On Writing #9: Tools, Not Rules
Aug. 13th, 2020 10:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bladesparkI'm skipping ahead in my reblogging my old On Writing series, because this one is relevant to some stuff I'm discussing over on Twitter. It's also the one I feel is the best of the series and the most central to how I myself approach writing.
Tools, Not Rules
We all know at least some of the "rules" of writing. Show, don't tell. Mary Sue characters are bad. Never use passive voice. Avoid adverbs. Don't write in second person. Never use a verb other than "said" after dialogue. There are more, but those are some common ones I see bandied about.
These tidbits often have blue-blooded pedigrees (the passive voice one is from Stephen King, for example) and are held up as valued wisdom, passed along with a sense of firm righteousness. Follow the rules, and you'll be a good writer. Break then, and you'll be a bad writer. Simple, isn't it?
Except it obviously isn't that simple, or there would be more good writers and fewer bad ones out there.
In fact a lot of great literature breaks the rules. You can find examples among the famous, beloved, and admired stories that break all of those. I would posit, in fact, that there's no such thing as a writing "rule" you should never break. (I can also find examples in my stories of breaking most of these, and I have a planned second person fic that means I'd have broken them all.)
Here's my take on rules: rules are a place to start. Rules are for beginners. Rules can be useful to learn, especially early on, but merely rote-learning and following all the rules for good writing will not make you a good writer. Frankly, I think people who advise beginning writers to strictly follow the rules by rote are doing them a disservice. Rote-learning rules is for elementary school kids, and if you're here on this site, you should be at least in middle school.
Let's look at the very first set of writing rules that beginners learn, back when we're all learning to write in the first place. Rule one, the absolute foundation: spell words correctly. Surely that should never be broken, right? Surely at least that one rule is absolute, isn't it?
Well...
That's a chunk of one of my pony fanfiction stories. It wasn't wildly popular, for various reasons, but I certainly don't regard it as a bad story. The people it's aimed at largely seemed to like it. But boy howdy, the number of little red squiggles under that text as I stare at it in Scrivener is kind of astonishing. There are a lot of misspelled words there! So I will posit that there's no such thing as a rule that can never be broken.
So if there are no rules, it's just a free-for-all, right? Do anything, try anything, it doesn't matter!
Well no. Randomly flailing around is not going to result in great literature. The infinite monkeys at infinite typewriters approach only works if you also have infinite time. You're just one monkey, with one keyboard, and you have one short lifetime to get this stuff done in.
The answer, I feel, is to seek to understand why the rules exist, and use that understanding to turn those rules into tools you can use.
Let's take a case study: "Mary Sue characters are bad." Now I just finished reading Old Man's War, which is a pretty well received book by a very highly regarded modern author (John Scalzi, who's been the head of the Science Fiction Writer's Guild in the recent past, so he's not a nobody.) The protagonist of Old Man's War is the biggest fucking Mary Sue I've ever seen. From the tragic past to the way he's super special, super funny, super liked, and ridiculously successful, culminating in him being the only ordinary soldier to ever serve with the special forces, and then outdoing them by managing to save their commander's ass and pull off the mission when everyone else had failed... It's just ridiculous, is what I'm saying. Yet it's a good book. I loved reading it, when I cringe at most of the Mary Sue shit I run into. Why? What's the difference? How can we understand the Mary Sue rule and use it to write better stories?
What's a Mary Sue? It boils down to a character that's "special." They're different from those around them. They're better in some way. They've suffered more. They're more talented. They have a destiny. Things like that. The details vary, but the existence of some "special" factor doesn't. Harry Potter is a Mary Sue. Luke Skywalker is a Mary Sue. Bilbo and Frodo may be Mary Sues. Hercules is a Mary Sue. Jason the Argonaut is a Mary Sue.
Readers love Mary Sue characters. We all want to imagine we're special, different, better, chosen, whatever. We like this idea. We love seeing it in characters. We always have, all the way back to the dawn of storytelling. And yet we also recoil at many Mary Sues. We hate them, they're stupid and bad and awful and people should stop writing them. Why the love sometimes and the hate other times?
