Podcast: Tools, Not Rules: Debunking the Iron-Clad Rules of Writing
With anne hawley & Rachelle Ramirez
Rachelle and Anne tackle seven common writing rules, aiming to debunk and reframe them as flexible tools rather than hard and fast decrees. They discuss how strict adherence to advice such as 'write every day,' 'write what you know,' 'draft first, edit later,' 'show don't tell,' 'kill your darlings,' 'write to the market,' and 'open in the middle of the action' can stymie a writer's creativity. By balancing these traditional guidelines with practical realities and personal preferences, Anne and Rochelle provide insights to help writers maintain their authentic voice and creative flow.
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transcript
Anne Hawley: Write what you know. Never edit while you're drafting. Kill your darlings. Write every day. Have you heard these ironclad rules of writing delivered from on high by some writing pundit or other? Then this one's for you.
Hi, this is Anne Hawley and in today's write anyway podcast Rochelle and I do our best to debunk seven of these rules of writing and reframe them as tools.
Rachelle and I work with a lot of writers and they often come to us confused about some so-called rule of writing.
We hear this all the time. We see lots of evidence in the manuscripts. We edit that an author has followed one of these rules to the detriment of their story, sometimes to the detriment of their whole writing life. And of course, we see plenty of manuscripts where following one of these rules might have made the manuscript better.
So these are not all garbage. We're gonna talk about the so-called rules of writing. And we're gonna look at both sides. So here's some that you may have heard of. Write every day. Write what you know. Draft first, edit it later. Show don't tell. It's a famous one. Kill your darlings. Another good one.
Write to the market and open in the middle of the action. Okay. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but these are some of the ones that most often seem to stymie the writers that we work with and have stymied us too. It's one of our highest aims here at pages and platforms to encourage you as a creative person, as a creative writer, to view all of these guidelines as tools, but not as hard and fast rules.
So, tools, not rules. We wouldn't want anything to block your creative flow. We wouldn't want anything to interfere with your authentic storytelling voice. Some of these so-called rules might be right for you. Some of them might be blocking you. So let's take a look at them one by one. And remember, as we go forward, well just to remind you again, put your questions in the q and a box, because really the majority of this hour is gonna be your q and a session.
All right, let's start with write every day. Related to this one is write first thing in the morning. Also write morning pages. Sometimes you hear you must write by hand and write Every day is not terrible advice. Many writers, including me, swear by that I write every day because I can. But it is not for everyone.
If you're holding down a job or two jobs as some people are these days, if you're caregiving whether younger or older people than yourself or running a household, you might truly not be able to make it. To the desk every single day. If you have health issues, you may not be physically able to conform to this standard.
Now, on the other hand, maybe you do write most days. Most days, but you don't write first thing in the morning. You're a night owl, so you write at night. That's fine. It doesn't have to be morning, maybe morning pages, which again, many creative people swear by. I, I like them, I, I do. That are just not for you.
That's okay. If writing by hand is not for you, it's not for you. Some of us, our hands don't feel so good these days. Maybe some of these ideas worked for you at one time in the past, but they no longer seem valid. Maybe they didn't work for you in the past or you rejected them, but are worth a try. Now the point is we've seen too many writers give up in the face of this.
Admonition that sounds to them like set aside two hours every day to write. And if you can't do that, then you're not a real writer. Well, that's pretty much bullshit. You're a real writer whether you use a computer, a phone, a pen, or a voice to text. You are a real writer if you write even for a few minutes at a time as your life allows.
So I'd like to offer an alternative to this rule right when you can. And that brings us to the second one. Write what you know. This one so easy to misinterpret. The best argument against it is if everybody only wrote what they knew, there would be no fantasy, no science fiction, no horror, no historical fiction.
We're writers. We write what we can imagine. The second best argument against this rule is if I followed it, then all my stories would feature only people just like me. Same gender, same age, same background, same career, same experiences set only in places where I've lived or spent a lot of time. Of course, you can populate your stories with characters unlike yourself and set them in places that you've invented or that you've only briefly visited, maybe even on like Google Street View.
I've done that. But the kernel of truth in this rule might be best summed up as right from authentic knowing. And authentic knowing includes what you've lived, what you know in your heart, what you've researched to the best of your ability, what you've imagined deeply, and what you believe, right from authentic knowing.
Okay, the next one, draft. First edit later. Also known as never Edit As you Go. This is a popular bit of advice that is totally right for some writers, some of the time, and totally wrong for others. We've seen writers who rewrite and rework their first chapter or their first couple chapters over and over and over again, hoping that if they can just get it perfect, then they can forge ahead with the story.
And they never do. If that sounds like you, you may need this rule. You may need to learn that your first draft will be flawed, that it's okay to be perf imperfect. It's okay to be perfect too, but since no, nobody is, it's okay to be imperfect. So go ahead, pour out all the scenes you have in mind, right?
Like no one's watching because you know no one is, on the other hand, some writers, when they get stuck, find that fiddling a little bit. Going back and perfecting a little something of what they wrote yesterday or the day before is a great way to get back into the flow of the work and to forge ahead. So this is not an all or nothing situation.
But the first chapter that you keep going over and over and over and over again, it's very likely that it isn't gonna work at all. And we'll wind up on the cutting room floor. So it's, you can learn something from doing all that rewriting, but hopefully one of the things you learned from doing that one time was not to waste too much time fixing something that's going to end up deleted.
So this rule might be better thought of as try not to waste a lot of time polishing turds. And I'm gonna pass this off to Rachelle who's gonna take us through the next group of these rules that are not really rules. So Rachelle, take it away.
