Breaking the Writing Rules (And Getting Away With It)

Are you a rule follower or a rule breaker?

Reading a sign that says “Stay behind the red line,” some of us will make sure our toes never come close to the forbidden zone. Others will take it as a challenge, purposely standing on the line and even moving an inch or so beyond it. After all, rules are meant to be broken.

(Dark Secrets and Dastardly Lies: Ramping Up a Killer Plot.)

Obviously, that’s not always true. In the thermal areas of Yellowstone National Park, for example, visitors are instructed to “stay on the boardwalks and trails.” Excellent advice, intended not to restrict their freedom but to keep them alive. Death by scalding isn’t a nice way to go.

What about the so-called “rules of writing?” Are they the kind you break at your own peril, or are they simply conventions—good advice, reflecting individual taste and preferences?

You won’t die if you use a cliché, ignore story structure, or sprinkle your prose with weasel words. On the other hand, you might not attract an agent or score a publishing contract; and if you self-publish, you probably won’t sell enough books to fund your Starbucks habit.

So what are the rules, or the conventions, of writing?

Most writers are familiar with Chekov’s Gun: To paraphrase, if you mention a gun in an early scene, you better make sure it goes off before the end of the book. In other words, every element introduced in a story should have a purpose in the plot. Chekov’s rule is as relevant today as it was when he first penned it in 1889. This is a rule you break at your own risk.

The most famous modern writing rules may be Elmore Leonard’s Ten Rules for Good Writing:

Never open a book with weather.Avoid prologues.Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said.”Allow no more than two or three exclamation points per 100,000 words of prose.Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

Elmore doubled down on the adverb thing when he said that using an adverb to modify a verb is “a mortal sin.” Heavens! None of us wants to commit a mortal writing sin. But is it true? Can a writer break the rules and get away with it? Here are three well-known writing rules you can break—if you know what you’re doing.

1. Show, Don’t Tell

Show, don’t tell is often the first piece of advice given to new writers. Today’s readers want to experience the story along with the characters, so instead of telling the reader a character is angry, we’re advised to show it dramatically using body language and sometimes interior thought:

How dare he? Ann clenched her fists, wincing as her nails dug into her palms.

It’s good advice. But are there occasions when telling is better than showing? Here are three:

To avoid repeating information the reader already knows

In my books, Kate’s mother acts as a sounding board and counselor. She needs to know what’s going on. So, when Kate relates information the reader already knows, I use a brief narrative summary—like this phone conversation from A Legacy of Murder:

“How are you, Mom?”

“I’m fine. Enjoying myself. Have they found the killer of that young woman?”

“Not yet.” I told her the latest, including the medical examiner’s verdict of murder, the proposed DNA testing, and the rumors about Lucien Finchley-fforde.

To skip over boring and irrelevant to-ing and fro-ing

Your main character is leaving her abusive husband and driving to a cabin in the woods where she will encounter a deranged serial killer. Encountering the serial killer is the important part, right? Instead of showing your character packing her suitcase and then riding along with her on the drive, you say:

The commute was forty-five minutes of hell, but Sarah was relieved to be at the cabin where she’d finally be safe.

Show what’s important; tell what’s not.

To help the reader correctly interpret what you show them

In Beverly Cleary’s Ramona and Her Father, Ramona’s father has lost his job, putting a strain on the family finances. Cleary shows us Ramona’s response and then tells what it means:

“Ye-e-ep!” sang Ramona Quimby one warm September afternoon, as she knelt on a chair at the kitchen table to make out her Christmas list. She had enjoyed a good day in second grade, and she looked forward to working on her list. For Ramona a Christmas list was a list of presents she hoped to receive, not presents she planned to give. “Ye-e-ep!” she sang again.

2. Kill the Adverbs

Stephen King said the road to hell is paved with adverbs. He and Elmore Leonard aren’t the only adverb haters out there. Of all the parts of speech, adverbs are by far the most maligned. There’s a reason. Adverbs are always telling—and overusing them (or using them at all, some say) will weaken your writing and mark you as an amateur. Use stronger verbs, we’re told.

Instead of this: She ran quickly to her next class.

Write this: She sprinted to her next class.

Okay, fine. But are there occasions when a well-chosen adverb is the best word to use? I think there are. Here are three:

When the information conveyed is important and an appropriate stronger verb doesn’t exist

In Jospehine Tey’s Brat Farrar, Brat and Aunt Bee visit the Gates family and are met by two wildly barking dogs:

The clamor brought Mrs. Gates to the door. She was a faded and subdued little woman who once must have been very pretty. “Glen, Joy—be quiet,” she cried ineffectually and came forward to reach them.

Adverbs that repeat the meaning of the verb (she whispered quietly) are superfluous, but can you think of a verb that means “to cry ineffectually?”

