The SIX writing rules it’s ok to break
Want to break the rules when you write? Go ahead. But make sure you know what they are first. Here are six rules it’s sometimes ok to break
When I write, I tend to write without thinking about it too much. Sure, I plan what’s going to happen, and I know roughly how I want that thing to happen. But a lot of the time I have to get into a sort of blank-mind state, where I’m totally immersed in the world I’m writing about, and what’s happening to my characters in order to come up with something interesting and worth reading. And when I’m in that zone, the last thing I’m thinking about are the rules of writing.
Which is why often, when I get to the end of that section and read it back, I’ve broken all kinds of rules.
But you know what? That’s ok. That’s where creativity starts.
It’s the same when I’m helping my kids with their writing homework. They’re bombarded with so many rules and regulations when asked to write something at school that sometimes all it serves to do is stifle their creativity rather than help them write the best piece of writing they can. And so I tell them that they should write what they want to write and forget the rules, and then they can go back and make sure they’ve followed them all afterwards.
And that’s how I’ve come to realise over the course of my writing career that, actually, for all the rules we read and learn, sometimes we also need to learn to break those rules too. And sometimes, it’s ok. In fact it’s more than ok — it’s essential for great writing.
But the number one rule? Make sure you know the rules first!
That’s because there’s a big different between bad writing, where someone doesn’t understand the rules and lets their copy or story run all over the place with no discernible direction, and someone who knows the rules, adheres to them most of the time, and then makes a deliberate choice to break them. In other words, bad writing is still bad writing. Deliberate rule breaking can be clever writing.
Don’t believe me? Here are six rules it’s not only ok to break sometimes, but that you should break from time to time to make your writing rise above the rest.
Rule 1: Show don’t tell
The writer Anton Chekhov once famously said ‘Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass’. In fact I have this pinned to the wall above my desk to remind myself while I’m writing.
And much of the time, the show-don’t-tell rule that we’ve all had drummed into us holds true. It’s important to show how a character is feeling, or show what sort of person they are with their actions rather than just saying what they’re like in a much more interesting, readable way.
But there are also times when it’s better to just keep it simple and tell rather than show. I’ve spent many an hour tying myself up in knots trying to show something in a story when, actually, it would have been better to have just said it and moved on.
In other words, telling is better when you need to cover lots of ground and keep the story moving. And you can still use your character’s perspective and voice to make it come alive. But let me reiterate — you need to make sure you know this rule in order to tell properly, and not just have your story set out as a list of things that are happening!
Rule 2: Write every day
Sure, do so if you want to — if you have time, if it makes you happy, if you need to. But don’t ever let yourself feel as though you’ve failed if you don’t. I wrote my debut novel while I had a two-year-old who was in nursery two days a week, and a part-time job. I decided to put aside every Thursday as my writing day — and after a year of that, the book was written — and it ended up being published all over the world! So yes, write when you can. But don’t think that only proper authors write every day. They don’t.
And sometimes, the words just don’t come. There are days when I sit down to write something — because, after all, it is actually my job now — but I hit a brick wall. So, over the years I’ve learned that, on days like this, once I’ve given it a few good tries, it’s better to give up and start again the next day rather than force it. Because the chances are, the words you force out will end up being deleted anyway!
Rule 3: Dump adverbs
I adore Stephen King, and this is one of his hard and fast rules (which even he admits to breaking sometimes). As he says, rather than using an adverb, there is almost always a better word you can use for the verb. This is an example in its simplest form:
The fat man walked quickly along the road
Better:
Despite his size, the man scurried along at a fair old pace
This sentence is by no means perfect and can certainly be improved further, but it serves a purpose to illustrate this point — a point that most writers will already know very well.
But, once you know and understand this rule, there is definitely a time and a place to break it, and stick those adverbs back in. I mean, look at words such as woefully. Excruciating. Undeniably. Some of these are lovely and we must certainly use them when we can!
Rule 4: Make sure your main character is likeable.
Sure, your protagonist can be lovely. But much, much more important than that is to make them interesting. And sometimes, nice isn’t interesting.
Look at Gone Girl, whose main character Amy Dunne does some ridiculous things and acts really badly many, many times throughout the course of the story. She’s often difficult to like thanks to the decisions she makes — and yet we still want her to escape, to win. And why? Because we can relate to her. We can understand her fear, her need to get away, and so we are on her side (most of the time!). And that’s far more important than whether or not we like her. As long as your characters are rich and developed, the reader will relate to them somehow.
Rule 5: Write what you know
Well, yes sometimes this is great. For my debut I stuck to places I knew and I wrote about the early nineties as that was a time I remembered with fondness. But I can’t do that for every book — and wouldn’t life be boring if writers only ever wrote about something they’d experienced themselves? There would be no historical fiction. No sci-fi, no fantasy. The point is, us writers can, and should be able to, use our imaginations. And if we’re writing about something that actually exists about which we don’t know much — well then we can research it. We can speak to people who have experienced it, or read lots about the subject.
The controversy around Jeanine Cummins’ brilliant American Dirt was centred around the fact it was felt that, as an American woman writing about Mexican immigrants, she was appropriating their experiences for her own gain, and that this was wrong. But whether you enjoyed the book or not, she wrote about something she was interested in, she did her research, and she produced something that, in my opinion, was a pacy, engaging, heart-breaking story about something I previously knew little about.
Rule 6: Don’t use cliches
Well it’s true that you don’t want your writing riddled with them. But cliches become cliches for a reason: it’s because, usually, they speak of a universal truth. It’s how people explain things, and it’s how people speak. Maybe we just need to think of some new cliches!
