Hey all, First and foremost - I have zero affiliation with this podcast or host, simply sharing it because I stumbled across it and found it to be interesting. This is the only episode I’ve heard by this podcast host, so I can’t speak to how the other episodes are… But I liked this. I feel like we get caught up in specific “rules” for writing, or how we have to go about improving our craft. I just like how this host unpacked this idea. https://www.sarahwerner.com/no-rules-just-write-wn-142/ If you listen to it, would love to hear your thoughts. Or, even if you don’t listen to it, feel free to offer feedback on the topic. IronWriter [moderator note - Iron checked this me (BSM) before posting - its fine]
I haven't listened to it, but I do have thoughts. I think there's a big difference between breaking rules you're familiar with because you know what you're doing, and breaking rules you don't understand out of sheer ignorance. It's often said that, in art in general, the tricks of a master closely resemble the mistakes of a beginner—the difference being that the master knows what they're doing. I also think many people misunderstand what kind of rules they are. Many people seem to think the rules of writing are like arbitrary laws that, if you break one, you go to writing jail or pay a fine. It isn't like that. What they are is tips and tricks people have discovered the hard way through a lot of trial and error, and are sharing to help make your journey easier and better. Sure, if you want to spend your life trying to re-invent the wheel, feel free. But it's already been done, all the problems solved, and a perfect wheel-form discovered. You could ignore that and chip away at a rock, trying the square, the triangle, the octagon, etc, or you could look into the discoveries that have already been made and use that info however you choose, rather than make all the mistakes yourself that have already been made by so many others. And if you interpret the rules as "Always do this, never do that", then you're working from a basic misunderstanding of them. Their purpose isn't to tell you exactly what to do and what not to do, but to familiarize you with the territory, so you can then make an informed decision. For instance, the well-known (so-called) "Show Don't Tell" rule. Around here we try to state it better, because that sounds like a hidebound injunction. It's never that simple. The true purpose of the rule is (or should be) to help new writers understand what both showing and telling are, in which situations each is useful, and in which they might work against your intent. And the problem with many beginners is they have no idea what showing and telling are and tend to do everything through telling when sometimes showing is far more powerful. That way each rule becomes a tool in your kit. Can you use a monkey wrench as a hammer? Sure if it serves well that way. But you should first understand what a monkey wrench is, what a hammer is, and what each is good for. Otherwise you may well end up using them foolishly out of ignorance. A hammer won't do the job of a monkey wrench very well. This is why I like to say rules are made, not to be broken, but to be transcended. And to do that you need to first understand them.
It's correct in the literal sense because the only quantified rules of writing belong to grammar. Everything else is up in the air. And the grammar often gets overriden. Nothing's safe, really. I always think of the writing rules (those that have to do with craft and not grammar) as guidelines for success. They're the well-trodden paths that successful writers have followed, and so it makes sense to know them. Even if you don't know them, your writing will coincidently align with them to some degree. If you're following the path the rules have laid out and you watch your feet carefully, you'll notice that previous writers veered off that metaphorical path quite often. I think that's what this podcast is pointing out. No one slavishly follows these rules. So it's not wrong. I just skimmed the transcript. It talks a lot about writing advice being unique to the author. That's completely true. Now there are some rules out there that are outright wrong, and they even apply to grammar; e.g., don't split infinitives, never begin a sentence with a conjunction, etc. Those old canards from the late 19th century. I hate them because they were the attempts of eggheads at Latinizing English to make it more rigid, but if you are very open-minded, even those have a weird sort of value. Somebody thought