I can’t either.

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When adverbs add intentional humor or irony

Neil Gaiman is the master of this technique. Here’s an excerpt from Neverwhere:

“It’s a rat,” said Richard.

“Yes, it is. Are you going to apologize?”

“What?”

“Apologize.”

Maybe he hadn’t heard her properly. Maybe he was the one who was going mad. “To a rat?”

Door said nothing, fairly meaningfully.

“I’m sorry,” said Richard, to the rat, with dignity, “if I startled you.”

To paint a more vivid picture

“The view from the mountaintop was gorgeous” is a perfectly fine sentence, but “The view from the mountaintop was breathtakingly beautiful” adds emphasis and emotion.

3. Drop That Body ASAP

This applies to crime novels, specifically murder mysteries. Hooking the reader from page one is great advice. Writers are told, and rightly so, to grab their readers’ interest with the first sentence by dropping them in the middle of the action and sparking their curiosity with something puzzling, intriguing, or unusual—the inciting incident. 

Something must happen or the tension will be lost. Conflict and tension are what keep your readers turning pages. In murder mysteries, the inciting incident (the murder) belongs—depending upon who you listen to—on the first page or by the end of the first chapter or before page 30, but certainly by the end of the third chapter.

But does the body drop always have to occur right away? Here are three good reasons to break the rule:

When delaying the body drop actually ramps up the tension

The Guest List, by Lucy Foley, a captivating thriller murder mystery set during a wedding celebration on a remote Scottish island, is a great example because the murder doesn’t take place until close to the end of the book. But there’s plenty of misdirection and foreshadowing along the way. Here’s an example:

The Irish band begins to play again…. Many of the guests hurry in that direction, eager for some light relief. If you were to look closely at where they step, you might see the marks where one barefoot guest has trodden in broken glass and left bloody footprints across the linoleum, drying to a rusty stain. No one notices.

The reader knows someone is going to die. The question is who, and as we move toward the shocking conclusion, the tension becomes almost unbearable.

When a murder overturns readers’ expectations, acting as a plot twist

In The Kind Worth Killing, by Peter Swanson, two strangers who meet on an airplane form a deadly pact to take revenge on those who have wronged them. The reader “knows” who the perpetrators will be. The question is how will they do it and will they be caught? But all is not as it seems, and when the first body drops about a third of the way into the story (“This Changes Everything”), one shocking twist after another upends every expectation.

When the murder isn’t the inciting incident or even the most important plot point

Miss Pym Disposes, by Josephine Tey, is an older example but a good one because the crime itself doesn’t happen until page 180—and the book is only 235 pages long. Miss Lucy Pym, a popular English psychologist, is a guest lecturer at a ladies’ physical training college. When she catches one of students cheating on a final exam, she decides, for what she considers to be good reasons, to cover up the evidence. That act and another close on its heels are the actual crimes that precipitate the death. Again, plenty of subtle foreshadowing creates tension, keeping readers turning the pages. Here’s an early example:

They stood there on the gravel, looking up at her, smiling. That was how she always remembered them afterwards, standing there in the sunlight, easy and graceful, secure in their belief in the world’s rightness and in their trust in each other, untouched by doubt or blemish, taking it for granted that the warm gravel under their feet was lasting earth and not the precipice edge of disaster.

Yes, the story includes a murder, but the real conflict is generated by questions of human psychology, personal preferences, and justice. Tey shapes the readers’ preferences and prejudices and then asks us, along with Miss Pym, to form conclusions with incomplete data—leading to tragic and unforeseen consequences. The death in this case isn’t the precipitating event; it’s the end result.

Check out Connie Berry’s A Collection of Lies here:

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Have I convinced you? I might have cited other writing rules such as No Prologues and No Head-Hopping, but I hope the three I’ve included make my point. Breaking the rules comes with risk, but it also provides opportunities for innovation and creativity. If you know what you’re doing.

I’ll end with some personal advice.

Know and master the rules of writing before you break them. Understand them and see their value before you toss them out as constrictive. Even Neil Gaiman, whose generous use of adverbs is part of his wit and unique narrative voice, understands their pitfalls:

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with adverbs (he asseverated, gnomishly) but I do tend to do a final read-through of anything I’ve written, deciding whether each adverb lives or dies, based really on whether it adds anything. If it’s implicit in what I’ve already said in the book I chuck it out bravely.

If you’re a new writer trying to attract an agent or a publisher, I’d stick with the rules for now. Publishing professionals receive so many submissions per week that a single adverb or a prologue might tempt them to hit the delete button. Once you’ve learned your craft and established yourself as a writer, you can experiment. Even then, you might experience some blow-back. If you break the rules, be prepared to justify your choices.

Whatever you do, make sure it’s a choice, not a mistake.