Writing Rules & Breaking Them

It has been said that there are only two story lines: a journey happens or a stranger appears. It has also been said that there is a formula that makes for a well written story. Your antagonist needs to do X, your protagonist needs to do Y. We are told good writing must have some conflict, someone learns something, someone solves something, and someone helps someone. In between X&Y there are five differentiating circumstances. Supposedly if you follow the formulas many websites, published authors, and editors agree upon then you will have a successful book, sell lots of copies, and have a hoard of happy readers praising you in life. I suggest throwing out the rules after you mastered them, abandon all inhibitions, and write from your heart and with whimsy and exuberance. It might not be an award winning story, but I guarantee you that it will include some really good threads that you can continue an amazing story with later.

I have my B.A. in English and have studied many novels. I am an avid reader and have read copious amount of books. I can tell you that reading a book that follows the X, Y, and Z rule is easier, but the ones who break the rules are the ones who stand out. I wrote a piece recently and I threw out the rules. It was quirky and fun. The people who read it LOVED it!! It broke the boundaries of what is considered a good story. It had such energy because it was not hemmed in by what is systematically thought of as perfectly written.

No one went on a journey (inwardly or outwardly) and no one new arrived in my story. It was just a fun little piece. The rules are there for a reason and yes you should learn them, but with all rules they are made to be broken. Rules are there to give you guidelines on how to start, where to build from, and what is accepted by the masses, but breaking those rules is thrilling. Your stories go into an area where magic happens. Your story touches the hearts of the people who follow no rules, who enjoy some chaos in their story, and who like reading something new. Pick you own beat and write to it!

Poetry is a perfect example of breaking the rules. You can write a whole piece without any punctuation. You can never capitalize a word, you can make your lines end where you want and move to the next line. There are rules for poetry too. You need to show, not tell, you can use alliteration to highlight a point, and numerous other rules, but once you learn them, again you can throw them out. Following the poetic rules again will get you an amazing writing piece. I have written following those rules for years now and now love to push the boundaries of my poetry as well.

Writers struggle with a balance between rules and bending them. It happens with every word and every sentence. We doubt that we can write anything new. That what we write will not matter to anyone at all. We struggle with trying to write something new, to create words in a way that matter beyond the old rules. We as writers doubt, get writers block, learn rules, break rules, write when we feel like, what we feel like, or abandon story lines as we feel like. All of our writer may not be abundant in flow and creativity. Honestly though we need to write through crap to get to the worthy stuff.

I had someone read a rough draft of my work the other day. He said to me there are mistakes. I said of course it is a mind dumping story. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I did not stop to edit. He said but you have a degree. People who do not write do not understand our writing methods. I tend to dump the story on paper with a pencil. Yes I do it old school. I like the feel of the pencil as thoughts flow out of my mind and onto the paper. I let it all flow. I do not censor. I do not correct spelling, I just dump it all out there. If you edit your writing as you go you will miss some amazing good bones to another storyline. Your writing is already limited to what you write down, why do you want to edit it more? Now I am not saying all that you write is good, most of it honestly is going to be crap, but ohhhhhh those few lines that stir magic into your pot of creativity. Yes those would be gone if you choose to fix everything as you mind dump onto your paper you will lose them.

Another writers issues is what time do you write. Some people say morning, some say I grab 15 min here or there as I can, and some say that they stay up all night and write. Let me say this about writing times, there are no correct time for you to be writing. We are all different. We all create and process at different times, rates, and our productivity will suffer if we are forced into a notch of time when we are not ready to create anything with our words. Our craft will suffer. So might I suggest writing when you feel you’re most creative. You pick your time, your hour, your words, and you decide when is right for you.

Now learn some rules and break them. If you are a seasoned writer you know this, if you are a new writer now you know this. Enjoy writing, write for yourself, and write without censoring yourself. Do not pick over your words before they have time to flourish and thrive and assemble into an amazing story or poem. Now go write something and let the words wash over you without censorship.

Your poet/storyteller

xo

Debbie