What I’ve learned about writing fiction and its “rules”
By: Danny Cherry
Tags: Writing, Advice, Writing Tips, Fiction, Creative Writing

What I’ve learned about writing fiction and its “rules”

They are meant to be broken

Photo by Nicole Honeywill

“You must learn the rules in order to break them” is the advice a comic book legend gave the crowd at comic-con in 2017.

It was a panel led by comic book writers on what it takes to break into the industry, and what it means to be a storyteller as a whole.

They gave all the usual advice: utilize your secondary characters to bring out the various sides of your main, read different genres and forms of literature, write everyday, make a pentagram in the middle of a crossroads if you want to sign an agent, etc etc etc.

Then they dropped a paradoxical bombshell on me — “learn the rules in order to break them.”

I was 22 and confused as fuck.

I was in the crowd and hoped to hear some magical spell or tip that would help me finish my slow moving manuscript.

But instead what I got was some Yoda level wisdom that did nothing but confuse me and make me want to pull out one of those cliché clear erase boards and scribble incoherently until I figured out what the hell he meant.

So I scoured books. I learned “the rules.” I went to write my manuscript. And I wrote. And rewrote. And I read all of the fiction books I could get my hands on.

And I got even more confused because even some of the “greats” didn’t follow the rules. James Joyce once wrote a 3,687 word sentence. Mario Puzo (The Godfather) used adverbs like it was going out of style. James Baldwin wrote some of the most dense sentences I’ve ever read. But, nonetheless, I went back to my book and followed all of the rules.

3 years and 8 rewrites later, I finally get what the comic-book writer meant.

The “rules” aren’t “rules,” they’re guidelines.

They’re meant to help you stay the course if you start to stray too far away. They aren’t meant to be restrictive — they’re meant to give you a good idea of what your writing should look like.

The day I came to this conclusion is the day my writing got better. But it also led to other realizations.

Good writing works on a spectrum — your story doesn’t have to be perfect.

You probably shouldn’t tell more than you show, but if your plot and characters are engaging, you may get a pass.

People probably won’t notice your plot isn’t the most creative in the world if your prose strikes an emotional cord.

Your first act can be a little longer than your second and third if it’s helping build the world and move the story forward.

You can lack in one area if you make up for it in the next. I often read the reviews of “award winning” books just to see what critics said.

I’ve not once read a critique saying “this was the most perfect book ever written.” If the greats are allowed to be flawed, give yourself the same license.

Those three examples I gave above came from classics I’ve read before, and those three books were flawed just like anyone else’s. But — their strengths were so strong I didn’t even give a shit. I flew through those books because they were able to resonate with me one way or another. Work on becoming the best writer you can, not the most perfect one.

If we all followed the rules, we would all sound the same.

But really though. Imagine if we all followed the “short sentence rule.”

We’d all be monotone. And sound like aliens. Who’ve discovered the written word for the first time.

The flaws in our work are what gives us our special literary fingerprint. And by “flaws,” I mean what goes against the typical literary conventions. By all means, please fix typos and very confusing bits of dialogue. Don’t take what I’m saying as an excuse to put out a shitty book.

Rule breaking should be used like seasoning in recipes — just enough to add your own flavor.

You can use adverbs if you want. Just don’t go fucking nuts. It might be a little annoying for readers to read a sentence like:

“He effortlessly, beautifully, gracefully, ……”

Go easy on the adverbs. Space them out when you need them.

Experiment with form and literary conventions. I once read a book, Wettest County in The World, where the author never used speech tags or quotations. It honestly made it flow better for me. It seemed like natural speech and I still knew who was talking.

DISCLAIMER: His dialogue was unique to each character and specific actions lead into the conversations.

Yet again, good writing is on a spectrum. You can break the rules once you get a handle on them and have honed your style.

In conclusion — rules are like assholes, everyone has one.

Never start with prologues. Never start a sentence with “and.” Never write when you’re not inspired. Never ever start with a dream sequence. Never do this, never do that.

A large part of the early days of your writing career is honestly sifting through the mounds of advice to find which bits are useful. I read craft books and studied the works of much more superior writers to come to the observations I have today.

There are 6 rules I follow. I think these are universal amongst fiction writers:

Cut out excess words Don’t stop to edit, edit in waves. Do a first draft. Then a second. And so on. Give your drafts some distance before editing. Write everyday. Or as much as your schedule allows. Read as often as possible. Preferably words of writers better than you. Use strong verbs instead of flimsy words. “He walked” vs “He strode”

I feel anything other than those 6 above can be experimented with at the author’s discretion. (Feel free to disagree.)

Please don’t take my observations as me saying to be a lazy writer.

Put in the hours of practice. Read. Learn. Observe.

Yet again — a writer needs to know the rules before they can break them. A quick example using something non-writing related — I once asked my basketball coach why is it NBA players are allowed to do non-fundamentally sound things. He said “because they’re good enough to. Ya’ll aren’t.”

Think about that for a bit and apply it to writing. You must have the skills and experience first before you attempt to turn tried-and-true methods on their heads.

If you don’t want to use dialogue tags, learn how to make your dialogue stick out from character to character. You want to toss out your “plot,” make sure your characters are great and your prose is flawless. You want to write a prologue despite conventional wisdom saying otherwise? Make sure it sucks the reader in and reveals something you couldn’t know without it.

The beauty of creative writing is you can do what the hell you want, how you want! It’s an art form. A very beautiful one. It is even more beautiful when a writer puts their own fingerprint and style on a piece. So take out your laptop. Write your book. Write your short story. Pull out the rule book and commit all of it to memory — then toss the shit in the shredder.