3.8 Writing Rules I'm breaking this Novemeber

This novel, I’m breaking my writing rules

When it comes to writers and the concept of ‘rules’ when writing, there are generally two camps. Camp No-Rules believes that there are no hard and fast strict rules for any novel. Camp Rules believes in murdering adverbs, not starting sentences with ‘and, or, but.’ These two houses, e’er at war on the battlefield of novel crafting… or are they?

If you are familiar with my writing habits, you will know that I fall very firmly into the rules camp. My list of story ‘don’t’s’ is far longer than my list of do’s. I’m vehemently against prologues, I’ll die on the hill of anti-flashbacks, and I’ll start a barfight over love-at-first-sights. I agree, adverbs weaken a sentence and filler words should be stripped from prose. I’m against three-pages of backstory on the history of the origin of the Dean of the magic college and I do not approve of ‘something just felt…’ as a reason for characters acting a certain way.

Now that I’ve sent some folk into a frothing rage, let me qualify all that; you need to understand why the rule exists and be a strong writer, before you should break it. And breaking the rules is fine, provided you meet that criteria.

Yeah. You heard me. You can break the rules, but only if you know what you’re doing.

This comes down to the difference between a cook and a chef in terms of approach. A cook follows a recipe, knows how to make a bunch of recipes but generally follows these instructions. A chef knows how to blend the ingredients and create their own recipes. In writing, I’d compare it to two authors writing Shifter romance: A cook will read a bunch of existing shifter romances and follow the formula. A chef will research terms, animal behaviours and world build around characters. 

To apply it to the so-called rules of writing, adverbs are handy and useful words. But a strong verb is even better.

A prologue can create good future foreshadowing and tension before a mundane ‘day in the life,’ chapter one. But a first chapter full of excitement and mystery is even better.

A flashback can show a blow-by-blow account of an event. But a cryptic few sentences can make the emotional impact far heavier, in a shorter time.

When it comes to rules, blindly following them is just as bad as blindly ignoring them. If you refuse to never use any adverbs ever, your writing might sorely need a sprinkling of colour. A tense melee benefits from a few ‘and or but’ sentence starters. A stoic character being gobsmacked by sudden love adds to a novel on occasion.

Everything in moderation. And everything for a reason. Treat your writing seriously, but also have fun. Balancing these two opposing points is vital.

The reason that I disdain most flashbacks and prologues is because they are vastly unnecessary. If your flashback can be summed up in ‘we were chased, he fell, I couldn’t save him.’ Then we probably don’t need a two-page chase scene unless there is actually a vital clue hidden in the memory. If the vital clue is ‘he fell,’ it’s not a clue. A good flashback should contain something relevant but also revealing of a deeper part of the plot, say that the villain has the Key of Ruin already. If your prologue involves prophecy, or a wetnurse/soldier running through a dread forest at night with a mysterious bundle, it can probably be summed up later in chapters one or two. A good prologue, well, have you seen the 1999 movie, The Mummy? The opening prologue of this movie reveals the villain’s motivation, personality, and why he is angry-angry mummy. For the rest of the movie he is a terrifying monster, eating people and kidnapping damsels. Without the prologue, the two lines of dialog later wouldn’t have given us much explanation for this behaviour.

So, this is my point when it comes to why I generally enforce the rules. Because until you understand the purpose and use, and are able to write well within the conventions, you are probably going to struggle outside the conventions. 

All that said, my current project starts with a prologue and has a flashback in chapter eight. I aahhed and uhmed over using both of these tools. 

A tool used poorly rarely contributes to the book overall. But I also knew that my story started with the prologue, an important narration to tell the reader there was a large mystery surrounding the origins of the protagonist and a question- did she help murder someone, and why? The flashback, for its part, throws further shade on the relationship with a major villain and murky water around the protagonist’s dubious skills. The motivations and origins of the protagonist’s skills are never spelled out precisely, except in these side-moments. I keep my flashbacks short and terse, focusing on the important plot points.

I feel confident with this piece because I know the reason why I am using the prologue and the flashbacks. They are ingredients I’ve picked deliberately for my novel, not simply ingredients I’ve thrown in because ‘that’s what everyone else does.’ An important distinction.

What are writing rules you keep? What would it take you to break them?