Sunday, January 15, 2006

Rules? Who says!!

Seems to me we spend way too much time listening to others who bombard us with 'you can't' or 'you mustn't' and when we ask why? we hear that age old excuse - 'because there are rules.'

There are? Who says?

I, like Captain Barbossa, prefer to think of them as guidelines.

I just finished going through some work for a couple of beginning writers and when I suggested they might want to make a change to something, got back an instant email reply of "we can't!!!" (Add angst and aghast tone of voice.) "That's against the rules!"

Says who?

Please, dear writer, forget you ever heard the word!

Yes, there are rules. The basic rules of grammar and sentence structure and the rules set down by your publisher. But there are no rules that say you can't have more than one POV in a scene. You can have more than one, just don't head hop within the same paragraph, or as in one excerpt I read, in the same sentence. (This writer had a problem with run on sentences as well.)

By listening to 'they' of 'they said', a writer hogties their ability to create great scenes, great chapters, absolutely great books.

As the late Ed McBain (87th Precinct mysteries) said - and I paraphrase - 'I know the rules and I will obey them as long as the story I tell is entertaining to the reader. But if I must, to make the story more enjoyable and to keep it from being disappointing to the reader, I will bend the rules. I'll even break them. But I won't disappoint the reader.'

That was his promise and it should be ours.

Learn the rules then forget them. Once you're good enough to be published, chances are you've learned how to break them properly. Just don't expect to enter writing contests and get away with it. Judges seem to have forgotten, if they ever knew, that the idea is to write a great story, not follow the rules.

Posted by Kelsy George :: Link :: 4:18 PM :: 4 Comments

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