Blog Post: Writing ‘Rules’

[From Our Blog]

New blog post by Claire G – discussions in this thread, please
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Don’t Start with a Character Waking Up, Looking in the Mirror, or with a Hangover

On Pop-Up Submissions, we received a lot of openings like this. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, at least in my humble opinion. It may be a cliché, but Fifty Shades of Grey starts with Anastasia Steele looking in the mirror and it didn’t do E.L. James any harm!



Too Many Adjectives

Example: She found the gold necklace in an old, battered trunk between a silk dress and a black handbag with a dull buckle which left a shallow imprint in her finger.

Mark Twain: “When you catch an adjective, kill it.”



No Adverbs

Example: The moon shone brilliantly, rising majestically above the horizon, its glow lovingly caressing my face.

Stephen King: “The road to Hell is paved with adverbs.”



Show Don’t Tell

Anton Chekhov: “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

‘Telling’ has its place but ‘showing’ adds so much depth to a description or scene. I need to remember this!



Too Much Exposition

This can especially be evident in openings. I’ve noticed it in a lot of fantasy stories in particular, where world-building up-front helps the reader to understand the setting. But how much is too much?



Clichés and Imagery

Over-use of common similes and tropes? A lack of originality? Lazy writing? Or do they have their place?



Don’t Use the Passive Voice

Example: The man was killed by the vampire.

The active voice would be: The vampire killed the man.

I think passive voice can work when used occasionally and for deliberate effect, e.g. when you want to shift the focus of the sentence, but many people say it should never be used.



Too Many Points-of-View Characters

I’ve heard three maximum advised time and time again, that too many doesn’t allow the reader to explore a character and their story in enough depth, that they can lose track of who’s who. However, when it’s done well, boy can it work!

e.g. Girl, Woman, Other and A Song of Ice and Fire.



Experience

I over-explain, I show and then tell unnecessarily, I love adverbs and adjectives, I’ve started a novel with a character looking in the mirror and one of my books has ten points of view – some of this I do consciously, some I’ve had pointed out to me. I’m constantly learning.

I’ve heard that an author needs to know the rules in order to break them, but that this must be for a reason. I wrote an experimental novel in which I wrote what and how I wanted, regardless of convention. It’s the one that got me a literary agent (but may not sell!). ‘Rules’ can be a minefield.



Final Thoughts

What’s your opinion of writing ‘rules’? Do you follow them? Why/why not?

Would you add any other rules to this list?
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By @Claire G
Get the discussion going – post your thoughts & comments in the thread below…

 

[Hannah F]

It is indeed good to know the so-called rules in order to break them for good reason.

Adverbs and adjectives are great if used sparingly and with purpose and when a more accurate verb or noun isn't available. They can also add to the author's voice (I'm thinking Maggie O'Farrell).
She found the gold necklace in an old, battered trunk between a silk dress and a black handbag with a dull buckle which left a shallow imprint in her finger.
I love this sentence! The adjectives heighten the mystery. I would read on.

Tell is important if one needs to speed through a scene, but Show immerses the reader in the scene.

Cliches and tropes are two different things. When writing within a genre, the reader might love to experience certain tropes as long as there is something original about them and they don't act in a cliched manner. Cliches can work within dialogue but otherwise tend to distance the reader from the immersive experience.

Passive voice is almost never needed. Until it is. Use it with purpose.

Waking up, looking in the mirror etc. - too cliche. They will only work if there is a great twist. (I shan't comment on EL James other than I wouldn't use her as my role model.)

POVs. The more you have, the easier it is to lose the writer. Many POVs is difficult until the writer gains much experience in how to keep a reader engaged. Newbies do it at their peril.

I say, find your voice. If your voice is towards the Stephen King style, get rid of the adjectives and adverbs. If your voice is more Maggie O'Farrell/Erin Morgenstern/many others, go with the flourishes but be aware of how they can clutter.

 

[Claire G]

The sentence with all the adjectives is from the opening of one of my paused novels, though slightly embellished! It was on Pop Ups.

 

[PCFrontier]

Hi Claire,
I will enter your debate. I think the list you have given is very useful for writers to keep in mind. I would say they are not rules, but stylistic choices for a writer. Some of Britain’s greatest writers took little no notice of these so called rules.

