Sunday, October 2, 2011

Rules and Writers

First, let me say, I don’t think most writers are very good with rules. The hard and fast bumps up against their creativity and it’s not a pretty picture after that.

Very often – the most-acclaimed writers break the most time-honored rules and not only get away with it, but it propels them to a place of fame.

· William Goldman – the screenwriter for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and many others (Misery, The Princess Bride) – broke almost every rule of screenwriting early on – yet is fabulously successful. When I was screenwriting, the seminar gurus would hold up his work as incredibly good and at the same time warn the class not to try to duplicate him, for fear of alienating potential producers and directors.

· James Joyce – author of Ulysses – became literary legend by creating the “stream of consciousness” technique, telling a story completely outside the usual conventions of a novel.

· A more contemporary example might be the author of The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger who employed two narrators, telling the story entirely in first person in the present tense. Many editors and readers consider this method a mistake, yet her “mistake” worked out quite well, don’t you think?

Do I think we should all just throw up our hands and break every statute of conformity willy-nilly? No, because rules in writing are not really rules anyway. They are instead guidelines for how something is normally done and in a professional way – which are sometimes “Bible-ized” by those who are more comfortable with set ways of doing things.

In my opinion, a set of conventions should always be considered, used if appropriate, bent slightly if more appropriate and tossed away at last resort if they are not working period.

We should not, as writers, be married to an idea because it is through examining rituals, conventions, and normalcy that we actually change things for the better. It is the exposure, through narrative, of what doesn’t work that we sometimes discover what does.

Malcolm Gladwell (Blink, The Outliers, The Tipping Point) does this all the time – expose a conventional way of thought for the reality that lies beneath it. Fiction writers do the same thing, no matter what their subject, but an example would be Kathryn Stockett – whose recent blockbuster debut novel The Help, broke with the accepted wisdom of playing down dialect and accents, to reveal the truth of her black characters – which is that they did speak differently and think differently than their white counterparts.

The old adage “Rules are meant to be broken” holds special meaning for creative types. We know it to be true but are pushed to stay within our boxes. It’s up to each of us to find the happy path between the two extremes.

18 comments:

  1. What a great post and what great writing! You speak the truth for so many of us creative types who seek normalcy within the boundaries of the "regular" world. I think we each end up breaking the rules that aren't important to us and finding a comfort level that allows us to have personal satisfaction. Success is often found when you make a decision about exactly what works for you, personally. Other people's rules can be helpful, but need not be set in stone.

    Go Red!

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  2. Landon - you are always a source of positivity! I love that about you. Deciding to go your own way, or what works for you is definitely the best thing to do.

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  3. Rules are there to protect the reader, IMO, more than the writer. Sometimes writers want to trash/forget the rules not because they are wildly creative (although they might like to think so), but because they are lazy.

    I knew an aspiring memoir writer who switched from first person to third narrative, and from past tense to present, in the same paragraph. Of course, her work was a bloody, unreadable mess that gave a reader vertigo before s/he was five sentences in. If we as writers choose to break rules, we had better understand what rules we are breaking, and have very good reasons for breaking them.

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  4. Landon - you are always a source of positivity! I love that about you. Deciding to go your own way, or what works for you is definitely the best thing to do.

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  5. Beverly - I totally agree with you, that it should not be willy-nilly but for a reason and well-done to boot. On the other hand, a writer can follow all the rules and still put out something that it is painful to read. For me, it's about weighing the pros and cons and finding an acceptable balance. Don't NOT do something just because someone tells you it's against the rules. I really appreciate your thoughtful opinion.

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  6. The problem, I think, is that people hear rules, and they start thinking they HAVE to follow them. Moreover, they may ever fear if they don't follow them to the letter, they're not going to get published. Some of the perceived "rules" come out of a desire to educate people into what writers do wrong most often. The thing that drives me crazy is when people say, "You have to understand the rules to break them" because it often isn't true. If you break them, then they tell you that you can't break them because it's a rule.

    My book is omni. It's actually a natural viewpoint for me. But for many years I bought into what all the craft books said, none of which was true. When I decided to use it, I researched, read books for it, determined to learn do it right. I wasn't sure I was on the right track, so I posted a chapter for crit. And 10 writers flame-throwed me for breaking the "Never use omni" rule. They never once mentioned whether I'd done it well -- it was because I'd broken what they'd perceived as a rule. No one seemed to care that there were writers on the market selling today who write in omni. The only thing that mattered was that rule.

    Afterwards, I read David Gerrold's book Worlds of Wonder. It was a refreshing book because it was about the possibilities of writing, not about rules. Guess what some of the reviews commented on? His lack of rules. Sigh.

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  7. Linda - You're a brave soul. You followed your instinct for the sake of the story. That's a perfect example of the "rules" issue I was talking about. Sometimes a story must be told in a way adverse to all the perceptions of what is acceptable. Good for you. I also admire that you researched the best way to do it. Thanks so much for your comment.

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  8. Amen. And true not just to writing, but other fields as well.

    ~Caroline Pointer

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  9. Well said. But it doesn't hurt to know what the rules are. Now if we could just get everyone to agree on that!

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  10. I'm afraid I tend to be one of the rule breakers. Not because I don't believe in rules, but because I've read so many books through the years that follow them...to the letter...and they get boring after awhile. You might not know exactly how the author is going to write rule number two, but you know it's going to be something to throw a wrench into the mix. And then it's going to turn around, followed by wrench number three, etc...

    I believe that some rules must be adhered to, but to follow a cookie cutter formula, simply because publishers and editors have decided this is the only way to write an acceptable story... I just can't always do it. I write the story I feel needs to be told. If it doesn't have X number of conflicts, I'm not going to add an extra one just to conform to industry standards.

    Time will tell if I'm doing the right thing, but just because a rule exists doesn't mean it's always applicable. Unless it's the rule that advises you to have plenty of brownies on hand for those PMS moments. Unless, of course, prison happens to be on your top ten list of future vacation destinations. :)

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  11. We're told not to lie. Would you lie to protect your family from danger? We're told not to drive over the center line. Would you do it if you knew you'd avoid an accident? We're told not to eat fatty foods. The human body needs fat to produce certain hormones.

    Nothing is black and white. There is a time and place for everything and your psost does a great job showing this. Thanks!

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  12. I'm normally a rule follower, with some exceptions. I hate the no adverbs rule. If there were enough strong verbs in the language, adverbs never would have been invented. I find myself more and more writing in sentence fragments. Then I can't help going back to complete them. Following the rules is in my nature, sigh. Fighting. My. Nature. Success!

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  13. I always tell my students to break the rules with intent, never through ignorance.

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  14. I say, do whatever works to serve your story. However, I also find that when a story is not working at all, it's usually because the writer ignored a lot of most basic rules--having a plot, for example.

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  15. Oh no, we're supposed to have a plot? I feel a rewrite coming on...

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  16. I came to your blog through twitter.
    It seems that the point of the rules are, as you say, guidelines, but also a jumping off point - here is a structure, but then, where do I have to change (evolve?) that structure to serve the story I'm trying to tell, ant The Time Travelers Wife is a great example of that.

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  17. I agree w/Donna. One has to know the rules to be able to break them properly, (or at least entertainingly). I do however, enjoy a book with lack of structure and a great plot to the other way around. ;)

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  18. I'm old school! Start with an outline! Great post!

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