Rachelle Ramirez: Alright, thank you Anne. I've had a few writing rules that have been conversation kindling for my writing clients and students over the years.
So I'll start with the old ruler. Slap on the knuckles show. Don't tell what. The heck, does that even mean? Well, it's often a variation of the rules that say you have to eliminate exposition and minimize narration. That's excellent advice if you are a screenwriter. But what about for a novel or a memoir?
Show? Don't tell implies that nothing but character action is needed in a story, and that interiority is boring. Look, do what you can to get all the important scene elements into character actions. Something needs to happen in your scenes. You need a character change. And the basic scene elements, you know, for your point of view, character, you need an inciting incident, turning point, complication, crisis, climax, and resolution in every scene.
But every story also needs some exposition, narration, and character interiority. For example, you may need to summarize a time jump show that your character is thinking the opposite of what they are saying, or provide a sentence or two, a backstory that informs an immediate character decision. The reality of good writing is that you show and tell as the story demands.
All right. Kill your darlings At this point, this is cliche advice often attributed to William Faulkner, and I don't know about you, but I haven't even met an honors English major who's finished a Faulkner novel, and why do we have to be killers? How about using an eraser or the back button, or saving extracted content for, you know, marketing materials?
We have a lot of other options before we result to murder. This advice might suggest that you delete that cherished prologue and squash description, which unfortunately often leads to writers suppressing their natural style. And what if your cherished prologue creates context necessary for your mystery novel and is directly tied to your all important epilogue?
That squash description you loved might be needed for the reader to envision the setting of your story. And who's to say that just because something you've written is precious to you, that it can't be the jewel of your story for your reader. Best advice on this one? Remove what doesn't drive your story forward or delight you.
Delete unnecessary characters and time gaps. Remove what's boring, repetitive, or non-progressive. But if it works, keep it even if it is a darling. Oh yeah. All right. This rule drives me bunker dunks, who hasn't heard open with action? There is so much talk about action and immediate hooks. Then not wasting the reader's time.
You are told to create a fast-paced story no matter what, but if you start right in the action, the reader might not understand what's happening, where the characters are, how many characters are in the room, or even the context of the scene elements and character decisions. You might start at the height of the story action and fail to evoke emotion in your reader because the reader hasn't had a chance to care about your character or what they want.
And what about the stories that aren't high action? Those that are more of an emotional or intellectual pursuit. If you start in peak action, you set up a story that you are not going to deliver and you'll lose those readers who picked up the book for slow yet unexpected character development open with what the scene, the chapter, the whole story needs.
It might be action, it might be setting, it might be narration. Okay. Right to market. Here's a rule that you'll see in certain circles as the golden rule of writing. Don't write the story unless you know there's a waiting market. Know and follow the trends so that you can get all of them in your book.
Write for the broadest market possible so you can sell the most books. There are some real challenges with this advice. First, the publishing market swiftly changes. It takes on average 18 months to bring a traditionally published book from agent submission to bookstores. So even the books that are hot off the presses were purchased by a publisher at least a year and a half ago.
The publishers have probably bought several other books like it since, and the market is about to be flooded with the trend by the time you finish writing your book to that market. Publishers and readers are likely already looking for something else. And trend or not, you can't write for everyone.
Readers are diverse. And a book that I love might be one you think is awful. While I love a gritty feminist crime novel and might love a historical love story and my son a high action fantasy, and here's an obvious example, just to make my point. If you're a romance writer, you could try and write for everyone, but in doing so, you'd miss many of the top selling markets.
You have to choose your type of lovers and heat level. A reader of stories about gay vampires won't buy what a reader of contemporary Christian novels will, and neither of those are likely to buy shapeshifter, erotica, or a story about rural male order brides.
Hey, we've seen it. So what's the best advice on this one? Write what you love to write, what you might actually finish. Write it the best you can and be proud of it. A well-written book is always well received by your narrowed intended audience. So the big question, how do you know if a piece of writing advice is bad?
For one, it makes you feel bad about yourself rather than better prepared to write or edit. It limits your writing potential or creativity. It doesn't work with your schedule or your capacity to write it disregards life circumstances, abilities, and real world limitations. It negates what's been working for you.
Can't say that enough and makes you doubt your own way of approaching the work. And it lacks clarity. It's too general, it's too vague, it doesn't make sense to you. So as you move forward in your writing journey, we hope you're better prepared to determine which tools you need and which rules you can break.
I'll just take a second to share some of the cool stuff we have going on at our pages and platforms. Black Ink Friday Sale real quick, where you can get 40% off on all our master classes and courses. 50% off your first month in the Happily Ever Author Club, 20% off private coaching packages and 500 off a full manuscript evaluation with me.
For the master classes, you can select among a series of masterclasses on each of the story types, action, crime, war, and others. And you can, or you can join the HEA club and get them all plus live calls with us and our marketing and mindset guru, Sue Campbell. If you're interested, you can check out those deals@pagesandplatforms.com slash store.
Those deals are happening until December 1st. Also, please check your email tomorrow for an invitation to register for Sue Campbell's live coaching call on Friday and my presentation on why habits don't work for ADHD writers and what does, that I'll present on December 1st. Both of those events are free.
Anne Hawley: Don't miss our big Black Ink Friday sale now through December 1st, where we're offering 40% off our masterclasses. Or you can take 50% off your first month's membership in the Happily Ever Author Club and get access to all the masterclasses included. Another great deal is 20% off private mindset and marketing coaching with Sue Campbell, our marketing genius, or $500 off a full manuscript analysis from Rochelle Ramirez.
Check it all out@pagesandplatforms.com slash store. And that's it for this episode of the Write. Anyway, podcast, thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.