I recently re-read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, perhaps his most famous book. This book starts with two pages of what some would call telling text. There are stacks of adjectives, adverbs and metaphors. According to the internet, Mr Dickens has sold 300 million plus books - and has also spawned big box office films, TV series and theatre plays.

I recently re-read Emma by Jane Austen. This book starts with three pages of what some would call telling text. It has lots of adjectives, adverbs and repetition of words. According to the internet Miss Austen has sold over 30 million plus books - and has also spawned big box office films, TV series and theatre plays.

I recently re-read Murder on The Orient Express by Agatha Christie. The book starts with a page of what some would call telling text and has adjectives and adverbs. I also re-read Murder in Mesopotamia. It might start with a cliché, stating that - The events chronicled in this narrative took place some four years ago. This text is then followed with a written letter giving what some like to call an information dump. Is a letter at the start of a novel also a cliché? There are adjectives and adverbs. According to the internet Mrs Christie has sold over 2 billion plus books - and has also spawned big box office films, TV series and theatre plays.

Do these classic British writers give us a message about good writing and so called writing rules?

 

[LJ Beck]

Rules. Bwahhh!! Rules are for sissies.

haha. Jokes. Rules have their place. I have a complex relationship with the rules. They've come into being to help make a better reading experience. So I take them as wise advice that I can adopt or not, at my own peril.

They also evolve. @PCFrontier I agree, applying the rules that we have today to writers from another time makes the rules seem foolhardy. I think it's important, however, to remember a few things.

One, any writer who has reached great fame and popularity can do whatever they want because their writing has a kind of magic that supersedes rules. That magic is not come by easily, and I imagine their brand of magic has its own kinds of rules. And two, the culture in which those books were written is vastly different than the culture we're currently in. I'm not saying that's good, or bad, just different. So I'm not sure today's rules can be applied as directly to the classics.

So rules. Sure they make writing harder, but do they make it better? Sometimes. It takes careful deliberation. Look at grammer. You've got to know the rules of grammer and understand how grammer works, so that if you decide to break it, you know it's going to work. Bad grammer can be super fun to read when done with a deft hand. When it's done out of a disregard for the rules of grammer, it can come across as amaturish.

Take "Show don't tell." I would venture to say most people don't like being told what to feel, they want to be made to feel it. That to me is the essence of show don't tell. It's natural to want to experience things for ourselves rather than be told about that experience. We never really learn from other's mistakes. We learn from our own. You know when you're at a restaurant, and a server puts a plate in front of you and says, "don't touch the plate, it's hot." What's the first thing you do? Touch the plate. We want to know first hand. But "show don't tell" doesn't apply to everything. Like i before e except after c, there are times it applies, and times it doesn't. You have to decide when that rules applies and when it doesn't. It's a complex rule.

In fact, all the rules are complex. There's good reasons for all of them. I think getting to the bottom of the reasons, really understanding them, how they apply to the reader experience, will help us become better writers, regardless of our choise on actually following them.

@Claire G - another great post. Thanks! You really do tackle the controversail grit and grime. Love it!

 

[James Charles]

New blog post by Claire G – discussions in this thread, please
---

Don’t Start with a Character Waking Up, Looking in the Mirror, or with a Hangover

On Pop-Up Submissions, we received a lot of openings like this. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, at least in my humble opinion. It may be a cliché, but Fifty Shades of Grey starts with Anastasia Steele looking in the mirror and it didn’t do E.L. James any harm!



Too Many Adjectives

Example: She found the gold necklace in an old, battered trunk between a silk dress and a black handbag with a dull buckle which left a shallow imprint in her finger.

Mark Twain: “When you catch an adjective, kill it.”



No Adverbs

Example: The moon shone brilliantly, rising majestically above the horizon, its glow lovingly caressing my face.

Stephen King: “The road to Hell is paved with adverbs.”



Show Don’t Tell

Anton Chekhov: “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

‘Telling’ has its place but ‘showing’ adds so much depth to a description or scene. I need to remember this!



Too Much Exposition

This can especially be evident in openings. I’ve noticed it in a lot of fantasy stories in particular, where world-building up-front helps the reader to understand the setting. But how much is too much?



Clichés and Imagery

Over-use of common similes and tropes? A lack of originality? Lazy writing? Or do they have their place?