Well... because Mary Sue needs to be you for you to love her. The reader has to relate to the character, to feel a connection, to feel some empathy or sympathy or something that makes them like this character in some way. (You can write characters the audience hates, but that's breaking the rules very dangerously, mostly the audience needs to love your characters in order to love your story.)
And that right there is the reason so many Mary Sue characters are awful. The writer loves them, because these characters are their babies, that they've thought about and labored over and adore. Because they're the author's self-insert, and the author wants their successes and understands their struggles. Where the authors fail is in making the reader feel these things. So many times a Mary Sue is bad because the author just dumps them out there, fully formed, and immediately has them do the wish-fulfillment the author wants. They instantly become friends with the Mane 6. They date Celestia. They are the seventh Element of Harmony. They do big, wonderful, amazing things out of nowhere, because the author wants them to, because the author loves them.
The author doesn't know that the reader doesn't love them. In fact the reader often hates them, because they do the things the reader would love to do, but they're not characters the reader identifies with or lies. So they become the enemy, the disliked, spit upon, dreaded, reviled Mary Sue. See, the original Mary Sue dated Captain Kirk in a Star Trek fanfic, long, long ago. She was special and wonderful and amazing, better than everyone, without ever having earned any of it.
Earning it is the key. (I've said this before, folks. It's a big deal.)
If Star Wars had started with the scene were Luke retrieves Han Solo from Jabba the Hut, we'd be all "who's this wanna-be badass bozo?" Because that scene comes in part three, after we all know and love Luke, we love that scene.
Harry Potter earns it too. He doesn't just suffer awfully and then suddenly triumph. He goes through a process of discovery, of discovering the wizarding world and discovering himself, and as we see this world through his eyes, we love it. We see his growth over the books and we love him. And so in the end when he becomes fully The Chosen One, triumphant over death itself, we don't revile, we cheer, because over all those books Rowling (*Note from future me: this is still true, but I'd have picked a different example today, fuck off TERFS.) made him earn that, over and over and over again, by being a person we could relate to, by thinking and feeling and doing things that we might have thought or felt or done. Harry might be Rowling's self-insert, but she didn't just assume that you'd like him because she liked him, she gave you the reader reasons to like him. She let you get to know him. She gave you chances to relate to him, to feel for him, to go "yes, I'd have done that too!" and "Wow, I can totally imagine that!" and so we all fell in love.
The rule against Mary Sue characters exists for a reason. It exists because when an author creates a character they love, and makes that character do amazing things, the reader tends to hate that character, and so most such characters are bad. One could say it's best to just avoid Mary Sue characters...but then you'd be avoiding a really great way to have a character everyone loves, because there's nothing readers love more than a Mary Sue they relate to.
Which is why I prefer tools to rules. Rules are superficial. Rules can spare you from the worst, but sometimes at the cost of avoiding the best. Rules won't make your stories good, they'll just prevent them from being specific kinds of bad. A story that perfectly adheres to every rule of writing ever would be bland pap, uninteresting and unlikable.
So learn the rules, but not by rote. Understand them, seek out what makes them tick, turn them into tools, and you'll be well on your way to being an amazing author.
Tools, Not Rules
We all know at least some of the "rules" of writing. Show, don't tell. Mary Sue characters are bad. Never use passive voice. Avoid adverbs. Don't write in second person. Never use a verb other than "said" after dialogue. There are more, but those are some common ones I see bandied about.
These tidbits often have blue-blooded pedigrees (the passive voice one is from Stephen King, for example) and are held up as valued wisdom, passed along with a sense of firm righteousness. Follow the rules, and you'll be a good writer. Break then, and you'll be a bad writer. Simple, isn't it?
Except it obviously isn't that simple, or there would be more good writers and fewer bad ones out there.
