Don't Fear the Rules of Writing

Frequent comments that this rule doesn’t make sense or I don’t need that rule or even why do we even have these stupid rules?

Rules are important. IMO, to become a successful writer, you need to understand how stories are constructed and why. Why start with an inciting incident? Why is there a climax?  Why does the hero need an emotional arc? There are reasons for everything, and they mostly have to do with reader engagement.

Readers don’t want to read boring stories. They don’t want to read about characters that seem fake or with which they can’t relate. They don’t want to read pages of history instead of hearing the salient facts from the characters. They don’t want to wade through facts and figures, social castes, or political intrigue that sets the world but is only tangentially related to the story.

Getting the story across to the reader in a way that is compelling and engaging is the core job of the writer. And writers need to understand the best ways to write.

Becoming a successful writer is a process. It is not something that simply happens (except in the rarest of cases. It is difficult enough to become a published author the regular way, so why try to be one of a handful of people who can just break the rules and be successful? Odds are better if you know what you’re doing.)

That process progresses from novice to intermediate to advanced to master. Writing, like any other skill, is one that takes practice to get better. But practice alone isn’t enough. It also takes learning. Just like in music. Yes, there are prodigies that seem to have mastered music and their instrument in only a year or two. But most musicians work hard, every day, every week, for years to get better. Along the way, they work with various other musicians and mentors and teachers to learn new things and get better. They may not always use what they learn, but in knowing it, they are making a conscious decision on how to play.

Writing is similar. We authors learn not just from writing more stories, but from reading other stories, reading books on writing from experts, and getting direct feedback on our work from other authors, and that feedback may include both story-level info such as questions about the plot or motivations of characters, as well as feedback on craft. Information on sentence structures, repetition, pacing, POVs, info dumps, etc. all let us know what is working and what isn’t. When we find those things that don’t work, we can apply what we’ve learned and revise them.

The rules of writing help us understand what works and what doesn’t. They aren’t meant to be obstacles. Learning, understanding, and using them are steps along the development process that every writer undergoes.