Among the most digestible forms of writing advice on social media are short (or long) lists of pithy “writing rules.” More frequently than I’d like, they come from more-or-less famous authors, who really ought to know better.
As an editor, I can’t go on record as saying anything like “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” when it comes to effective writing. There are lots of very important rules, like rules on correct punctuation, clauses, and adverbial phrases (and most of those can still be bent by the right author). Everything else is style.
When I see that an author has tweeted (X’d?) out a list of writing tips, I’m always hoping for entries along the lines of “semicolons are a valid form of punctuation and anyone who tells you they don’t belong in dialogue is factually incorrect.” I’m always disappointed.
Lists of “So-and-so’s writing rules” annoy the heck out of me. They occasionally contain useful advice, and they can encourage authors to take a closer look at elements of their work, but it’s impossible to ignore their problems:
- They’re all pretty much the same. They all address a handful of common wisdom “tips” that we already see everywhere, maybe with one or two of the author’s pet peeves thrown in. Unless this is the first such list you’ve ever seen, you’ve already seen it.
- The “rules” are so broad as to be nearly useless. Every “rule” can be countered with a dozen examples of that “rule” being broken, to varying degrees of success, by authors of varying skill levels.
- They only cover purely stylistic elements. There are very rarely any “rules” about structure, form, mechanics, or actual storytelling. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a “rule” in a listicle regarding which kind of character arc to use in what kind of story; I only see rules like “Don’t ever use the word ‘aardvark’.”
- They lack explanation and nuance. Why shouldn’t we use the word “aardvark”? Because this author says so. Any further exploration of the topic is an exercise for the inevitable YouTuber who takes issue with the list.
- They almost feel like they’re engineered to spark rage bait engagement rather than to help aspiring authors.
A bare list of “rules” is not especially educational. Imagine if a famous fisherperson released a tweet titled “Fishing rules for new fisherfolk,” but it was just a list of the types of fish the author likes to catch. “Never catch catfish. Never catch smallmouth bass. If you focus on catching trout, your fishing will improve by 25%. Remember to always use a hook. Never use treble hooks.” That’d be absurd.
It’s more helpful to provide a general rule, explain why it exists, and maybe include some examples. This allows a writer to understand the deeper levels of the process and to generalize the information to other areas of their work. But that’s too long for a tweet, so it rarely happens.
What sparked all of this? It’s simple: I stumbled onto yet another set of “writing rules” on social media recently, and it broke me. I have finally been piqued to engage. So, in spite of my own “rule” to not feed this particular form of engagement mill, I will be going through the list, as I originally saw it, and attempting to make it useful. Let’s begin.
1. Never open a book with weather.
The “never start a book with [whatever]” suggestion is a staple in these lists, but the use of “weather” here was my first clue that this list came from a fairly old source. Weather-based openings were pretty common before or around the turn of the 21st century, but I can’t remember the last time I saw it in a more recent book. Maybe I’m not reading the right genres to have encountered it.
“Never start a book with a character waking up” is the current version. You’ll run across this everywhere, including in the submission requirements for some literary agents. But a more useful way to phrase it would be “Avoid opening a story with something normal and mundane.”
A character waking up in the morning on the first page of a book is incredibly common. To a writer (newer writers especially), this feels like a natural beginning. It’s how we begin every day, so we should start with a character beginning their day, right? The problem is that waking up and going through a normal morning routine is also the most boring thing in the world to read about. This is also very genre-dependent. It’s mostly true in works set in the contemporary real(ish) world, like crime novels or urban fantasy, where someone would wake up, get out of bed, use the bathroom, brush their teeth, and go get breakfast. We all do it. It’s mundane. It’s skippable.
The main thing a “morning routine” opening is intended to do is to set up the character’s socioeconomic class and general lifestyle, and there are a lot of better ways to do that. Starting here is similar to starting with a lore dump, except that the lore is the character’s station in life.
On the other hand, if a character’s morning routine is to wake up, put on snake-proof boots, go out and feed the riding cobras, and then write a status report to send to their undead dragon-wizard overlord before breakfast, that’s a whole different thing. (Even then, you can probably skip the yawning-and-stretching part and start with them pulling on their snake-proof boots.)
Opening a book with a paragraph-long (or longer) description of the weather has the same problem. It’s mundane in most contemporary-like settings, and it was often used as a sort of literary flex (“Look how awesome my prose is, even when I’m just describing the weather!”).
