Are Heinlein’s Rules Worth Your Time?

This is probably one of the more controversial opinions I’ll have. My Intellection is giving inner critic a job, and inner critic is happily rolling up its sleeves.

When my former cowriter started attacking me out of what was likely fear, my inner critic jumped into the fray to protect me. It was a fierce warrior. So you’re going to see the inner critic punching back on a sacred cow: Heinlein’s Rules.

To restore my fun of writing, I have to debunk the sacred cows. When I did that for the beginner craft advice, it took identifying the bad advice, understanding the origins of the advice, and the reason why it was good and why it was bad. Often, advice has elements of both.

The Provence of Heinlein’s Rules online

Heinlein’s Rules are a pretty big sacred cow. I’m going to do the complete history so you can follow the trails to why and when it surfaced. As Ross Dawson notes in his book Thriving on Overload, it’s important to trace things on the internet back to its origins (if possible). I think it’s also important to understand if the opinions are coming from multiple and diverse sources, or if writers are repeating what another writer said (sadly true in beginner circles).

The rules first showed up online in 1996 with Robert Sawyer (a decent interpretation, and mercifully short). Patricia Wrede picked it up in 2010, as did Charlie Dane Anders presenting the only post I could find taking a deep dive into issues with them.

There’s a smattering of posts discussing it, as well as one on Absolute Write from James A. Ritche, a ghost writer. Between 2011-2012, Dean Wesley Smith appears to have discussed the topic in a sacred cows post (taken down). In 2013, Dean Wesley Smith published the first blog post on the rules. Absolute Write also discusses a post from Dean, though it’s been taken down. I found it refreshing to see someone questioning the “musts” of the rules instead of agreeing with it.

In early 2015, Harvey Stanbrough started writing about Heinlein Rules. There are numerous posts on the topic, though as part of other topics.  At the end of the year, Dean blogged a book on the rules, then published it.  He also created a $50 lecture, which I’ve seen. The late David Farland also has a course on the rules for $199, though the link is broken (I’m assuming his estate is doing something with the site).

I also found a smattering of posts from other writers, varying between providing the list, defining the rules, or how they’re following or not following them. So it appears this is the point where people started to take some notice.

Harvey Stanbrough’s posts that bring it up continue through the years and he comments enough to land a guest post on Killzone. James Scott Bell writes a post on the topic in 2018 because of Harvey’s comments. There continue to be regular blog posts as recent as 2023. In 2022, Dean Wesley Smith created a six week course on the rules, seven years after creating the book.

The visibility of these rules comes from one person.

Robert Heinlein was a master science fiction writer who came up during the pulps. He wrote many science fiction novels, both for adults and children. In 1947, he wrote an article for Of Worlds Beyond: The Science of Science Fiction Writing, edited by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach (the link provides a list of all the articles and writers published in the book). The rules were part of his article:

You must write.You must finish what you start.You must refrain from rewriting (except to editorial demand).You must put it on the market.You must keep it on the market until sold.

Dean Wesley Smith defines them as business rules. But, as Peggy noted in her comment Why Word Count Goals Can Be Bad For You, many writers are defining writing as business, not publishing as business.

Onward to my opinions of these rules. I promise no lecturing.

You must write.

Definition: Self-explanatory.

This one likely is first on the list because Mr. Heinlein was asked by wannabe writers the secret of how to write without doing, well, the writing. In fact, it’s rather pointless to state this to modern day indie writers, and the wannabes aren’t going to read it. Or if they do read it, they’ll still root around for the secret.

You must finish what you start.

Definition: Self-explanatory.

But …

There is truth to this rule, but it’s not black and white. I knew a writer who would write three chapters, then ask for a critique. He was auditing if the idea was worth his time, which translated into if people made any comments, then it was no good. So he’d abandon perfectly good starts after a critique and start over again. Other writers would get stuck on a story, go to another one, get stuck, go to another…you get the idea.

They’re also not likely to read this rule and go “Ah ha! I need to finish my stories.”

And here’s the gray area: Clifton Strengths.

My top five are:

IntellectionIdeationInputAdaptabilityFuturistic

Ideation comes into play here. It’s common for me–and Ideation–to have lots of unfinished story starts. I don’t abandon them in the middle because I get stuck. Rather, it’s a few pages. I’ve always written like that, since I was eight. The idea was exciting, but something was missing (often needing a collision of another idea), so ideation wandered off to find a different story to play with. During the Great Challenge where I did a short story a week for an entire year, I mined those story starts.