In fact a lot of great literature breaks the rules. You can find examples among the famous, beloved, and admired stories that break all of those. I would posit, in fact, that there's no such thing as a writing "rule" you should never break. (I can also find examples in my stories of breaking most of these, and I have a planned second person fic that means I'd have broken them all.)
Here's my take on rules: rules are a place to start. Rules are for beginners. Rules can be useful to learn, especially early on, but merely rote-learning and following all the rules for good writing will not make you a good writer. Frankly, I think people who advise beginning writers to strictly follow the rules by rote are doing them a disservice. Rote-learning rules is for elementary school kids, and if you're here on this site, you should be at least in middle school.
Let's look at the very first set of writing rules that beginners learn, back when we're all learning to write in the first place. Rule one, the absolute foundation: spell words correctly. Surely that should never be broken, right? Surely at least that one rule is absolute, isn't it?
Well...
Well, I can't tell ya much about 'em. The Pie Family've lived 'round these parts fer as long as anypony can remember, but there ain't that much ta tell.
I was a foal when Old Clyde Pie, that's Igneous Pie's pa, who passed on a while back, built the house them-all're tearin up now, but they was 'round these parts afore that. We always figured they was decent folks. Quiet, that's fer sure. Didn't cause nopony no trouble. 'Round here that's probably 'bout as good as it gets. My nephew, he lives jus' down the river a mite, he ain't quiet and I'm near ready to march down there an' put a shoe-print er two over his cutie mark, he's jus' no end of trouble and noise and bother. Many's the time I wished he was as quiet as the Pies.
So I was right satisfied with them as neighbors. Could do worse, I always figgered. Jus' goes ta show, ya never can tell, I figger.
What's that? Did I notice anythin' strange? Not so's I could mention. Like I said, they was mostly quiet. I remember the pink one, I forget her name, came over a few times 'fore she left, to borrow sugar or somesuch. She weren't quiet at all! Could talk the ears right offa ya. But she didn't bother us none most o' the time, and the rest of them... Ya nod when ya pass on the road, ya know? That was 'bout it, most days. They kept ta themselves, an' we kept ta ourselves. Which I guess includes my nephew, 'cause he's my kin, but Celestia Almighty I wish he would just stop askin' me fer bits every month. He ain't got the sense Celestia gave sparrows, that boy. Can't manage money worth beans. Shoulda' jus' gone ta the city like most o' the fillies an' colts 'round here do. He ain't cut out fer farmin'.
That's a chunk of one of my pony fanfiction stories. It wasn't wildly popular, for various reasons, but I certainly don't regard it as a bad story. The people it's aimed at largely seemed to like it. But boy howdy, the number of little red squiggles under that text as I stare at it in Scrivener is kind of astonishing. There are a lot of misspelled words there! So I will posit that there's no such thing as a rule that can never be broken.
So if there are no rules, it's just a free-for-all, right? Do anything, try anything, it doesn't matter!
Well no. Randomly flailing around is not going to result in great literature. The infinite monkeys at infinite typewriters approach only works if you also have infinite time. You're just one monkey, with one keyboard, and you have one short lifetime to get this stuff done in.
The answer, I feel, is to seek to understand why the rules exist, and use that understanding to turn those rules into tools you can use.
Let's take a case study: "Mary Sue characters are bad." Now I just finished reading Old Man's War, which is a pretty well received book by a very highly regarded modern author (John Scalzi, who's been the head of the Science Fiction Writer's Guild in the recent past, so he's not a nobody.) The protagonist of Old Man's War is the biggest fucking Mary Sue I've ever seen. From the tragic past to the way he's super special, super funny, super liked, and ridiculously successful, culminating in him being the only ordinary soldier to ever serve with the special forces, and then outdoing them by managing to save their commander's ass and pull off the mission when everyone else had failed... It's just ridiculous, is what I'm saying. Yet it's a good book. I loved reading it, when I cringe at most of the Mary Sue shit I run into. Why? What's the difference? How can we understand the Mary Sue rule and use it to write better stories?
