No Rules, Just Write
The Budget-Friendly Family Steakhouse Chain Guide to Writing Fiction
While accomplishing the thimbleful of research I had to do for today’s Shelf Life, I learned that last month was the ten-year anniversary of Outback Steakhouse’s “no rules, just right” slogan. So, happy anniversary to them I guess.
One of the things I do to “research” Shelf Life articles is I trawl writing forums and advice groups to find questions writers are asking each other, editors, and publishing pros, and then I answer those questions in Shelf Life. I figure, nobody knows what writers want to know better than writers who want to know stuff.
The most common question formulation I see, by far, goes like this:
Is it okay if I. . . .
Am I allowed to. . . .
Would it be a mistake if I. . . ?
Followed by a thing the writer wants to put in their book.
Writers seeking information about how to write, how to write well, or how to write for commercial success have probably discovered tons of writing “rules”—or writing advice, at least—about what to do and what not to do in their novel. Some of this advice is even found in Shelf Life. This I won’t deny.
There are two important caveats to any writing rule, though. First,
Rules are not important when you are drafting.
Rules are for revision. Drafting is for vomiting your idea onto the paper as quickly as you can so you actually complete it. Rules can be enacted during revision—if you want to enact them at all. Which brings me to the second,
Everything works well sometimes.
Advice to do or not do something in writing tends to evolve from an understanding of what has worked well for others and what’s been overused. When someone says, “You should never start your story with X,” it’s a safe bet that X has been overused or used poorly in enough stories that it’s become a tired trope. When someone says, “Always do Y,” it’s probably because Y has been used to excellent effect enough times that it’s presently seen as a sure thing—that it will always land, that readers will always like it.
However, every Y is in danger of becoming an X. If something worked well yesterday, and has become part of the writerly advice today, then it may well become tomorrow’s overused trope. Conversely, many Xs were once Ys—every tired trope is tired because it’s overused, and things become overused because they work. Every X—every overused, tired trope—was a completely new, unique, and daring technique if you go back far enough in literary history. The novel itself was once considered experimental, avant garde, and, in fact, subversive.
Therefore, consider these:
“Readers won’t like this, it’s too experimental.” → Every tried, true, and trusted technique was once experimental.
“This feels tropey and unoriginal.” → If it feels like a trope, that’s because writers keep using it because it keeps working.
What I’m getting at is, first, you should never worry about writing rules while drafting because drafting is about getting the story out of your head and onto paper, and anything from the draft can be changed in revision. Second, even during revision you need not adhere to every writing rule you’ve heard or been told. A writer should use their discretion and judgment to consider the writing rules and advice that apply to what they have written, and then decide whether or not to proceed anyway.
A great example is the “mirror scene” that I talked about in September’s Rookie Mistakes—this is the scene that comes into existence because the writer wants to describe their character physically but isn’t sure how to work it into the story organically, so they have the character examine themself in a mirror and think about their physical characteristics as a means of communicating these to the reader.
In September I told you not to do the mirror scene, not even once, because it’s amateur hour and everyone hates the mirror scene. Now it’s October and I’m telling you otherwise. Here are two perfectly good reasons to write the mirror scene:
You know you may take it out later but getting the images out of your head and down on paper will give you momentum.
You know the mirror scene is an overused trope, and why, but you want to use it anyway, and you have a plan to subvert the trope or rise above it.
There are actually no rules to writing fiction. Everything you can do in writing falls into one of two categories:
It’s been done before.
It’s never been done before.
If it’s been done before, it’s probably been done successfully at least once, in which case, it can be done successfully again. If it’s never been done before, there’s a first time for everything. Everything is valid. Nobody was ready for the European novel before Cervantes wrote Don Quijote. Nobody was ready for the science fiction novel until Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Nobody was ready for Finnegans Wake when it published in 1939 and nobody’s ready for it yet today. Finnegans Wake is a little too experimental. Probably don’t write Finnegans Wake if you can help it. Also probably don’t read Finnegans Wake if you can help it.
Here are some examples of the things you’re never, ever supposed to do in fiction.
Never describe your character’s appearance by having them look in a mirror.
Harry ran his fingers over the scar again. It was still painful. He turned on the lamp beside him, scrambled out of bed, crossed the room, opened his wardrobe, and peered into the mirror on the inside of the door. A skinny boy of fourteen looked back at him, his bright green eyes puzzled under his untidy black hair. (from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by JK Rowling)
Never begin your story with a character waking up in the morning.
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. (from The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka)
Never begin your story with dialogue.
“They’re made out of meat.”
“Meat?”
“Meat. They're made out of meat.”
“Meat?”
“There’s no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way through. They’re completely meat.” (from “They’re Made Out of Meat” by Terry Bisson)
Never begin your story with a bunch of exposition.
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. (from One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez)
Never reveal, right at the end, that it was all just a dream.
So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality—the grass would be only rustling in the wind, and the pool rippling to the waving of the reeds—the rattling teacups would change to tinkling sheep-bells, and the Queen’s shrill cries to the voice of the shepherd boy—and the sneeze of the baby, the shriek of the Gryphon, and all the other queer noises, would change (she knew) to the confused clamour of the busy farm-yard—while the lowing of the cattle in the distance would take the place of the Mock Turtle’s heavy sobs. (from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll)
Never use purple prose or fancy language; remember, to be succinct and concise, like Hemingway!
Then summer came. A summer limp with the weight of blossomed things. Heavy sunflowers weeping over fences; iris curling and browning at the edges far away from their purple hearts; ears of corn letting their auburn hair wind down to their stalks. And the boys. The beautiful, beautiful boys who dotted the landscape like jewels, split the air with their shouts in the field, and thickened the river with their shining wet backs. Even their footsteps left a smell of smoke behind. (from Sula by Toni Morrison)
I could go on. And, in fact, I did, but I unleashed some nasty spoilers so I stopped and deleted what I wrote. Go read “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce. And, if someone tells you to never use amnesia as a plot device, point them toward The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. There’s even a convenient movie if they don’t feel like reading.
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