The Rules

The rules of writing are easy to understand and follow. Every reader knows them. Writers, on the other hand, develop difficulty and subjectional amnesia as soon as a blank page is within their gaze.

First, there is only one rule.

Second, the one rule: write what is necessary for the story.

Third, the hang-up: what is necessary for this particular story?

Fourth, the answer: only the writer can know.

“But,” says the novice writer, “I’m inundated with advice about rules so there must be more?” Of course there is, but they have nothing to do with writing. Those rules have to do with marketing. They have to do with sales. They have to do with a whole herd of different people’s expectations— but NOT THE STORY.

Then what do the rules mean to us as writers? First, we must separate the issues masquerading as rules into three parts. The first is the rule mentioned above. The rest is a whole ‘nother basket of issues, but luckily for us, they too are simple. Remember THE RULE is the most important thing for any story. It is the reason why when a daring author appears to bend or ignore some ‘rule’ the story is still wildly successful. The other two parts are marketability and customer/reader expectation.

Let us delve into some of the many things disguised as rules. If an author is writing with the ambition to become famous as a writer, they must get their writing under publication. To get a story accepted for publication, it must pass muster by an acquiring editor and perhaps an agent too. The expectations of acceptable stories for publication change by what has successfully been published and sold. Therefore, all stories have to meet proven criteria of someone else’s sales to be acceptable now. Those expectations are shaped by the emotion of the times, sales volumes of like stories, genre, and personal taste of decision makers. Let’s take each of them one at a time.

Sales volume and like stories. Famous writers cannot write fast enough to fill the market and they have a limited life span of writing. New writers who are writing similar books are used to take up the slack. As new writers develop their own following and as their own writing voices mature, they will begin to sway the market by their work proving itself acceptable to the market and the buyers of writing will begin to do two things, they will either find more to fill in the gap of a surging market or they will bring in some fine, but unusual writing by a new writer to test the book buying public to see if its taste is ready for a change on the reading menu. For an example, imagine the difference between a Barbara Cartland book and a Stehanie Lauren’s tale. They are two authors with examples of very similar work if compared carefully, but very different in complexity and flavor. Both of these extraordinary writers break, by very wide bounds, the ‘rules’ that are being sported around as definitive ways to write. Yet, Barbara Cartland in her time had more books in publication than any before her. I do not know if the current most prolific writer has passed her in production yet, but few of us will ever come close.

Genre. Each reader of each genre and each subheading of every genre has their own set of expectations (rules) for stories they are willing to read. And these are VERY specific. Many of the rules used to hit newbie writers over the head come from this group of expectations. Cozy mysteries have less description of the victim/treasure than the experience and flavor of the investigator or the town they live in. Cozies are about the people. There are mysteries that spotlight the science of the investigation. Leave out the science and that bunch of targeted readers will go elsewhere for their books. The reason professionals in the writing world tell writers to READ and RESEARCH is that readers must have their expectations fulfilled to wish to continue reading your stories.

The reading is in the genre or subgenre you wish to write in so that you know what these subtle clues are that signal the current set of expectations of what is in a story so that you can scratch the specific itch for which your readers will come to you instead of some other writer. There are two ways to run afoul here. One is to ignore reader/editor/agent expectation. The other is when research goes too far. If during your research of the ancient world you get so fascinated by blowing loess that it is mentioned on almost every page in your newest book, you will quite likely lose the readership that made The Clan of the Bear Cave by Jean Auel a household word for several years. People like details of other places and times. They read for the story more. Too many details and not enough story make for unemployed writers. The fact (unsubstantiated) that all true corsets have twenty-six holes for the tightening ribbons maybe interesting one or two times. Mentioning the number each time each lady removes her corset is too much.

