Often the topic of writing rules come up attached to the notion of breaking them or there not even being real rules in the first place. But what about the other side of things? What rules have helped advance your skills or elevate your prose? I thought it might be interesting to discuss the upside to the rules of writing. I mean the point of these rules is to help writers, isn't it?
I think it's just don't repeat words. I mean, it's a rule that I follow. It's probably more a symptom of my own neurotic aversion.
I get it @Friedrich Kugelschreiber. I like that one too. Unless going for some sort of dramatic effect, repetition of words can muddy the water and/or make the prose kind of clunky.
When editing, cut as much as possible. Keep in mind when cutting that whatever doesn't kill it makes it stronger.
I'm not sure that's actually a rule or even good advice... Sometimes you might need to add rather than cut in the revision process.
My personal favorite is ‘use strong verbs’. There is something so satisfying about having someone trudge instead of walk, fingers that caress instead of touch, shadows that crawl and vines that cling, lunging and ripping, rippling and snapping. So much atmosphere and flavor can be added just by swapping out some verbs for more specific ones. Truthfully I’ve found most common ‘rules’ helpful, as long as you understand the underlying logic and how to tell where they are and are not applicable. I think a lot of the time the rules get lash-back because they get turned into sound-bites and absolutes (show don’t tell, never use adverbs) but when you see the more nuanced and flexible version it makes a lot of sense.
I always go by the 'what's the worst thing that could happen?' and it serves me well. Want a character to pass out or something? Think of 'when would be the worst time for this to happen?" and it adds so much to the story.
I'll be honest, it's kinda a rule for me. Because sometimes I get stuck in a story and I go back to this. I suppose it's better to call it a principle of writing, more than a rule. I suppose I don't have any rules when it comes to writing. Maybe aside from: Things have to be balanced. And treat all characters equally
This one should be more obvious than it actually is. "Make sure someone else actually reads the bloody thing, first." No matter how clear you are, or think you are; no matter how vividly you wrote a scene or how you think a character came across - you will inevitably write something that doesn't come across as you intended it. As painful as it is to hear sometimes, you feel a million times better when you've found an issue and know it is fixed for the 99% of subsequent readers.
This one took me a while to find. I wrote for years feeling it was something that was true, and I could find some hint of it mentioned in many books in techniques of flow, but I never saw anyone spell it out. Here it is: "Think of a story as a stream of information. At best it's an ever-changing series of rhythms. Now think of yourself, the writer, as a DJ mixing tracks. The more music you have to sample from—the more records you have to spin—the more likely you'll keep your audience dancing." -- Chuck Palahniuk He calls this approach textures. I always called it rhythm. I guess the terminology doesn't matter. He then breaks down different texture techniques (methods of communication, POV shifts, narrative distance shifts). I've read a lot of writing books and Palahniuk is the first writer to really expand on that technique and go beyond simple flow. Every other book I've seen mentions short/long sentences and flow, and they leave it at that. I swear there's more to it. There's even more than he listed. The point is that the mechanical structures of writing are in motion, and that motion carries the narrative like a current. Okay, it's more of an approach to writing than a "rule," but I follow it always. So for me I guess it's an absolute rule. If I were to ever break it, it would be for a particular effect.
I second 'just write' for sure. One I follow is quite broad and simple: only narrate things the POV character would pay attention to, things that stand out and serve a purpose, rather trying to transcribe your exact image of the scene into text. The colour of Bob's slacks is usually something you can safely leave to the reader's imagination. I apply that to play with narrative ignorance a lot too, e.g. someone mentioning a tick/absence that the POV character doesn't inwardly acknowledge: "You're biting your nails again. What's the matter?"
When I was musical director for the Del Vikings we double billed with these guys a lot. With just write, I am following my instincts and my training. I worked with a producer who always told everyone to "Just spew the whole thing out; we'll clean it up later" and phrases to that effect. Basically, just get all the ideas out while they are still fresh and worry about the layering later. Since I'm new at the whole writing thing - well, it's been over a year, but lots of recent interruptions, such as Hurricane Ida depositing five feet of water into my studio, and moving 2,000 miles starting tomorrow - I'm just spewing it out and polishing later.
I used to work for Carolyn (Wood) Imbrie, the keyboardist. She owned a waterbed chain after the Brooklyn Bridge. I won a sales contest and got a trip to HQ in Phoenix for some dinners and parties. It was a great weekend. Blast from the past!
Lady Muse is a fickle master. If you wait for her to speak, you will never finish anything. Write, write, write, then write some more. Even if it is all bunk that you toss in editing, write. When she comes around to whisper her words in your ears, write, write, write...
Readers aren't very good at it. They start in the middle, upside-down, only reading every other word, at the same time watching anime on their phone. The book format - hell writing altogether, even papyrus - wasn't invented to preserve stories and wisdom and scientific ideas through the ages. It was so that minor officials could prove what they'd said to these people. If a synopsis is 2 pages long, and a novel is 200 pages long, that tells you how much repetition readers need. They evolved from goldfish fer chrissakes! They read stories about magical schools, and teenage vampires, and ladies being tied up and think "that's new" They read Macbeth, and then they read eight boring books about Macbeth, and then they do a 10,000-word dissertation on Macbeth, and even then I guarantee that twelve months later they'll have forgotten the lot. What was this post about again?
Always avoid alliterations. Jokes aside, I've a soft spot for them and use simple pairs quite a lot. The main rule I keep for any writing I do (whether it's a short story, novel project or RPG) comes from Brian Mitsoda, a video game writer: "One-off characters that you talk to once, need to have hooks or personality traits that make them immediately fascinating." I find this is a good approach to write most things, and reception thus far has been positive. For a location, a city, a faction, a character - or anything, really - identify their most defining traits and over-emphasize them so that they are immediately branded into your audience's brain. Remembering "Lady M. who met with the protagonist" is much harder than "Remembering that one Lady who was so full of herself her office was filled with self-portraits". I think it's an unwritten rule that existed for a long time; multiple classic authors seem to adhere to it (Tolstoy, Agatha Christie, Poe, Voltaire come to mind).
That's a good point. When I write something, I know exactly what I meant, and it comes to the page that way. But the next reader might wonder the hell I was thinking of, either because the reader doesn't have the information I neglected to provide, or because I didn't make it clear who was feeling what, and why. Which brings me to another rule I live by, which I think comes from Cicero (the Roman, not the town in New York). It applies mostly to technical writing, but it's not a bad rule for everybody: Write not only in such a way that it is possible to be understood, but in such a way that it is impossible to be misunderstood.
Don't get sentimental about words, phrases, and plot: change what needs to be changed for the good of the story.
I like Stephen King's rule on avoiding adverb abuse. It forces me to be pickier about the words I use and makes for a nice challenge. However, I would not recommend it during the "just writing" phase, in case you suffer from analysis paralysis.
That's probably the hardest lessons to learn - to kill those adorable darling babies to which you are so attached. As a musical director and producer I was on the other side; trying to convince the artist(s) that their song has moved beyond the one riff or lyric line that was the inspiration in the first place.