Don’t Use the Passive Voice

Example: The man was killed by the vampire.

The active voice would be: The vampire killed the man.

I think passive voice can work when used occasionally and for deliberate effect, e.g. when you want to shift the focus of the sentence, but many people say it should never be used.



Too Many Points-of-View Characters

I’ve heard three maximum advised time and time again, that too many doesn’t allow the reader to explore a character and their story in enough depth, that they can lose track of who’s who. However, when it’s done well, boy can it work!

e.g. Girl, Woman, Other and A Song of Ice and Fire.



Experience

I over-explain, I show and then tell unnecessarily, I love adverbs and adjectives, I’ve started a novel with a character looking in the mirror and one of my books has ten points of view – some of this I do consciously, some I’ve had pointed out to me. I’m constantly learning.

I’ve heard that an author needs to know the rules in order to break them, but that this must be for a reason. I wrote an experimental novel in which I wrote what and how I wanted, regardless of convention. It’s the one that got me a literary agent (but may not sell!). ‘Rules’ can be a minefield.



Final Thoughts

What’s your opinion of writing ‘rules’? Do you follow them? Why/why not?

Would you add any other rules to this list?
---

By @Claire G
Get the discussion going – post your thoughts & comments in the thread below…

Rules are made to be broken.

 

[Pamela Jo]

It all depends on who your reader is and the current market.

Dickens characters and stories stand the test of time but he got paid by the word and first wrote for his market, serial publications. A very different market to today. Writing in his style you wont get past the slush pile.

Recently someone did a new take on David Copperfield and won acclaim for it-but not lots of readers.

Here's the reason for that. For writers looking to be published, there are effectively two markets now:

Commercial, where your readers are also consumers who chose where to put their hard-earned cash.

Literary, where the acclaim of your peers matters more than sales. Usually these writers have some connection with the English dept of universities. Tenure and grants are the prizes for publication. Mass sales dont matter as much as acclaim and fame. And that last is true for publishers too. They'll take on a few of these because they have to look like literature matters at least as much as money-even though it doesn't. There is very little grey area there. Ahem.

The rules are different for each market.

It's important to remember that Dickens and Shakespeare were consummate commercial writers who catered to the audience of their time. Only now are they considered "literary."

Writing you have two choices.

You can decide, "Damn the publishers-full speed ahead" and do whatever you want not caring if your work is publishable in the current market or not.
Or you can decide to try and decipher the writing on the wall and amend what you want to write to be marketable.

Those two realities are the real rules of writing.

 

[PCFrontier]

Hi all,
To add further to the debate. I will mention The Martian by Andy Weir published initially in 2013. After the first paragraph, the start is full of what I think some Litopians would call telling text and information dumping. Judge for yourselves, the first several pages can be read on Amazon.

I think the first few paragraphs start really well and the main character is introduced, advising the reader he is in trouble. We then get into - 'I guess I should explain how Mars missions work'. The next few pages are what some would call telling text and an information dump to the reader about the Ares Program and the Mars ascent and descent vehicles.

The next section is the main character telling the reader retrospectively about the Mars Ascent vehicle again how he came to be left on Mars. There is also repetition of the words 'ridiculous sequence' in the same sentence. Then there is some good writing, the main character advises how he got injured and his reactions. This is followed by another telling section as the main character and Andy Weir go into lengthy telling detail justifying a highly implausible idea - that an astronaut can survive a metal antenna thrust into his body and a hole in his space suit, on the Mars surface, while being unconscious and all alone. Reads as all telling text to me. I don't mind this, since I think telling text balanced with so called showing text is fine. When I read The Martian, I see a fair bit of telling and information dumping throughout the book.

I think there is much to admire about Andy Weir's writing. He is one of the few modern writers I actually like. I even had the impertinence to use Andy Weir as a comparison to literary agents when I sent my own poor scribblings recently. I would say Andy Weir shows that telling text and information dumping is alive and kicking in the modern writing world and helps to sell 5 million books and spawn a big Hollywood box office film.

 

[Hannah F]

Hi all,
To add further to the debate. I will mention The Martian by Andy Weir published initially in 2013. After the first paragraph, the start is full of what I think some Litopians would call telling text and information dumping. Judge for yourselves, the first several pages can be read on Amazon.

