Rules for Writing Fiction

My online critique partner has been trying to follow all the “rules” for writing fiction but is having trouble when they conflict with each other or don’t further her story. That made me wonder how hard-and-fast they really are. Here is what I came up with.

In my opinion, there are only two inflexible rules for writing fiction to be read by others. (If you are writing merely to please yourself, you can ignore them, too.) These two higher-level rules are:

·       Respect your reader, and

·       Stay true to your story.

Most of the lower-level rules are really guidelines designed to help writers respect their readers. Obviously, not all readers are alike, so how the guidelines are used and the degree to which they apply depends on the intended audience. For example, thriller fans expect you to apply the “show, don’t tell” guideline more rigorously than readers of literary fiction do. Here are a few of the other many guidelines that help you respect your reader.

·       Write clearly. Readers deserve to understand what they are reading. I have started but not finished many books that used confusing sentence structures. Here are some examples:

o   “Tom and David entered the room smoking a pipe.” Since it says “a pipe” (singular), were they sharing it? If only one was smoking, then which one? Or should it say “smoking pipes?”

o   “Betty went camping with her sisters, Debbie and Carol.”  This could mean that there were at least five people on the camping trip: Betty, two or more sisters, Debbie, and Carol. Or it could mean that there were only three: Betty and her two sisters, who are named Debbie and Carol.

I thought about putting clarity among the immutable rules, but even it has exceptions. There are times when a writer is purposefully ambiguous and/or misleading, such as when he or she wants a character’s motive to be unclear until the end. But the lack of clarity should always be intentional.

·       Be consistent with point of view. There can be more than one POV character, but it is inconsiderate to head-hop within a scene. When that happens, the reader is the one who gets the headache. At least I do. It’s also important to understand how the various POVs work and use them properly, but that’s a subject for another day. In fact, it’s a subject for an entire month, and I covered it three years ago. For more detail, read my blog posts for July 6, 2015; July 13, 2015; July 20, 2015; and July 27, 2015. 

·       Don’t tell readers what they can figure out for themselves and don’t repeat information they already know. That tells me, as a reader, that the writer thinks I’m dense. Of course, sometimes repetition is useful for emphasis or as a rhetorical device. That’s why this is a guideline rather than a fixed rule.

·       Feed information to the reader when and where it is fresh. This includes backstory. “Fresh” doesn’t mean it has to be served right after it is made (i.e., when it occurs), but there is a difference between good cheese and moldy cheese or between crisp vegetables and rotten ones. In other words, don’t use the first chapter—or any other part of the book—to dump information on the reader the way trash is added to a garbage dump. Instead, merge backstory, details, and descriptions in where they fit naturally. If there is no place to merge them in, then they are probably unnecessary.

The other actual rule is to stay true to your story. This doesn’t mean it can’t change or develop in the writing process, but no writer should give up control. I always listen to and consider my critique partners’ suggestions, and they often improve the story. This goes for craft elements as well as plot. But I don’t make changes that don’t feel right. It is my story, and nobody else understands it the way I do.

So if you want to be a good writer, respect your readers and stay true to your story.

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The image at the head of this post was drawn by Frank T. Merrill for the original edition of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. First published in 1868, the illustration is in the public domain because of its age.