When Rules Go Right
By Greer Macallister | March 4, 2024 |
For many years I’ve been up on a soapbox about how well-worn writing rules (“Show, don’t tell!” “Write every day!”) don’t work for everyone. But only recently did I realize I’ve been doing myself a bit of a disservice rejecting well-worn rules in my personal life.
Here’s an example. Like many of us whose formative years overlapped with the Aerobics Age of the 1980s, I’ve had at least one ear tuned to diet advice for several decades. And as with writing, there are countless rules that some people present as “musts” that don’t work for everyone. (“Never shop on an empty stomach!” “Always eat breakfast!”)
But recently, a conversation with a doctor convinced me to attempt to change my eating habits. Even while rolling my eyes internally at hearing so much advice I’d heard before about healthy eating, I did decide that it was worth trying out some of the guidelines from that conversation, even if I was skeptical about how effective they might be. After all, I’d heard them so many times before.
So earlier today, instead of snacking on the go (my default mode), I had a meal. I cooked myself a hot lunch and ate it from a salad plate at my kitchen counter. I drank a glass of water. I focused on eating and nothing else, and chewed slowly, savoring every bite. Afterward, I felt full and satisfied.
And then I thought, Dammit. I think it worked. How annoying is that!?
I’d heard the advice many times. But had I ever tried it? Had I dismissed it out of hand, telling myself That’s too simple to work or That might work for other people but it won’t work for me without considering giving it a shot?
Look, tomorrow I might make myself a hot lunch that I sit and eat from a salad plate on my counter and then look up afterward and say I’m still starving, this is ridiculous, I was right all along.
But today it feels good. Today I didn’t just dismiss an idea because it wasn’t a new idea. And I like that.
Like me, you might be disinclined to follow rules you’ve heard before. I’m not going to just write what I know, I’m going to tell instead of show if the story calls for telling, and I’m absolutely not going to write every day. But I can say all those things because I’ve tried all those things.
Any particular well-worn writing rule may not work for you, it’s true. But before you dismiss it out of hand, have you given it a try? Because in all these years of talking about how no rule works for everyone, I think I forgot the flip side: every rule works for someone.
Q: Does some, all or none of the best-known writing advice work for you? Which rules have you tried and rejected, or tried and embraced?
Raised in the Midwest, Greer Macallister earned her MFA in creative writing from American University. Her historical novels have been named Book of the Month, Indie Next, LibraryReads, Target Book Club, and Amazon Best Book of the Month picks and optioned for film and television. Her latest novel, The Thirteenth Husband, is inspired by Aimee Crocker, the Paris Hilton of the Gilded Age. Macallister also writes the ongoing Five Queendoms epic fantasy series as G.R. Macallister. A regular contributor to Writer Unboxed and the Chicago Review of Books, she lives with her family in Boston, MA. www.greermacallister.com
The first rule goes like this: Learn and use the rules before you break them.
Yes, every rule works for someone. But when it comes to creativity, rules don’t always apply. Some of the greatest writers broke ALL the rules, and that is how they were recognized. That’s not to say everyone jumped on board. It takes courage, creativity or just plain madness to write a novel in the second person. And like Barry, YES. Listen, read, learn from the rules…then make your own choices. That happens on the keyboard, you and your brain, a duo of creation. Thanks for your post.
Adhering to several rules improved my writing greatly. 1. Remove passive voice from your writing (is am are was were). 2. Show, don’t tell. 3. Every scene must move the story forward. 4. Add tension.
Write what you know. At 19 I tried that, but writing too close, too soon, about trauma is not healthy for the manuscript or the writer. That was a disaster and it took me years to recover from it.
Later in life, I tried again. I knew my favorite authors wrote what they knew. But what did I know? I wrote my life then, a romance of two coworkers from different cultures, working on software in the early internet days in the Bell Labs/ Bellcore workplace, in the NJ landscape that I was sure no one cared about. The heroine’s biggest fear (like my own in my young marriage) was the hero would want to move back to where he had grown up, far from NJ and her. But she, being a Jersey Girl, could never follow him. My writing group, most of whom were not Jersey, thought this was preposterous. Why wouldn’t someone not want to move out of NJ? Even those from Jersey thought no one outside Jersey would get it. Jersey is a joke said one, it’s a punch line. Readers wilI laugh, thinking it’s a parody. I added a few more reasons she couldn’t move, changed NJ to PA, but it didn’t feel right.
I tried again. Another romance, set again in a landscape I know, the Jersey Shore. This time I didn’t hold back on the location. I embraced it. The setting was intertwined with the plot and the characters so closely that, I’m proud to say, it won Best Novel by NJ author by NJ Romance Writers. It was a story that could only be told by a NJ author.
Meanwhile, I started to realize that friends (and my husband) who hadn’t grown up in Jersey were fascinated by stories of my childhood. To me it was normal to shop for clothes from Tony the Fence’s garage, and know the yard full of spotlighted saints was home to a mobster snitch, who told the babysitter to never answer the door. When I had to rewatch Goodfellas to figure out if a certain memory was mine or from Scorsese, I figured I had material for my third novel.
Now I write what I know, always. What they don’t tell you is that means having enough distance and wisdom to be able to write it, especially if it’s traumatic.
I’m originally from New Jersey. Born and raised in Kearny. Lived in Lavallete, OB3 for a while. Lived in Cranford as an adult until 2000 when we moved to New Mexico. I think it’s great that you embrace what you love, and write about New Jersey!
I still go back several times a year. Man, the food is fantastic!
It’s funny you are in New Mexico. That’s where the heros in my novels are from and where IRL I almost moved. Thanks so much for your encouragement.