rules

The other day I mentioned the discussion about rules for writing, and I said writers like to talk shop. It's true. But here's something--Laura Miller, over at Salon, has weighed in, giving it right back to writers.

What she gives us are rules for writers formulated by readers--or, if you will, our customers--rather than other writers. Which is bloody brilliant.

3. The components of a novel that readers care about most are, in order: story, characters, theme, atmosphere/setting. Of course all these elements are interlinked, and in the best fiction they all contribute to and enhance each other. But if you were to eliminate these elements, starting at the end of the list and moving toward the beginning, you could still end up with a novel that lots of people wanted to read; the average mass-market thriller is nothing but story. If you sacrifice these elements starting from the beginning of the list, you will instead wind up with a sliver of arty experimentation that, if you're very, very good, a handful of other people might someday read and admire. There's honor in that, but it's daft to write something with the deliberate intention of denying readers what they love and want and then to be heartbroken when they aren't interested. If you want to engage with more than a tiny coterie, take storytelling seriously; if you think that's incompatible with art, you are in the wrong line of work.

Sure, you could have the debate about whether readers truly know what good writing is, and I'm sure some of you will. Maybe it's like they say about human rights, that we shouldn't be allowed to vote on them. But hell--if we don't give the readers what they want, they won't stay readers long, will they?

Which is not to say you should just blindly write a book meant to please an audience. Don't--you shouldn't. But it wouldn't hurt any book to keep Miller's comments in mind.

rules

Outwardly I am, at times, a flaunter of rules. Inwardly, I fear them. This is due no doubt both to my Catholic upbringing, with its divine overemphasis on guilt as a presiding moral compass, and my parents' particular "Take no risks, make no enemies" sensibilities. Both laudable, to be sure, but like all rules, best broken from time to time.

See? Even that statement is a ridiculous contradiction, and circular in logic. It's a wonder I get through most days.

Rules apply to writing in many ways, including grammar. I firmly believe grammar should be understood in a 'close-enough' way--writers need not obsess about it--and broken when useful, as long as it's broken in a controlled, meaningful manner. This does not mean using the wrong "its," or foregoing punctuation, or writing in some pidgin patois born not of culture or region but ignorance or laziness. (Of course, that said, even those rules can be broken. Cormac McCarthy rarely uses quotation marks, and he's known some success here and there, hey?)

Aside from grammar, writers fret over other rules, too. Low-level ones like show, don't tell. Avoid the passive voice. Eradicate cliche. Eschew obfuscation. (That last one's a joke.) Higher-level ones governing plot devices, character development, first sentences. Strange and curious ones that worry over manuscript formatting, font size and choice, and submission etiquette.

It's difficult to sit down at a blank page and force your mind to be equally blank. Rules, once you're aware of them, become pesky. They hover and annoy like a mosquito in a dark bedroom. When I write I try like hell to ignore them. I try, too, to not be aware of audience, or what's selling these days, or markets., to just focus on what I'm writing and sort the rest of it out later. And yet, because of my dual nature regarding rules, it's not always easy.

Hey, I tell myself, if you wanted an easy job you'd have gone to medical school instead of being a writer.

As it turns out, I'm not alone. Writers love rules. And, similarly, writers hate rules. They're always drafting them up like some condo complex covenant, circulating them, holding public hearings for them, and revising them. Maybe it's because we're all looking for some guidance as writers, some literary Church to give us a moral compass to follow, an external skeleton to help us stand tall. Maybe it's because people like to talk shop, and writers, like fishermen, are no exception. Except it's easier to talk about the great steaming trout you let slip away than it is the story you're working on. Rules give us something to talk about.

I don't know. I tend to think they're useless. If writing was something you could do by following the rules, wouldn't we just have a bunch of, say, MFA programs teaching writing to people? (Ha.) Still, I respect them, even if only subconsciously, and dear God, there are plenty of rules to haunt me. They're often contradictory, and the canon is ever-growing.

Over at The Elegant Variation, Mark revisited Elmore Leonard's rules, which he called "unhinged dipshitery." He also linked to a bunch of other rules, which I'm relinking here. My favorite among them comes from Neil Gaiman, who can always be counted on to keep things interesting:

Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

I keep a copy of E.B. White's "The Elements of Style" on my desk. White is something of a personal hero of mine--if you ever want a great read, pick up "One Man's Meat," his essays written from his saltwater farm in Brooklin, Maine. His book, itself a revision of his old teacher William Strunk's collection of rules, is full of good advice.

But it's also full of bad advice. And if you tried to follow every rule in the book you'd be paralyzed. So, rules--what do you think?