that those guidelines improved the language, and if you try to understand why a particular rule was put in place, you can gain something from it even if you never use it directly. (Because it's wrong. How can you use it?) In that sense, every rule is important, even those that are silly by modern standards. Just ask yourself "why" the rule is there and use that. An example! I use the worst rule of them all, mentioned above, the dreaded "don't split infinitives." Now I don't believe it in the slightest and happily ignore it, but I understand it and use its essence. According to the creator of this, the point of not splitting an infinitive is to be like Latin. It gives the English language a common baseline and establishes a "correct" form. That's the 19th century logic. The problem is that infinitives in Latin are one word long. You can't split them. * In English the infinitive is two words long (to eat, to live, to die). They can be moved apart, so why not? So the usefulness I pull from this broken rule is that there is a power in having the basic structure connected. The idea holds as a unit, and we don't want inserted qualifiers diminishing that idea. To go (infinitive) To boldly go (split infinitive) To as boldly as Kirk at the Miss Galaxy Pageant go (split infinitive) The last one fails because it has broken the idea of the infinitive. The two parts of an infinitive hold like magnets. When they're too far apart, their connection is broken. By the time you get to "go," you are too distracted by the qualifier. The fix is to go back to the ancient rule and unsplit that infinitive. To go as boldly as Kirk at the Miss Galaxy Pageant (Miss Galaxy seems like more of a Jetsons thing. I feel like there was even an episode around it.) So that's the only thing I would add. Whenever you see a rule (guideline) try to understand why it helped the person who gave it. Its purpose has value. The idea of split infinitives carries over to subject/verb distance, phrasal distance, and a few other forms. It's amazing what can be rescued from that disaster of a rule. (* You can split any word with an infix. Not a suffix or a prefix but a close cousin, an infix appears in the middle of the word. In English there's basically only one infix. It inserts itself between any two syllables for special emphasis. I know that you've said it before. It won't be mentioned here but is left as an exercise for the reader.)
I get the impression that she's talking more about daft rules like 'never use adverbs' or 'never open with the weather' rather than the rules of grammar... although you can definitely break the latter vis cormac mcarthy and e.e cummings
But it's worth reiterating - I've seen loads of threads on the forum where a writer has, for example, said they hate adverbs and go through their work and compulsively (hah!) remove them all. Or "show, don't tell" is probably the one that's most often misunderstood. Having read through some of Stephen King's early (and best) horror work, he just about breaks every rule I've seen quoted on the boards. Mind you, I've seen some story submission guidelines which repeat these rules (like "We don't like stories that start with the weather."
Quite - the Running man starts with the weather , as do many other best selling books... theres a big difference between that and staring 'it was a dark and stormy night'
I notice you changed your avatar to a different philosopher, haha! The Metamorphosis breaks the famous "don't start the story waking from bed." The MC even immediately dwells upon his appearance. He should have mentioned his green eyes with flakes of gold.
Yes, the wisest of them all! Or most foolish, but is there a difference? Oh yeah, if you can do it really well, or if it serves a good purpose that's different from the ordinary stuff beginners are always doing, then the rules don't apply * . And I guess Gregor Samsa has the best reason of all to think about his appearance. I just read Rumble Fish and am working on The Outsiders (which isn't nearly as good, you can really tell she was 16 when she wrote it, but it's definitely far above what you'd expect from the average 16-year-old!) and all these tough street fighter dudes all have eyes that are either grey, violet, or pale ice blue. I give her a pass though because for the most part I really liked it. I can forgive a small thing like that. I did balk however at the one who has ears like a lynx. Say what? Was she presaging the whole Furry phenomenon? * Unfortunately a lot more people think they can do this than actually can.