In addition, this is also heavily genre-dependent. Someone approaching the rule as written might decide that a famous author is telling them to ditch their opening description of an approaching fire tornado on a distant planet, or a blue-sparkling sandstorm in the Desert of Mysteries. An opening like “She pulled her hat low against the rain of small frogs falling from the sky and grumbled about the lousy spring weather” is the opposite of mundane.
When I say these lists lack nuance, this is exactly what I’m talking about. If the weather is interesting and/or has a specific, tangible effect on the opening scene, you can absolutely start there! If the character waking up is interesting or unusual, then have at it! Though you should probably avoid submitting it to agents whose submission requirements prohibit it; it’s entirely possible they’ll delete your email as soon as they see “MC woke up…” without getting to “…to a knife held against his throat.”
2. Avoid prologues.
You can’t hear my heavy sigh through this medium. This is one of those things that baffles me. There’s a not-insignificant contingent of readers who hate prologues, for reasons I have yet to understand. Prologues, like every part of a book, can be useful or unnecessary, but just seeing “Prologue” at the top of the page doesn’t tell you which this one is. A lot of these readers go on to say that they automatically skip prologues, which… well, ok, it’s free and the cops can’t stop them, but they do this at their peril.
A prologue can be a valuable tool. They’re best used to give the reader important information that wouldn’t naturally come up in the story itself. This is usually information that the characters don’t know and that nobody would ever tell them, but that also helps the reader contextualize what’s happening or that foreshadows some significant event. For example, the circumstances of the MC’s birth that their dead parents didn’t get around to explaining, the effect some hidden ancient artifact is having on the land, or the secret the High Potentate is holding back from the Potentate Council that will soon doom the galactic fleet.
Sometimes they can be used to give the reader information that another character does know but that the MC doesn’t, especially in stories written in first-person. Or information that is so baked into the setting and so self-evident that it wouldn’t be mentioned except in a dreaded “As you know…” exposition-disguised-as-dialogue scene. There are often better ways to do this, but not always.
As with any writing tool, however, there are also ineffective ways to use it:
If a prologue is centered around a main character and doesn’t provide any background information that wouldn’t come up elsewhere, it might be better to call it “Chapter 1,” even if it takes place well in the past.
A prologue generally shouldn’t be used to introduce a character who doesn’t show up until much later in the book (or a mystery that isn’t solved until the third act), because some readers have better memories than others. You don’t want a reader to get to page 122 and say “Wait, who the heck is this person, and why does the story act like I’ve already met them?” They’ll be pretty frustrated if they have to flip all the way back to the beginning to find out. Incidentally, that’s why prologue characters tend to be historical figures, people important enough to be at least mentioned later during the course of the story (like a major antagonist or powerful official), or dead by the end of the prologue.
The prologue should probably be written in the same style as the rest of the book. For example, it can be a problem if you’ve written a first-person prologue to a third-person story, or if the prologue is in the past tense while the story is in the present tense. A reader who takes the book home because they like the style of the prologue could feel cheated if the story doesn’t match, and a reader who doesn’t like the style of the prologue is unlikely to take it home at all, even if the rest is in a style they do like. If you have to ask yourself “Should I send this agent the prologue or just chapter 1?” when they ask for the first five pages, that may be an indication that the prologue doesn’t mesh well with the style of the rest of the story.
A prologue shouldn’t be a straight lore dump (while Tolkien kind of did that, that’s probably the second most common complaint I hear from people who don’t like Tolkien). A lore dump is normally at its most valuable as a page in an author’s planning notes, and the lore itself usually works better if it’s shown in the main body of the story rather than told to the reader all at once at the very beginning. I strongly suspect that the anti-prologue folks have encountered a lot of lore-heavy prologues, especially when much of that lore doesn’t directly affect the story.
If a story absolutely needs an opening lore dump (very few do), be very careful that everything you mention has some direct impact on the plot or the characters. Please don’t describe 30 different fantasy creatures if the characters only encounter two of them and only hear about a third in passing. The other 27 would be better presented in an appendix, assuming your publisher will let you get away with having appendixes. Otherwise, we don’t need to hear about them.
I won’t presume to define a specific length for an effective prologue, except to say that it should probably be shorter than a typical chapter, and almost definitely not longer. This goes back to “starting a story as close to the beginning as possible.” The reader doesn’t usually want to run a mile just to get to the starting block of the real race.
