The Rules Of Writing
Remember back to the days where you were in English class and you thought grammar was boring. Well, there’s a point in your schooling where “these are the rules” becomes “there are no rules.”
If you’re in some creative writing class, you might be being told by a professor “there are no rules of writing, just guidelines,” or something similar.
Imagine a siren blaring and red floodlights filling your vision. Today, I read some guy on a writing forum say, “there are no rules of writing and nothing is sacred” and now, with the aid of those sirens and floodlights, I’m going to address the supposed existence of the rules of writing in this article.
Yes, there are rules of writing.
No, some creative writing professor is not a philosophical genius that can convince you of the abstract nature of human subjectivity and art.
No… you can’t point to a good example of someone who “didn’t follow the rules of writing” and succeeded.
Let’s go.
The Rules Of Writing: English… Do You Even Speak It?
“Grammar rules are just guidelines.”
… A common myth permeates just about every field. The idea that there is a singular “orthodox” way of doing things and other ways of doing things are just as accurate or useful.
Writing is no different, and the argument is just as stupid here as it is in all those other fields.
Ask any guy who does some form of martial art, “Have you ever encountered someone who told you they could beat you in a fight, despite having no training, no particular skill or strength advantage… but just seemed to know they would win?”
Most martial arts guys will have experienced this. People with no idea of their skill level – or lack thereof – will often massively overestimate themselves, and most people think they could fight and win, even should they never have been in a fight.
Call it a coping mechanism or whatever, but it’s absurd. If you have never been in a fight, there’s not some magic Rocky style “Will to Win” that’ll make you immune to getting punched in the face and really regretting it afterwards.
What does this have to do with writing?
With martial arts, particular movements have been drilled throughout the course of hundreds of years to be as efficient as possible. A trained boxer will hit you harder, faster and with better technique than an untrained person will. There is nothing subjective about this, despite what people think.
The same is true of communication – specifically grammar. Language is an evolved form of passing a message from one person to another, and the grammatical rules of writing are the means by which that message is conveyed.
This is not subjective. Your message gets through effectively or it doesn’t.
Rules Of Writing Copy And Marketing Materials
Despite what some weird schools of thought believe, advertising and marketing absolutely have rules of writing. More importantly, the whole set of these skills point towards an obvious, objective and inarguable goal.
The rules of writing copy are thus: You have to make the greatest financial return possible on your work.
A sales funnel that generates $100 in sales and $50 in profit is in no way better than a sales funnel that generates a million in sales and $800k in profit.
This is pretty straightforward and I’ve written about this in numerous other places in the archives, so I won’t repeat myself.
The Rules Of Writing Fiction
The rules of writing fiction are about as straightforward as the rules of writing copy. There are plenty of creative writing lecturers who’ll say “good work is unique” or “it’s all subjective” and that’s all well and good, except it’s not really true.
So far as genre fiction goes, there’s clearly a scientific backing behind all of those genre considerations. This is true of everything from the genre clichés through to the front covers of the books, and is readily observable in every genre and every example within the genre.
Don’t believe me? Go and look at the top 100 on Amazon for any single genre.
You can immediately tell from the covers, blurbs and well, everything what you’re getting within the covers. There are small variations, sure, but the rules of writing for a genre never change.
If a new author thinks, “I’m going to do something that breaks the genre norms,” they don’t sell very well.
I could write a romance between two MtF transgender people on a pirate ship in the Indian Ocean in the 23rd Century after all the world floods due to global warming. I could have it be an unhappy ending where the two never consummate their love… hell, I could make “love” a foreign concept that people from the future don’t understand.
Critics and philosophers might call this piece revolutionary. It might get on the academic reading lists as ground-breaking.
And you know what?
It wouldn’t sell.
It would sell worse than the 900th 50 Shades Of Grey knock-off that pits a virgin eighteen year old against a dashing but misunderstood hunky alpha male that’s 150 pages long, 50 pages of those gratuitous and poorly written sex scenes.
Why?
The rules of writing do not care about a lecturer’s idea of ground-breaking.
People who buy books want what they want, and your politics or social theories do not matter.
Final Thoughts
The rules of writing exist.
They govern your success whether you accept them or not, regardless of your goal.
If you want to communicate effectively, follow the rules of writing.
Should you want to write fiction that’s successful, follow the rules of writing.
If you want to make money through writing, follow the rules of writing.
Most importantly, ignore anyone who tells you that the rules don’t exist, or that “it’s all subjective.”
They are wrong.