I tried to listen to it but it opened so awfully that I thought I would just skim it - and then the bits I skipped to were awful too. 00:40 - "I'm well aware that (giggle) the title of this podcast is a pun, or just straight up lifting the slogan for a commercial steakhouse"? 05:19 - "Some people write because they want to get published" 08:20 - "It's also good to take someone else's methods with a little bit of salt" 12:20 - "I'm going to say something nice about myself as a writer: I think I'm kind of talented" 16:20 - "Advice, and rules, and regulations are everywhere." 19:50 - "You have to figure out what works for you." 22:30 - "Maybe you thrive on 5 hours of sleep instead of the recommended 8-9" 24:40 - "... or do not use the Oxford comma, there are people who argue it both ways" == I disagreed with the initial version of "the only quantified rules of writing belong to grammar." (but the later versions less so). Grammars are only an empirical study of what people seem to be doing with a language - at the time of writing, and often in only a few dialects. There is no such thing as authority over language: there is nothing for the users of a language to misunderstand except each other. Latin infinitives are one word long, but Latin was closer to the times when verb endings were a separate particle that you could tack onto a verb to show how you were using it. The -ere in 'legere' is almost the same thing as the 'to' in 'to read'. It's as if one of Latin's precursor languages already had a prohibition on split infinitives, and took it to the logical extreme: by fusing the verb and the particle into a single word. "Ha," said the literate Proto Indo-European priesthood, "that'll show those bloody poets." == Writers make patterns-of-usage for other users of the language to adopt if they want to. It's mutual application of the rules that matters - gained naturally by using the language. And I think that holds true up to the scale of a book: if the readers hate being told and find adverbs to be a confusing and unwelcome abstraction to their experience of doing stuff, the writer will always be outnumbered. We must pick our battles, and make a case for readers changing to our way of speaking - or at least trick them into speaking that way without noticing. Homo Sapiens might have overthrown our parent species with the help of a secret language comprehensible only to individuals with mutated cerebral cortices. It's easy to imagine Erectus' creative writing tutors telling us that "eek!" should be used for threats and "chak!" to formally express disagreement, while we were articulating complex plots to Darwin the lot of them. It may be that history is repeating itself with artful telling.
And dear god her voice is like nails on a blackboard... i think i'll stick Sarah Painter and the worried writer
Correct - I probably should’ve clarified this in my original post. For example, she refers to Stephen King’s book “On Writing.” And she talks about how some habits that work for King, may not be the ideal advice for everyone.
There are no rules but there are guidelines. There are things that you ought to do until you are skilled enough to know how not to do it well. Ultimately, the only people who are going to decide if you're qualified to break the guidelines are readers, done by not reading or purchasing your books. Nobody else is qualified to tell you what you should or shouldn't do.
when i was at school my creative writing teach told us "in this room there are no rules"... she probably should have thought that through
I don't get it. Genuinely, I don't. Before I came on WF, I thought of genre as small g giving a vague sense of content, i.e. Asimov is science fiction. Within his books you will find things that, at that time, did not exist in the real world. Don't be alarmed. They're not real. How it's written would determine whether or not I would enjoy the read. He's not the same as the next sci-fi writer. Now, I see my viewpoint was naive. Genre has a big G and there are rules attached. Honestly, I agree with whoever said there are two genres. Good writing and the other kind. Not sure who gets to decide though, and that's a measure specific to each writer. I understand the notion that one should learn the rules and then proceed to break them. Sometimes, though, it can work out well to learn what works for you, simply by writing without limit and inhibition. Listen to someone you trust when they're correct and work to improve. I'm aware this is going on a bit but, if you're still reading, it gets worse now with a sporting analogy. I recall seeing an influx of young players make it on to the Irish rugby team, watching them play with no realisation of their own limits. They made things happen simply because they weren't aware they shouldn't try those things. It is somewhat unnerving to see people climb into a box with only request that their reviewer close the lid after them. Why do people still like live music? You'd get a truer rendition on cd player at home. Sometimes the flaws allow in some vibrancy, immediacy, that brings the experience to life. I believe there's too much overproduction on music and too much formula applied to writing. If everyone is reading the same books on how to write, attending the same classes with the same prescriptive notions, then everyone will write to the same template. That gets old very quickly. I heard a radio interview with a genre writer who suggested, alongside snobbery, there were other issues at play when dividing output between Literary and Genre, one of which was straight, old fashioned sexism. His take, all these compilations of great Irish writers drew almost entirely from a male pool, ignoring numerous and prolific writers who were dismissed as genre, including very many women. He had engaged with a compilation to address this fallacy. A review of Waiting for Godot observed it was a play where nothing happens. Twice. It's still well regarded. Ok, genius helps, but so too does a fearless, uncompromising attitude. In short, there are no rules. Sorry, should have started and ended with that. If you're writing for yourself and your own satisfaction, absolutely no rules. If you want others to read and understand, your writing may need to accommodate your prospective audience. If you're writing for fame and riches, good luck.