As a final tip, if you want to completely avoid the issue of readers who skip prologues, put “Chapter 1” (or even “Chapter 0”) on the top of the first page instead of “Prologue,” and change nothing else. That solves the problem far more frequently than I wish it did. It sometimes feels like there’s more of an aversion to the word “prologue” than to the concept of a prologue.
3. Never use a verb other than ‘said’ to carry dialogue.
I have mixed feelings about this one.
Sometime back in the misty elder days, some primary-school creative writing teacher told their students to never use “said” and to always use some more exciting and evocative verb. I don’t know why, I don’t know when, and I don’t know who, which is probably good for them in case I ever stumble onto a time machine with an air horn in it. But this weird axiom spread through the writing community like some kind of literary fungus.
Thankfully, it’s becoming less common, but the reason “Always use ‘said'” shows up on these lists at all is because the opposite advice was so prevalent.
On the balance, I feel like “only use ‘said'” is somewhat better advice than “never use ‘said’.” An author will go less wrong that way, and they will make less work for me as an editor.
In technical parlance, all of those “…he said,” “…she said,” and “…they said”s are called “dialogue tags.” The primary purpose of a dialogue tag is to remind the reader which character is speaking. There’s a whole lot to be said about the mysterious science of dialogue tags, but that’s the short of it. They’re a subtle nudge to the reader that allows them to more easily follow a scene.
The verb that best accomplishes that primary purpose is “said.” “Said” is one of those words that’s nearly invisible, like “is” or “of.” It slides right under the reader’s direct perception, and it doesn’t drag the reader’s attention away from the words that are being spoken. If “said” is the only verb the author uses in dialogue tags, it’s unlikely that any real harm will come from it.
Any other word in that spot (other than maybe “asked”) draws attention to itself. A more exciting verb is, by definition, more exciting, and a reader will pay attention to it, which can interrupt the flow of the dialogue. Every time a reader sees “opined,” “demanded,” “mused,” or “stated,” it slows them down. Running into a cluster of these words is like trying to drive over a series of speed bumps; it’s annoying even where they’re ostensibly useful, like in a parking lot, and would be deeply frustrating on Main Street.
Sometimes, though, the words a character is saying are less important than how the character is saying them. Since the other words used in place of “said” draw attention to themselves, they’re especially useful for showing a character’s emotional state with a considerable degree of granularity. Consider the following examples:
- “Pull the lever!” she commanded.
- “Pull the lever!” she shouted.
- “Pull the lever!” she screamed.
- “Pull the lever!” she shrieked.
- “Pull the lever!” she growled.
All of these show different emotions even though the character is saying the same words. If “Pull the lever!” is less important than the character’s mental state, these words are a great way to communicate that mental state.
Here’s the guideline I use: If the words are important, use “said.” If how the words are spoken is the important thing, consider using a synonym for “said” to show that. But don’t overuse them, or else you risk running into that speed bump effect.
An exception to this guideline is when the volume of the words is important. While an exclamation point (we’ll get to those later) is usually enough to indicate that a line is being said at a louder-than-normal volume, there aren’t a lot of good ways in English to show that a line is being said at a quieter-than-normal volume. We’re kind of limited to using dialogue tags for that, such as “whispered” (or its more flowery cousins, like “breathed”). It’s probably better to use “she whispered” than it is to try to use action tags that, at best, just kind of vaguely wave their hands in the direction of a specific volume (like “She leaned in close before speaking”).
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said.”
To clarify for folks who were validly bored to tears in English class (no judgment!), adverbs are words that modify verbs, like “quietly” or “forcefully.”
This is basically the same “rule” as the previous one, and my response is mostly the same. Adverbs are as distracting as “said”-synonyms are, and they draw attention away from the words being spoken. That can be either useful or counterproductive, on a case-by-case basis.
Be aware that it’s easier to overuse these than it is to overuse “said”-synonyms, if only because any given author is likely to know more adverbs. It’s always a good idea to take some time during each editing pass to double-check for extraneous dialogue-related adverbs. You may be surprised at how many have managed to sneak their way in.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control.
This sounds fine, actually. Exclamation points are a powerful punctuation mark. Much like how a dish can be overpowered by even a little too much clove, a work of literature can be quickly over-spiced with too many exclamation points. But how do we define “too many”? Oh, good, this list item includes a second line! Let’s see…
…oh.
“You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.”
It’s wild to me that anyone would unironically say that. A whole fantasy novel with only three exclamation points? Does anyone really think a reader would notice even 100 exclamation points in a work that size? Who is going around counting exclamation points?
