Rules Were Made to be Followed…And Broken

If you’ve been a writer for any length of time, you know where you spend the bulk of your efforts in polishing your manuscript. If you’re new to writing, you’ll find out once you type “The End” on your first draft. 🙂

It’s not in the pre-planning. It’s not during the creating-from-a-blank-page phase. It’s not even in crafting a synopsis, though many a writer becomes tempted to toss the laptop out the window at that stage.

No, whether it takes you six months, a year, or four years to polish your manuscript, you will spend most of that time editing.

Truth be told, editing is my favorite part. The blank page intimidates me, and I can only get so far in pre-planning before I must start fleshing things out, chapter by chapter, because I won’t discover the details otherwise. But once I’ve plowed through that first draft and know where my story is headed and what has become important to the plot, I love to return to Chapter One and start chipping away at the next layer. Smoothing out the sentences, tightening the description, clarifying the dialogue—that’s fun for me. Well, overall. I do have my moments when I want to quit. 😉

By the time we get knee-deep into the writing craft, we have no doubt been inundated with rules: Never use adverbs. Avoid all instances of exclamation points. Get rid of the passive voice. Show, don’t tell.

To name just a few.

We’ve touched upon these rules several times in past posts. And what I have learned between my debut novel and its sequel is this: Know the rules and work toward excellence in your craft, but do not sacrifice the story for the sake of adhering to said rules. There are times when we will want to tell, rather than show. Other times when “Suddenly…” or “It was…” makes a sentence pop.

But how do we know which sentences require rule-following and which would benefit from rule-breaking?

I found the following video, created by Abbie Emmons over a year ago, helpful in discerning what to look for, and what to ask ourselves, when it comes to some of the “Thou shalts” and “Thou shalt nots” of the writing world. Running just under twenty minutes, it’s a quick and worthwhile lesson I hope you’ll enjoy as much as I did.