What's a Mary Sue? It boils down to a character that's "special." They're different from those around them. They're better in some way. They've suffered more. They're more talented. They have a destiny. Things like that. The details vary, but the existence of some "special" factor doesn't. Harry Potter is a Mary Sue. Luke Skywalker is a Mary Sue. Bilbo and Frodo may be Mary Sues. Hercules is a Mary Sue. Jason the Argonaut is a Mary Sue.
Readers love Mary Sue characters. We all want to imagine we're special, different, better, chosen, whatever. We like this idea. We love seeing it in characters. We always have, all the way back to the dawn of storytelling. And yet we also recoil at many Mary Sues. We hate them, they're stupid and bad and awful and people should stop writing them. Why the love sometimes and the hate other times?
Well... because Mary Sue needs to be you for you to love her. The reader has to relate to the character, to feel a connection, to feel some empathy or sympathy or something that makes them like this character in some way. (You can write characters the audience hates, but that's breaking the rules very dangerously, mostly the audience needs to love your characters in order to love your story.)
And that right there is the reason so many Mary Sue characters are awful. The writer loves them, because these characters are their babies, that they've thought about and labored over and adore. Because they're the author's self-insert, and the author wants their successes and understands their struggles. Where the authors fail is in making the reader feel these things. So many times a Mary Sue is bad because the author just dumps them out there, fully formed, and immediately has them do the wish-fulfillment the author wants. They instantly become friends with the Mane 6. They date Celestia. They are the seventh Element of Harmony. They do big, wonderful, amazing things out of nowhere, because the author wants them to, because the author loves them.
The author doesn't know that the reader doesn't love them. In fact the reader often hates them, because they do the things the reader would love to do, but they're not characters the reader identifies with or lies. So they become the enemy, the disliked, spit upon, dreaded, reviled Mary Sue. See, the original Mary Sue dated Captain Kirk in a Star Trek fanfic, long, long ago. She was special and wonderful and amazing, better than everyone, without ever having earned any of it.
Earning it is the key. (I've said this before, folks. It's a big deal.)
If Star Wars had started with the scene were Luke retrieves Han Solo from Jabba the Hut, we'd be all "who's this wanna-be badass bozo?" Because that scene comes in part three, after we all know and love Luke, we love that scene.
Harry Potter earns it too. He doesn't just suffer awfully and then suddenly triumph. He goes through a process of discovery, of discovering the wizarding world and discovering himself, and as we see this world through his eyes, we love it. We see his growth over the books and we love him. And so in the end when he becomes fully The Chosen One, triumphant over death itself, we don't revile, we cheer, because over all those books Rowling (*Note from future me: this is still true, but I'd have picked a different example today, fuck off TERFS.) made him earn that, over and over and over again, by being a person we could relate to, by thinking and feeling and doing things that we might have thought or felt or done. Harry might be Rowling's self-insert, but she didn't just assume that you'd like him because she liked him, she gave you the reader reasons to like him. She let you get to know him. She gave you chances to relate to him, to feel for him, to go "yes, I'd have done that too!" and "Wow, I can totally imagine that!" and so we all fell in love.
The rule against Mary Sue characters exists for a reason. It exists because when an author creates a character they love, and makes that character do amazing things, the reader tends to hate that character, and so most such characters are bad. One could say it's best to just avoid Mary Sue characters...but then you'd be avoiding a really great way to have a character everyone loves, because there's nothing readers love more than a Mary Sue they relate to.
Which is why I prefer tools to rules. Rules are superficial. Rules can spare you from the worst, but sometimes at the cost of avoiding the best. Rules won't make your stories good, they'll just prevent them from being specific kinds of bad. A story that perfectly adheres to every rule of writing ever would be bland pap, uninteresting and unlikable.
So learn the rules, but not by rote. Understand them, seek out what makes them tick, turn them into tools, and you'll be well on your way to being an amazing author.
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Date: 2020-08-13 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-14 11:06 am (UTC)- Erulisse (one L)
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Date: 2020-08-15 04:18 am (UTC)