It can be a good exercise to see how a sentence or a paragraph reads with the exclamation points removed; you’ll likely find several places where that enhances the flow of the work. But arbitrarily outlawing all but two exclamation points is ridiculous. They’re useful and often necessary in a way that can’t be described by a quota.
Exclamation points can indicate a heightened emotional state, a louder-than-normal volume, or both. Even someone who’s incredibly angry is unlikely to say everything with an exclamation point. But a line like “You can’t do that! I won’t let you! It’s wrong!” isn’t a problem at all (unless the character is angry about too many exclamation points), and it has an entirely different feel from “You can’t do that. I won’t let you. It’s wrong!” or “You can’t do that! I won’t let you. It’s wrong.”
In the first example, all three sentences are said with strong emotion and/or in a loud volume. The speaker is very upset about this, and it would probably be the first choice for this sort of scene.
The second example could be showing a character who is getting more excited as they continue to talk, coming to a crescendo with the final sentence. It could also show that the moral wrongness of the situation is the part that they’re most impassioned about.
The third example implies that the speaker is surprised or shocked, and they initially respond with impulsive emotion before calming down slightly to deliver the remaining two sentences.
You might note that I didn’t include an example of “You can’t do that. I won’t let you! It’s wrong.” That’s because the emotion/volume of a line peaking in the middle and then dropping back down to baseline at the end is an unusual speech pattern for a native English speaker. It’ll feel pretty weird if you try to say it out loud. The emphasized part is almost always going to be the first bit or the last bit.
The only place I’d come close to agreeing with “two or three [exclamation points] per 100,000 words” would be in the narration itself. When the story is written in third person omniscient, the all-knowing narrator probably shouldn’t be surprised or angry about something happening in the story, and it would be weird if they were shouting at the reader a lot. Third-person limited might be able to get away with a few more, especially when exploring the character’s thoughts and feelings. Deep-POV has the most freedom to play with exclamation points since the character’s voice frequently bleeds over into the narration.
6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”
A catalog of the author’s least favorite words and cliches is not especially helpful to anyone trying to learn how to write. “Suddenly” is a perfectly valid English word, and it does not need to be scrubbed from the language. Neither does the phrase “all hell broke loose.”
This list item is trying to describe a useful underlying writing principle, but it’s doing it in the least helpful way possible.
The only real problem with these words is one that’s also caused by a bunch of other words: When you use them, you’re at risk of putting spoilers in your work.
A reader who sees a sentence that begins with “suddenly” now knows something unexpected is imminent. Whatever “it” is has gone from unexpected to expected. That can rob the event of some of its intended impact. “All hell broke loose” does kind of the same thing. The reader is prepared for the next line to contain chaos and excitement, which can suck some of the excitement from the chaos. Another version of this is “Everything happened at once.”
Sometimes, that’s what you want. A well-placed “suddenly,” “all of a sudden,” “abruptly,” or the like can build an instant of tension, which you can then choose to either fulfill or subvert. It functions as a tiny drop of foreshadowing, or to tell the reader to brace themselves for the incoming event, which you might want them to do for a variety of reasons.
In addition, there are plenty of times when “suddenly” is there to show how something happens from the characters’ perspectives, and you weren’t intending to surprise the reader with it at all. “He pushed on the door with all his might, and it suddenly shifted under his hands…” is a different use of the word “suddenly” than this suggestion is intended to target, but the absolutist phrasing obscures that. The shifting of the door is abrupt and unexpected; the door’s motion isn’t intended to astound and awe the reader. (I still wouldn’t personally write it that way, but that’s a question of voice and style, not objective correctness.)
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
Finally. Some helpful advice. It’s not explained in depth, but the principle here is sound.
Regional accents can cause a number of issues, even when done well.
From the writer’s side of things, they become a real pain. A long dialogue scene, especially with multiple characters using different accents, can slow your writing pace to a crawl. It’s fun for a couple of pages, but it gets real old, real quick.
Once you commit to the bit, you’re obligated to write tens of thousands of words of it, and you have to be consistent. When you decided to trade a southern Ah for the more standard I, did you choose to capitalize it when it shows up mid-sentence? Did you do it every time? Better check. When you decided to use a Cockney ‘e instead of the American he, did you use the apostrophe every time? Did you accidentally let any other word starting with an “h” slip in, which would ruin the effect? How do you handle contractions like “he is”? Did you do that the same way every time? Better check. If you aren’t consistent with the way you characterize your accents, the reader will be the one who suffers for it, but Control+F is almost useless for quality-checking intentional misspellings.
