Write Better: Tips and tricks

Following the Recipe (IE: The Rules of Writing)

Most articles about the "rules of writing" should not use the words "never" and "always."  If you're like me, you've read a lot of rants and advice about what not to do. It can be especially annoying/confusing when you read popular books and everyone is blatantly breaking the rules.

You're trying to be a better writer and these people have success and they're doing everything that these articles say is bad. You do these things and you're not going to get anywhere. Agents will toss out your manuscript. Readers will give you terrible reviews or drop the book within the first chapter. The editor will delete your submission if they see it starts with the weather.

So here you are, reading editing advice and tinkering away and editing and fixing and rewriting and taking care to make sure that every word is as good as they come. Hey, if people who write poorly can do it, why can't you? But then you publish your story and you get a couple reads and no comments or reviews except that one from your BFF and a couple of friends. Maybe a random stranger likes a chapter. And that's it.

What gives?

You followed all the rules. You tried so hard and you know you wrote a better story than Twilight and some popular Wattpad stories.

Maybe they don't matter like you thought?!

Eventually, you find yourself on a comment board somewhere reading about whether writing rules are important, and if they are, if they only exist to be broken.

Famous writers break them all the time. Even sometimes before they were famous. And people still took on their work and liked it. Publishers, editors, agents, readers... Why is it okay for them and not for you?

I'll say it now and I'll say it in future chapters:

Things don't work until they do. People will give you broad advice, and most of them can come up with circumstances where whatever they said not to do, works perfectly. There is almost always an exception to every rule.

That being said, it doesn't mean your adverb/adjective/sentence/paragraph is the exception. It doesn't mean that rules are meant to be broken in every single time you pick up the pen.

 It doesn't even mean that you have to know all the rules to be able to break or follow them!

Rules are very good for making you think out of the box.

If you want to find your own voice and learn how to be original, it helps to know what isn't considered original. 

Rules help you master all aspects of language by providing you with a foundation from which you can work and manipulate.

That's what writing is. We all work from the same database of words. What we want to know is how to use them effectively.

Adverbs are a huge issue in the literary community. All debate aside, rules can help you learn how to use them, and can show you how to write when they aren't available.  Sometimes, it's good to know what happens when an ingredient is there and when it isn't. You'll come to better understand how it works, and how to effectively add, remove, or substitute it.

For example, take the yeast out of your bread recipe, or the baking soda out of your cookies. What if one day you run out of vegetable oil and need to add something to finish frying your chicken? What if your boyfriend really loves raspberries and you want to incorporate them into a lava cake? 

You can guess, experiment, and know.

Part of being a good cook is having an understanding of how things work. There's also experimenting.  Don't be afraid to try something new, don't let people tell you that you can't do something, that you aren't going to be the exception- but don't let your pride get so big that it prevents you from realizing your mistakes.

Sometimes you're going to add an adverb or an extra tablespoon of brown sugar in your marinade, and it'll be genius. Other times, it might be absolutely foul.

A big excuse I've seen from writers is that they're experimenting with a style. You're allowed to defend yourself, but even the great chefs know when to say "Yeah, it didn't turn out as good as I'd hoped."

Be the great chef. Be comfortable with your writing so that you can admit your successes and failures. Don't be afraid of the rules. Don't be scornful or petty and put them beneath you. Understand that, just like there are times when they don't work, there are a great many times when they do!

Lastly, do you have to know rules to be able to tell a story and be famous?

No, of course not. Heck, different people have different rules and they have argued something fierce over them. Even in their top ten. Writing is special like that.