Absolutely. I just wrote with no thought for any rules or anything for a few decades before I decided to learn the rules. You improve by stages many times that way, and it's necessary. It can be disheartening to try to follow a bunch of rules before you've developed through just the sheer fun of writing.
Beckett was writing Absurdism, which was totally anti-narrative and anti-sense and anti-anything to do with standard proper writing or storytelling. It was part of the Modernist rebellion against all rules, like punk rock and abstract expressionism. People who like their stories or plays to make sense don't regard it well at all.
Tools, not rules. You ultimately decide what what you need to achieve your writing goals. That doesn't mean you will be right. I don't think it's so different from most other endeavors in life.
People are afraid if they learn rules they'll be forever bound by them. Do you obey every rule you've ever learned? Hmmm?
People may stop and ask themselves why they place more authority in a 'top ten rulez' article/video/podcast or 'how write fast novel ++ good' book than the actual variations within published fiction. I think creative paralysis or hindrance due to rules is subconscious self-sabotage. In other words, not due to ignorance. It's procrastination at best. Our mind doesn't like to show its hand, though, and we don't want to see it anyway.
The one rule, the only rule, the rule to, umm, rule them all, this place is more interesting, stimulating and informative when @Xoic is involved in the discussion. I was going to say even when I might disagree but, more accurately, especially when. Looking forward to more edification.
I'm saying if anyone teaches you 'rules' that aren't helpful you can freely discard them, modify them, etc. But you've said you're at a stage where you're not interested in learning rules? Not sure why you're interested.
My post above may have caused offence? Not what was intended. I might just elaborate. Coming fairly new to creative writing in the last couple of years, there's a few things come to mind. I'm at a point in life, generally, when things are a bit quieter, the kids have moved out and there's more time, usually, than I'd become used to. Most of the obstacles to writing now are self-imposed, largely to do with overcoming inhibitions. Is it good enough? What am I revealing of myself? And of others who are close to me? Does anyone give a shit what I have to say? Why is this not as easy as I thought it would be and am I robust enough to handle rejection? There's a whole bunch of things that get in the way of productive writing. Last thing I need is to superimpose a set of external restrictions on how and what I should write. I don't need a set of rules to prescribe for me, I got plenty of that on my own. We all have different tastes in what we read and what we want to write. Too often, people seem to seek a formula as to what fits for this rigid Genre piece, as though the secret to successful (however you measure that) writing comes through adherence to Genre conventions, plot advancement and world-building. Lots of people love that exclusively and good luck to them. It's not for everyone though, and most of us will enjoy what we perceive as beautiful use of language just for its own sake, to linger a moment rather than propel to the next contrived plot point. Those moments, for me, are what makes a piece worth reading. My concern is that writing to instruction not only can't teach it, it can actively discourage artful expression. Writing classes tend to focus on product, much like a factory floor. Mass production of engine parts does rely on uniformity, the dimensions must fit or there's trouble. Writing and artistic expression is different. No need to reinvent the wheel gets thrown around, which always confuses me. Is there any instrument that has undergone more reinvention than the wheel? Your point on not adhering to rules is absolutely correct and clearly indicates a mature approach. My saying that I don't particularly want to learn a set of rules has more to do with avoiding additional, unnecessary and unhelpful inhibitions that would probably strike up a grand rapport with those already flourishing inside my head. I would suggest, however, that's not the same as saying I don't want to learn. There are many things that I reckon I've learned in the past couple of years, many of them from the pages on this forum and many of them from your contributions to the discussions, if that's not too presumptuous. I do believe the best learning is experiential, write the damned story and listen to what people have to say about it, find someone within that whose opinion you regard and listen to them when they're correct. Even better if that person has gone to the bother of learning the rules of engagement!