In addition, since the point of going to the trouble of doing it this way is to gain more authenticity, you’ve signed yourself up for a lot of extra research, some of which can be surprisingly difficult.
For example, if your Londoner refers to the trunk of a car as the “trunk” instead of the “boot,” you’ve taken your immersion/realism out back and shot an arrow into its knee. Finding a comprehensive list of all the words British people use differently than American people is very hard, but it’s also crucial. For example, you really don’t want that character to talk about a “fanny pack.” The same goes for just about any regional dialect you can think of. It’s not only the pronunciation of words that’s different; it’s often the choice of words as well.
If you’re going to do it anyway, I strongly suggest sticking to dialects you are personally familiar with. I have a lot of experience with a variety of different US Southern accents, so I will have a much easier time with those than I would with writing a convincing Irishman. Or even a convincing Californian. Without putting a lot of care, time, and research (or lived experience) into your dialects, you can easily shatter the very immersion and realism you were using the accents for. In addition, under-researched accents can easily turn into ethnic or cultural stereotypes.
From the reader’s side, reading accents is hard. Readers can no longer rely on rapid sight-reading; they now have to slow down, sound everything out in their heads, and then go back and put it all together again to make it make sense. Sometimes more than once for each line, depending on how different it is from standard English. That slows the reader down dramatically. It’s immersive for a line or two, but it won’t take long to become a taxing chore, especially in the above-mentioned long dialogue scene incorporating characters with multiple accents.
So how does one more effectively convey a character’s accent? There aren’t any perfect ways. You can throw in a few key words that are spelled phonetically and/or a few consistent slang terms, leaving the rest of the dialogue alone. Another way I’ve seen it done, when it’s an accent a secondary character has that the main character doesn’t, is to write the first lines phonetically, then have the MC squint and concentrate really hard, write something like “After a moment, he understood what they were saying,” and then do the rest of the conversation without the accent. Or, for a quick and dirty solution, you can just tell the reader that the character has an accent (“They had a [whatever] accent…” or “…they said in a thick [whatever] accent”).
All of these have their pros and cons. I’ve come at this from the perspectives of the writer, the reader, and the editor, and I believe that fully writing out all of your characters’ regional accents has far more cons than pros, and the pros can be difficult to fully achieve. Mark Twain arguably managed it, but even in that case, if The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn isn’t a book you read regularly, reading the dialogue is pretty hard.
The next two points are basically the same point, so I’ll address them together.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.
There’s a fair-sized group of people out there who really, really hate description. It’s often the prototypical example of “the boring part,” and “too much description” is the most common complaint I hear from people who don’t like Tolkien.
But this is purely a matter of taste, style, and genre (can you imagine a romance where the characters are only described with their gender and hair color?).
On the one hand, some people have a lot of difficulty focusing on parts of a book that aren’t exciting (in whatever way they define excitement). Some people have a great imagination and resent not being allowed to create the details on their own. Some people like a little bit of description, but they feel that it drags when it doesn’t directly further the plot or the character development.
On the other hand, some people (like me) have varying degrees of aphantasia, which makes it difficult to picture details that aren’t explicitly described. Some people have a great imagination and want to immerse themselves in the world as the author sees it. Some people feel like a lack of description means the author has foisted the mental work of imagining a scene onto the reader. Some people have a hard time caring about a book when they feel like the author didn’t care about it either, and they see “not describing much” as evidence of that indifference.
All of these are valid. There are no wrong answers here.
It’s very hard, if not impossible, to please both sides, and I can’t be sure which side is larger. The anti-description camp certainly seems to be louder, at least online; none of these lists ever say “Describe everything in great detail, down to the smell and the texture!” But the overwhelming popularity of description-heavy books like The Lord of the Rings tells me that there are a ton of people who are pro-description as well.
The following two points are my opinion on the matter. These are not guidelines or rules, just how I, as one individual person, tend to think about it.
1) Anything you don’t describe, the reader will fill in with their own ideas.
This means that you should use description to anchor the reader to the parts of the world you want to control. If it’s important to you that your city has towering, neon-lit skyscrapers, describe that. If you just say “city,” you’re letting (or making) the reader create the image in whatever form they like. Their vision of your “city” will become their canon. So, if there’s some description you want to make canon for everyone, you must describe that, to exactly the level of detail that’s important to you.