Emotion of the times. Would a story about war and surviving war be really popular during peacetime? Would a wounded hero story be popular then? Would a recovery story about a piano player with only seven fingers be a good bet? It depends upon the writing of course, but there are some subjects that are not as appealing depending upon current events. The overall mood of the public will be different also. This public mood is revealed by architecture as well as the books that are published. Fantasy reading goes really wild when things are easy. Readers want to play what-if. When things are uneasy, confidence is shaken, they go for substantial feelings. Buildings that look solid. Stories that reflect basic values. Then people tend to want to touch base with sturdy tried and true values. In a time when children who are pregnant at ten years of age hit the news, the desire for fundamental goodness and redemption spread the book market. What does this mean for a writer? It means that what is acceptable in phrasing at some other time and place may not be as acceptable now. We do not generally use the word ‘nigger’ these days. Yet, in period writing and other famous writings of the past, words of that nature certainly were. If we write stories set in time periods, the story will be read by people of today. Readers of today are not necessarily going to appreciate the stark language of that time! Therefore, the reader’s emotions of today top the accuracy of yesterday in the competition of publication. There will be stories so well written and so compelling that will reduce any of these problems to dust. But, it will be a rare occasion. Editors are the guides in this area.

Personal taste of the decision makers. Women, today, make more upper level decisions than ever before and along with having decision making personalities are more attuned to women who are decisive. They like women who lead. Therefore, they are more likely to find stories that are about women like them more appealing because they UNDERSTAND them. Have you noticed the trend towards self reliant, decision-making, heroines with deep public responsibilities and abilities? Good luck getting a heroine that wants to sell the ranch she’s inherited so that she can get a desk job and marry a man who only expects her to bear his children, cook for him, and sew on his buttons because SHE wants to be taken care of in all ways. Such is our current ways and times.

If we had more men in the early decision-making on our books and up the ladder, then we might be able to squeak a few by, for a man’s view of a woman’s role is often different from those of workplace- related women. There are still many women in our world whose reason for being is to be wonderful mothers and wives and housekeepers and nothing else. It is their art. They are good at it. They are domestic leaders and shapers of our future. However, their stories are not necessarily those being selected for publication at this time in this current social structure. Again, I point you to Barbara Cartland stories. In her time, the heroines could hardly take a deep breath. They gasped a lot. But, that does not preclude a homemaker as a heroine, it merely means the writing will need to be extraordinary to catch and keep the attention of our new crop of decision makers.

Make no mistake. Publishing is a business. Writing is not. Published writing is a business act. If a writer wishes to engage in writing something that will be published, the writing must be engaging AND it must be of interest (different enough to engage the jaded reading palate) AND it would help if it were similar to an already published and wildly lucrative product. When a writer runs into advice about marketability, these are the qualities people are talking about. This is another area where the advice is to do research. The reading and searching is to find what published book is similar to your own and approach the market who published it to see if it would also like yours. However, a compelling story well written about something entirely new may see print. Try Heart Mate by Robin Owens. She is known for breaking new ground and starting a new genre.

Then there is grammar, word choice, point of view and all manner of things to sling at a new writer: There shouldn’t be an ‘ing’ word. Take out all adverbs. Shorten sentences, don’t you know that we compete with television? People have shorter attention spans you know.

Know this. Every writer makes their own decision on how to make the language express what needs to be expressed. It stands to reason that writers will disagree on the best way to express an idea. Listen to your own writer’s ear and heart. Only the original writer knows the story best. Every portion of a language has a purpose. ‘ing words are as necessary as ‘ly’ words. Long sentences with lyrical phrases are as necessary as passive verbs. Try reading a Stephanie Lauren book. She is a very popular writer in her specific genre area. There are strings of extraneous, repetitive phrases and unending paragraphs of similar emotional content and yet she is a favorite of many—because it works wonderfully for the sentiment and kind of story she writes. Strip her stories like some would have us do as in ‘let no word stay that does not add to or further the story’ or ‘throw out passive verbs and replace them with more forceful action verbs’ and there would be many unhappy fans of hers. There are as many different reader desires as writer styles. Just like there are men with very hairy bodies, there are women who love all that fur. It is wise to attend to all well met advice. It is foolish to follow all of it. Writers should do what is right for their story. When they don’t, it ruins the flavor and individuality of the story.

So, in a nutshell, writing rules are specific to genre expectation and what is necessary to get the story across to the reader as well as the writer can do it. Things like the use of commas and subject verb agreement are grammar rules—cross them up at your peril.