When I wrote the story Alien Pizza that was my first pro publication and landed a mention in Publisher’s Weekly, it was one of the story starts. I didn’t quite know what to do with it until I saw the call for Monsters, Movies, and Mayhem. The original idea collided with movies, and the story was done.

In 2022, I went temporarily crazy and took Dean Wesley Smith’s six week Heinlein’s course (because I had a lifetime subscription, it was free). Blame input. Sometimes it has done some ill-advised learning because it must learn All The Things.

In the second week, the assignment was to create these metrics:

Count the number of completed storiesCount the number of unfinished stories.Divide them to get the percentage of how successful you were with Rule 2

We were rated on how well we followed the rules, with single digits of unfinished stories the ideal. My percentage was demoralizing (and I know one of the gurus I used to follow would say with sneering condescension that I was clearly stuck in the myths). I never sent in Lesson 2 and called the class done. I didn’t want to see what would show up for Rule 4 and 5 as you will see below…

You must refrain from rewriting (except to editorial demand).

Definition: Don’t use revision to procrastinate.

This rule is much disputed, especially by the beginning writers to justify the amount of revision they’re doing, and the indies to justify not revising at all.

I think you should do what you need to do. But if you’re hitting 20 drafts, that’s not a bragging point. You should question why you’re doing that much revision. There might be some fear lurking in there. My former cowriter was afraid of the story getting rejected by an agent, so he was happy to keep revising the first chapter endlessly on the pretense of making it more marketable. The worst part of this is that it looks productive while you actually never finish.

You must put it on the market and You must keep it on the market until sold.

Definition: Get the story in submission until you sell it (and really, it should be one rule, not two).

When Mr. Heinlein published these rules, the pulp era was in full swing. There were many, many magazines you could send the story to. If it was rejected, you could keep it in play until an editor bought it.

That’s not as true today, making both rules dated. And I know what the writers pounding their fists about Heinlein’s Rules would say, and I’ll say back “Bullshit.”

For short stories, the market has contracted a lot. If you want to be paid pro rates, it’s hard to find markets for some genres like mystery. Speculative fiction is more popular in short stories, and it’s still hard to find a pro paying market. Many of the spec fiction markets have additional author requirements that you may not qualify for, cutting the number down further. Others may have elements that you don’t want to be involved in as well. I’ve seen a lot of political topics and I steer clear of those. Aside from getting too much politics as it is (I live in political ground zero), that makes for a story you will never sell anywhere else if it gets rejected.

It’s hard keeping a story on the market with so few opportunities. The indie gurus would say to publish the short story to get it in front of readers and that it’s more visibility. Okay…well, that’s a lot of work to do and it probably won’t sell (anecdotal experience). Despite having short attention spans, people want longer fiction.

Also, more than once, I’ve had a story I indie published and then an anthology call popped up where it was a perfect fit…and I couldn’t submit it because I’d already published it. So I have very mixed feelings about these rules.

Besides, it’s a lot of work to fire off submissions to every magazine available. Many take a year to respond, if at all.

But there are people who never gets story out as another form of procrastination.  I knew a writer who was pretty decent, but she’d been beaten up a lot by other people’s negativity because she was disabled, so she put the stories in her drawer.

Overall, today’s gurus make these rules out in black and white, like a checklist that you’re supposed to paste above your writing computer to make sure you’re following them. Really?!

One guru endlessly lectures about these rules, patiently explaining them as if you were two years old and misbehaving. Unfortunately, a lot of other writers repeat the message without every thinking for themselves (seems to be a trend across all sides of writing). I think exposure to this has helped erode my fun of writing.

The indie writing gurus boast, “I follow all Heinlein’s Rules to the letter,” with implication, “If you don’t, you’ll never be successful like me.” We have no way of knowing if they actually are doing as they say, only that they are saying it. This gives them an authoritative tone (that thing experts need), and may give them an ego boost to lecture other writers. I’ve seen writers pontificate authoritatively about beginner craft advice on message boards. Why not with something like these rules?

My advice on Heinlein’s Rules?

Read the rules as if you stumbled across them in a resource from 1947. Which means in the original list form I pasted in above.  Not another writer’s interpretation.Think about them briefly, as you would any other piece of writing advice.Form your own opinions.Then move on.

And for goodness sake, go read Heinlein. The man was a classic science fiction writer. He should be remembered more his fiction than for five rules he slapped in an article. Just saying.