10 Writing Rules You Should Break and Why
Filed Under: Uncategorized
When you start writing, you cling to rules. Rules take this great sea of possibilities and attempt to turn them into a river that flows in one direction. They’re not necessarily bad ideas, but you can gain as much from breaking them as you can by following them. Here are a few writing “rules” and rules of living a writing life that I have heard and the reasons I have rebelled against them. Particularly, I come at these as a writer of science fiction and fantasy, so your results may differ from the picture on the box.
1. Write what you know.
This rule should be “draw from your personal experiences.” I imagine as told originally, that’s what it meant, but some beginning writers take this to mean that they should only write work set in places they have been, about people they know, and so on. As someone who has set stories in the Himalayas (never been there), East Africa (been there), and the outer orbit of the solar system (never been there, except that one time, long story), well… sometimes, we write about things we want to know, not just the things we already know. A book is the easiest way to travel without going somewhere. There shouldn’t be a rule excluding the writer from traveling through their writing too.
2. Don’t try to force developing your voice.
You don’t have time to let your voice develop naturally. The world is full of writers, maybe more than ever before. Everyone you know is working on a book. If they say they aren’t, they’re lying. Writing is a hell of a lot better of a job than digging ditches or flipping burgers, so of course everyone wants to be a writer, and everyone thinks they have something to say. Having something to say is important, but if you’re going to stand out these days, you need to find a unique way to say it. Get a voice, and get it quick. It doesn’t matter how. You need to find a way to remove yourself from the horde of 20/30-something white nerds who want to write science fiction. Or whatever your group is, if you’re not me. I don’t want people to say, “Jeremiah Tolbert? He’s like, Cory Doctorow, only dumber, right?” Don’t be like someone else. Be you, but if you is boring, and you really want to make it, change who you are. We are not all original snowflakes, but we can pretend to be. Self-trepanation is not recommended, but it might not hurt.
3. Omit needless words.
Yes, fine, some words can be removed to strengthen a sentence, but some writers will take this too far, to the point of turning every narrator into the same person. Word choice plays a large part in the voice of a character. If you take this rule to the extreme, you neuter your writing. Verbal tics are okay. Bloated prose is not. Unless your narrator likes bloated prose. But that’s hard to pull off and look like you meant to do it.
4. Don’t take rejections personally.
This is like telling people to stop breathing or to stop loving their parents. I suppose if you’re the kind of person who just can’t let something go, then maybe you should find another career, but every writer takes rejections personally. Don’t believe them if they say they don’t. The trick is getting over it quickly. And for God’s sake, stop posting on your blog about every rejection you get. Nobody cares. Hardly anybody cares when you get an acceptance either. They will congratulate you, but that’s only because they want you to congratulate them when they sell to Hentai Slash Fic Online for half a cent a word and a bagel. Editors aren’t just rejecting your story. They’re rejecting you and your work. If you’re going to keep writing like that, yeah, they don’t want to see anything else you willl write either. It hurts. Nothing can be done about it except for you to stop sucking so much. So get to work.
5. Don’t blog so much. Write more.
Blog as much as you want. Just don’t expect anyone to read it. If you had to be doing something besides blogging, I don’t think it should be writing more fiction. You should be reading more. Read the instruction manual to your blender. Read cereal boxes. Read trashy romance novels, and read the classics. Read 400 blogs and news websites. Write when you have something to say, and a new way to say it. Writing more is going to help you especially when you are starting out, but after a certain point, you’re bordering on hypergraphia, and that’s a mental illness, sorry, not a career. In general, stop beating yourself up about how much you do or don’t write. Live your god damn life, and the writing will come. Or it won’t. Nobody will care but you.
6. Kill your darlings.
Some people take this as an imperative to be harsh in your editing. Other people take it as a command to murder your characters. If it’s a darling to you, it might actually, you know, be good writing. Find a way to kill the boring drivel and keep the darlings. But yes, I agree that you should murder your characters. Murder every single one of them, so long as it’s interesting to do so.
7. Get rid of your TV.
Do you know why it’s so hard to motivate yourself to write? It’s not because your life is full of distractions like TV and video games. It’s a lack of concrete rewards. Most people roll out of bed and go straight to work, and they don’t have to get rid of their television or internet access to be able to do it. That’s because they know there’s a paycheck coming at the end of the period. Writing, unless you’re already successful, is on spec. You do the work and then you hope someone wants to buy it. The solution isn’t to get rid of your television. Even the most prolific writers need to rest and relax sometimes. The solution is to make writing the reward itself. Challenge yourself with each piece. You have to find it fulfilling on the page before anyone else sees it. Selling the piece and seeing it published should be a bonus.
I almost wrote “icing on the cake” here but to hell with cake without icing. That’s just a spongy bread. Screw that.
8. Never submit a first draft.
Sometimes you nail it. I’ve sold first drafts. You will too. The mistake here is thinking that all the work in writing happens on the page. At my guess, it’s about 20% of it. The rest goes on before you even sit down.
9. Always submit your first draft.
I forget who said this. Heinlein? Screw that guy. Nobody always nails it. When your name carries a certain amount of prestige in your field, you might be able to sell every first draft, but do you really want to do that? Do you really want work out there, circulating, that you know isn’t the best you could have done? Do you have that little passion for what you do that you just can’t be bothered? Then read on to rule 10.
10. Don’t Give Up.
There should be a lot more giving up in the world of writing. If you can be encouraged to quit writing and find a more lucrative profession, like, say, cleaning toilets, then do so. You’ll save yourself a lot of heartbreak and rejection. And you make room for the rest of us who are psychotically obsessive about “breaking in” to markets that pay the same thing they paid in 1952.
I mean all of the above with the upmost love and respect, of course.
