{"id":186,"date":"2016-07-23T22:44:49","date_gmt":"2016-07-23T22:44:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/?p=186"},"modified":"2020-08-15T17:38:15","modified_gmt":"2020-08-15T17:38:15","slug":"sunday-writing-every-rule-has-exceptions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/?p=186","title":{"rendered":"Sunday Writing: Every “Rule” has Exceptions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"marquee\"One of the many fascinating aspects of English and writing is that anything that sounds like a rule has exceptions.\u00a0 The only real rule in writing is this: IT HAS TO WORK.\u00a0 If it works, it’s good. \u00a0I’ve written stories in the past just to show that a “rule” can be broken. \u00a0My latest story at Daily Science Fiction does exactly that. \u00a0It’s called “Writing Advice.”<\/a><\/p>\n

So, a lot of the standard wisdom writing teachers hand out is challengable, if you know what you are doing<\/u>.<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Write what you know.<\/b>\u00a0 This is intuitively wrong, or at least poorly stated.\u00a0 I prefer “Don’t write what you don’t know,” because that implies you can find out stuff (and should).\u00a0 Too vigorously applied, “write what you know,” produces a lot of belly button gazing.\u00a0 At the college that means I get a ton of dorm stories, filled with drinking and teen angst.\u00a0 Maybe an even better way to phrase this might be, “Write what you can imagine, and imagine with gusto (and detail).”\u00a0 At least for science fiction and fantasy writers.<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0 Don’t shift point of view.\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0 In general, this is good advice.\u00a0 A writer who slips around willy nilly with point of view just confuses the heck out of the reader.\u00a0 I responded to a story the other day that dipped into the cat’s point of view for a sentence, and then, catastrophically, into a house plant on the fireplace mantle for another sentence.\u00a0 The better advice, at least to stronger writers, is Control point of view<\/b>.\u00a0 If you know what you are doing, a story that shifts point of view can be the only way to tell the story, if it works<\/u>.<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0 Show, don’t tell.<\/b>\u00a0 This rule is what I had in mind when I started this post because yesterday I said the weakest way to reveal character is by the narrator directly telling the readers what the character is.\u00a0 What I had in mind was the writer who puts something like this down on the page: “Leslie was witty and clever,” and then Leslie never does a single witty or clever thing.\u00a0 That’s telling without confirming showing.\u00a0 But some of the most memorable characters in fiction are revealed partly through the narrator directly telling the readers what the character is like.<\/p>\n

For example, here is one of the most famous character introductions in all of English literature:<\/p>\n

Oh!\u00a0 But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!\u00a0 Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.\u00a0 The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.\u00a0 A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin.\u00a0 He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.<\/b><\/p>\n

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge.\u00a0 No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him.\u00a0 No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty.\u00a0 Foul weather didn’t know where to have him.\u00a0 The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect.\u00a0 They often “came down” handsomely, and Scrooge never did.<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think that nice bit of telling works, don’t you?\u00a0 All right, it’s a bit of a cheat as an example, because there is some effective showing in there too, but the mode is mostly telling.\u00a0 Look at how much milage Dickens gets out of mixing showing and telling.\u00a0 Remember, too, that the very first time we see Scrooge in the story, his character is revealed through dialogue:<\/p>\n

“A merry Christmas, uncle!\u00a0 God save you!” cried a cheerful voice.\u00a0 It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.<\/b><\/p>\n

“Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!”<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, for me, the better advice is “Show, don’t tell, unless you earn the right to tell by doing a lot of showing.”\u00a0 It doesn’t quite roll off the tongue as easily as the first piece of advice, but it seems closer to the truth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the many fascinating aspects of English and writing is that anything that sounds like a rule has exceptions.\u00a0 The only real rule in writing is this: IT HAS TO WORK.\u00a0 If it works, it’s good. \u00a0I’ve written stories in the past just to show that a “rule” can be broken. \u00a0My latest story […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,6,3,41],"tags":[21,12,54,10,55],"class_list":["post-186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","category-short-stories","category-writing","category-writing-advice","tag-advice","tag-craft","tag-rules","tag-writing-advice","tag-writing-rules"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions\/188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}