How would you react if I told you that most of the rules you were told as a writer: “show don’t tell”, “no run-on sentences”, “you can never write about x thing, no one’s interested in that”, they were all bullshit?
It’s often what we’ve heard when we’re starting out, right? Inspired by a post by Jessica Faust of BookEnds, I wanted to pillory the rules that have been handed out to us by half-baked blogs that seem to be written by AI and advice parroted by people who wouldn’t know good writing if it rawdogged them. Be a stud, don’t take shit from anybody. Don’t be the reporter, be Arnie:
“Show don’t tell.”:
It’s someone truly devoid of imagination that would say, “Treat your readers like children. Make sure you explain what your characters are doing and feeling down to every minute action because otherwise your readers won’t know what’s going on, or they won’t care.” Hell, I’ll be kind. Even good kid fic isn’t written like that.
I’ll give you an example. This is from my first book that I ever wrote (that will never see the light of day):
“The chubby guardsman leapt clumsily in front of his comrade as the stone missile impacted, exploding against the wall and sending debris flying through the air. They were thrown backwards. His helmet flew off as he landed hard on his back. Air was forced from his lungs and he groaned in pain. His enemy filed into the gap the catapult had made – his face twisted in a smirk. The guardsman gasped for air.”
What does this actually tell us about the characters? Very little. Aside from a few pronoun issues, there’s a big psychic distance between the guardsman and the reader (he’s meant to be the POV character). We have no concept of his emotional state—maybe he likes being thrown backward. But all of the above paragraph is showing.
How would I break this rule? Well, know when to show, and know when to tell. This comes from experience, but try breaking the rule a little more often, and read it back.
“No run-on sentences.”:
We’ve all been taught it. In school, the teacher tells you that using ‘and’ or ‘then’ all the time is not good writing and you shouldn’t do it.
I won’t lie, it often runs me afoul of my critique partners and beta readers. One of them in particular doesn’t quite get my paratactic style, and my flair for grammatical inconsistencies for dramatic irony or other reasons (if you’re reading this, I love your edits generally!)
But some of the best writing floats you down a chain of description like floating on air, dancing across the clouds, becoming music, where the words themselves chime like sweet bells in your mind, the intonation and the rhythm gliding your eyes along the page, then a few pages later that same writing drags you through the mud and never lets you have a breath even for a second pulling you deeper into a darkness that claws into your throat, so deep you can only hear your heart beating in your ears and nothing else and the sentence just ends. You take a breath. But you’re not sure you can. You’re not sure you know how to, anymore.
“Don’t write about x thing, no one will read that.”:
Now this is the meat of things. This is where I tell you that that idea that you had while you were tripping balls on LSD where you imagined a world where people couldn’t sleep except a select few, and those that couldn’t sleep went psychotic and formed marauding gangs that hunted down the “sleepers”, as they came to be known. Oh wait, that’s a book already.
Trust yourself, and you’ll come up with the best ideas. It’s all in the execution, anyway. Yes, some ideas are DOA like dystopian sci-fi YA (unless you’re Pierce Brown), but push the boundaries. People like to put things into boxes. It makes them feel safer. But who wants to be kept in a box their whole lives? Push the boundaries. Tell your beta readers to suck it. Go tell the agent that doesn’t like your concept that they missed out on a future best-seller. Punch your mother in the face.
Everyone should know that everything I say is tongue-in-cheek.
Stay tuned for a brief of Leo the Isaurian (who tricked his enemies into burning their own supplies during a siege), a deconstruction of one of my favorite poems, The Footsteps by C.P. Cavafy, and a writing update at the end of the month.
NCK