I wasn't offended, I just didn't understand why you would respond since you're not interested in learning the craft yet. Also, learning the craft of writing doesn't necessarily mean learning genre conventions. I know I connected them in the past, and to some extent they are connected, or usually anyway. But I think that's true in the same way that learning to ride a bicycle is connected to training wheels and learning basic safety rules. I strongly agree with the very brief posts above by @Siena & @123456789 Beyond a certain point (and I'm not saying you're necessarily at that point yet, that's for you to decide) in order to advance you do need to learn the craft of writing. That does not need to be attached to genre, but it usually is, I suspect because genre is simple and therefore a much easier way to learn. Like training wheels. But there are excellent writing books that are geared more toward non-genre writing that cover the craft aspects of writing, in particular by John Gardner and Douglas Glover. I'm sure there are more I'm not aware of. I went through a long (way too long) period of fighting against the idea of formalized education, both in visual art and writing. My arguments sounded a lot like yours. And I don't know, maybe I intuitively knew I wasn't ready yet, that I needed more time spent just drawing and writing. Up to a point that is exactly how you grow and learn. But to be completely honest, when I finally did decide I needed some real education I discovered all my fears were ungrounded. Well, it is true that with most writing books you'll get genre conventions touted as if that's the only way to write. But I do think it's helpful to understand what genre conventions are, otherwise how can you effectively avoid them or break the rules of genre writing? You need a basic grounding in what it is before you can even think in interesting ways about how to work around it. If you think of genre as the shallow end of the pool (actually it can get fairly deep, but just for the sake of clarity let's go with this) it's a lot easier to learn to swim when you can touch the floor of the pool in an instant any time you need to. But there are excellent arguments on the other side as well. And I should specify—when I say I wrote for decades before seeking any education, that was because I started writing as a kid. Actually I was getting the education I needed at that point—grammar, spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, paragraph structure, etc. The early part of craft. But I really am glad I wrote without instruction for so many years after graduating high school, because I did keep improving to a point where I got really good at certain things. I just didn't understand what story really is, or how to make one compelling. That is something a writer definitely needs to know, and has nothing to do with genre. The craft aspects of writing apply whether you're writing genre or not, it's just that at the literary end of the spectrum you don't use them as heavy-handedly, or you decide to what extent to apply them. You can't really think about what story is until you've studied story structure, and best if you've looked into a few different approaches to it. Otherwise if people say you need a stronger inciting incident for instance you don't even know what they mean. And this suddenly reminds me of some amazing advice I got from a drawing instructor named Robert Beverly Hale, who said that before you can draw the body you need to learn what it's made of. This is anatomy, and I suppose it's analogous in certain ways to story structure. He said first you need to learn what the parts of the body are. Many art students who think they're doing really well for instance have no idea what a ribcage is. Well, that's one of the biggest and most important parts of the body, if you aren't aware of it or how it's shaped, you can't draw convincing people. And there are hundreds more parts, most of them much smaller and more subtle, that the vast majority of people have no idea even exist. As an art student you need to learn what they are, their shapes, and how they all fit together. It takes a lot of time and study , but without it, if you consider yourself a figure artist, you're groping in the dark and you can't see that the other artists (who have learned anatomy) draw far better than you do. If you don't even know these parts exist, you can't see why your drawings aren't right. It's the Dunning/Kruger effect. This sounds harsh, but it's just a fact—when it comes to things you haven't learned yet, you're not knowledgeable enough to even understand that you need to learn them. But I do believe it's important to get in many years of carefree writing or drawing just for the sheer fun of it before you delve into the more professional stuff. And that's only IF you decide to move toward professional writing.
