifts in POV must be very clear.