This means that you can go into detailed descriptions of the things you truly care about, without feeling obligated to describe things you only kind of care about. That might satisfy the middle quartiles of both sets of readers.
2) It’s easier to skip a paragraph of description than it is to create one in your mind from scratch.
It’s trivial for a reader to get two sentences into a description and then skim over the rest of the paragraph (this is a warning not to put something important in the middle of a paragraph of description). On the other hand, it can be hard for some people (like me, for example) to conjure up a detailed mental image without having any guidance from the author. I’ve read books where, in my mind, the characters are gendered-but-otherwise-generic humans with blurry faces walking through an empty plain that occasionally has a random tree in it. Having a map in the front of the book helps a lot with that, but “maps in books” is a whole ‘nother controversial topic that I’m not going to touch here.
Obviously, I can’t define what’s “too much” or “too little” description in any objective capacity. Even when I’m doing developmental editing, it’s kind of an “I know it when I see it” sort of thing, and I’ll usually only mark it if I notice repetition. Essentially, you’re going to have to pick a side and run with it. You’ll get salt over it either way, so do what’s comfortable for you and what’s true to your unique narrative voice.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
This is 100% true and fantastically useless at the same time. Yes, I agree, I should definitely omit the parts that suck. Thanks, doc, I’m cured.
Once again, there’s a helpful little tidbit buried in here, but the need to state it cleverly and snarkily obscures it. Maybe an example will help clarify things.
I once wrote a short story for a publication that had a hard submission limit of 6,000 words. By the time I got done with the character motivations and the setup, I ended up having to skip the cool part to get to the ending under the word limit. The big battle the whole story was building up to was resolved off-screen, with the aftermath being the last two paragraphs. I left my audience hanging; the entire story was nothing but “the parts readers tend to skip.” Not on purpose, but because I got focused on making sure all the vegetables were off my plate before I ate my ice cream.
That story didn’t get accepted, but it took me a long time to understand why.
This is a big one I struggle with. There’s a story I want to tell, an awesome character I want to explore, or an amazing scene I want to write that will knock a reader’s socks off. But before I get there, I have to set up a bunch of things, get the characters where they need to be, explain everyone’s relevant backstory, and on and on. Before I know it, I’ll find myself needing two whole books just to get to the part of the story I wanted to tell in the first place.
So that’s how I read the guidance here: Don’t get stuck in the belief that you have to eat all your vegetables before you can have your ice cream. Remember, the reader is also anxiously waiting for the ice cream! It’s fine to push some of the vegetables off to the side, let everyone have some ice cream, and then come back to those vegetables later in the book (or in a different book, or not at all).
Some other possible interpretations of this advice could be “Start the story as close to the beginning as possible,” which means try to limit the amount of setup you need before you get to the inciting incident, or “Try to make every scene do something to move the plot forward, enhance the characterization, or reinforce the theme,” which helps make every scene less skip-worthy. But I like my interpretation because it involves ice cream.
I did a little bit of research on this particular list, and I found it was a cut-down version of a longer article that Elmore Leonard wrote for the New York Times in 2001. The article itself provided some clarification, but not for all of the points, and some of the clarifications were more infuriating than the rules they clarified. If you are interested, you can read the original essay here.
As Mr. Leonard passed away in 2013, I do not expect that any of my amateur hooptedoodle on the topic will get back to him, and I want to make it clear that I have neither the desire nor the authority to criticize the body of his work as a whole. I used this specific list because it was the one I was most recently exposed to, and because it is a typical example of the types of “writing tips” that crop up in authors’ social media spaces every third day or so.
Every “rule” is useful to someone, or nobody would bother to write them down. But the number of people for whom such hard-and-fast rules are helpful is far smaller than the number of people who are made to feel unnecessarily insecure about the quality of their work. These single-sentence tips may be attempts to illustrate underlying principles of writing or storytelling, but they’re poorly communicated and phrased in absolute terms, which causes confusion.
Sometimes the desire to be seen as hip and clever undermines actually useful advice.
I may, in the future, make more posts to catalog these common “writing rules.” I don’t expect there to be a huge pile of them, since the lists I’ve seen vary only slightly from each other. Have you seen any other “writing tips” or “writing rules” that feel arbitrary or that have confused you? Send them my way, and we’ll see if I can gather enough to warrant another post.
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