I recently came across this on someone’s Facebook page:
The Rules for Writing a Modern Novel
- Never open a book with the weather
- Avoid prologues
- Never use a verb other than ‘said’ to carry dialogue
- Never use an adverb to modify the verb ‘said’
- Keep your exclamation points under control
- Never use the words ‘suddenly’ or ‘all hell broke loose’
- Use dialect sparingly
- Avoid detailed descriptions of characters
- Avoid detailed descriptions of places or things
- Leave out the parts readers tend to skip
After reading this list I was more than a little depressed. I think I break every single one in my first novel! I’m not sure if this means I’m a bad writer or just that I like to avoid trends.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen lists of ‘rules’ to follow when you’re writing. While I’m not suggesting it’s a bad thing to have rules like these, I wonder just how hard and fast any rules are. If you are a writer do you follow guidelines like the ten steps above or do you think it’s all garbage?
Over the next few posts I’m going to look at each of these guidelines individually and see what I can discover about them, so watch this space!
Ummm those rules seem really stupid to me. It sounds like the extremists view of what not to do – seriously every single dialog should be ‘said’ no ‘exclaimed’, ‘shouted’, ‘whispered’?? Boooooring! I’m not convinced Lynne.
Neither am I, which is probably why I broke it!
I can definitely see sense in number 10!
Trouble is, how do you know which parts they are? It could be different parts for different readers.
As a reader, I do not sit down with a list of rules for writers in my non-book-holding hand. I have one rule: entertain me. I love to be educated, enlightened, learn different POVs, etc, etc, really I do. But if I’m not entertained – engaging characters and some plot – then I’m taking my reading time elsewhere. I will say I agree with 4 and 8 most of the time.