I think the first few paragraphs start really well and the main character is introduced, advising the reader he is in trouble. We then get into - 'I guess I should explain how Mars missions work'. The next few pages are what some would call telling text and an information dump to the reader about the Ares Program and the Mars ascent and descent vehicles.

The next section is the main character telling the reader retrospectively about the Mars Ascent vehicle again how he came to be left on Mars. There is also repetition of the words 'ridiculous sequence' in the same sentence. Then there is some good writing, the main character advises how he got injured and his reactions. This is followed by another telling section as the main character and Andy Weir go into lengthy telling detail justifying a highly implausible idea - that an astronaut can survive a metal antenna thrust into his body and a hole in his space suit, on the Mars surface, while being unconscious and all alone. Reads as all telling text to me. I don't mind this, since I think telling text balanced with so called showing text is fine. When I read The Martian, I see a fair bit of telling and information dumping throughout the book.

I think there is much to admire about Andy Weir's writing. He is one of the few modern writers I actually like. I even had the impertinence to use Andy Weir as a comparison to literary agents when I sent my own poor scribblings recently. I would say Andy Weir shows that telling text and information dumping is alive and kicking in the modern writing world and helps to sell 5 million books and spawn a big Hollywood box office film.

Ah, but Andy Weir has VOICE. I write that in capitals because a brilliant voice can override a lot of rules.

 

[LJ Beck]

Hi all,
To add further to the debate. I will mention The Martian by Andy Weir published initially in 2013. After the first paragraph, the start is full of what I think some Litopians would call telling text and information dumping. Judge for yourselves, the first several pages can be read on Amazon.

I think the first few paragraphs start really well and the main character is introduced, advising the reader he is in trouble. We then get into - 'I guess I should explain how Mars missions work'. The next few pages are what some would call telling text and an information dump to the reader about the Ares Program and the Mars ascent and descent vehicles.

The next section is the main character telling the reader retrospectively about the Mars Ascent vehicle again how he came to be left on Mars. There is also repetition of the words 'ridiculous sequence' in the same sentence. Then there is some good writing, the main character advises how he got injured and his reactions. This is followed by another telling section as the main character and Andy Weir go into lengthy telling detail justifying a highly implausible idea - that an astronaut can survive a metal antenna thrust into his body and a hole in his space suit, on the Mars surface, while being unconscious and all alone. Reads as all telling text to me. I don't mind this, since I think telling text balanced with so called showing text is fine. When I read The Martian, I see a fair bit of telling and information dumping throughout the book.

I think there is much to admire about Andy Weir's writing. He is one of the few modern writers I actually like. I even had the impertinence to use Andy Weir as a comparison to literary agents when I sent my own poor scribblings recently. I would say Andy Weir shows that telling text and information dumping is alive and kicking in the modern writing world and helps to sell 5 million books and spawn a big Hollywood box office film.

Exactly. It's not a blanket rule. You have to know when to use it.

I didn't read The Martian, but I believe it was self-published in 2011 as a serialized story in his blog, and then it was picked up by a publisher in 2014, which is kind of interesting. He did say he took all his learnings from The Martian, and put them into Artemus, and then all the learnings from Artemus and put them into Project Hail Mary, which to me was perfect. Still took him 18 drafts.

He does add a lot of science stuff that you have to tell as well as show. But he never tells you how to feel. And I never felt he told me something that I would have reather been shown. Just as important not to show everything, too, as that can get tedious. It comes down to balance and the reader expereince.

 

[Pamela Jo]

I would also say Weir does NOT dump, he feeds. Bit by bit while building suspense.
Last Sat. I met with an agent who specialises in SF we had a good discussion about this.
We agreed Fallout is an incredible masterclass in feeding enough info to be interesting but not so much that the fast pace bogs down.
He also bashed me over the head for places I had not followed this rule in the sample of Feckless he read and redlined 2 sentences.
But then he said he'd been telling every writer he met with that day (5 others) the same thing and told them to watch Fallout so I got a few points for saying it before he did.

 

[PCFrontier]

Ah, but Andy Weir has VOICE. I write that in capitals because a brilliant voice can override a lot of rules.

Hi Hannah and LJ,
I agree. A good commercial voice and a top story are the most important, rules not so important.
I agree. A writing balance is the best.
Others will have a different opinion which is equally valid.