We Don't Need No Stinkin' Rules!

I paraphrased a famous line from Treasure of Sierra Madre—We don't need no stinkin' badges—to make a point. There are plenty of rules for writing available online and in bookstores and libraries. We need rules of grammar, style, and punctuation to make our writing intelligible. Of course, we may tweak, bend, and transform the basics when appropriate. "We have no need of odiferous badges" would seem ludicrous coming out of the mouth of a bandit about to whack Humphrey Bogart with a machete.

Beyond the basics, rules are made to be broken. I repeat: rules are made to be broken. That's both a redundancy and a cliché. There are rules against redundancies and clichés that I follow— except when I don't. At times, it's all right to be redundant for emphasis and, in everyday usage, people often speak and think in clichés. Therefore, a judicious use of clichés is perfectly fine. Perfectly fine. Perfectly is an adverb. Should we avoid using adverbs? Does adding "perfectly" to "fine" convey a subtly nuanced message to the reader, or is it superfluous? Yes—no—maybe—depends.

Writing is an art. An MFA in Creative Writing doesn't make you Shakespeare. At best, creative writing instructors, not to mention writers' groups, agents and editors, can provide guidance, criticism—and rules. All that tutelage may be valuable, but it doesn't make you a writer. Much of this business is trial and error, reading and writing and dealing with rejection and criticism. Starting stories, novels, plays, poems and scripts, grappling with their complexities, revising them to death and often as not abandoning them. Failing and, to quote Samuel Beckett, learning how to "fail better." Following the rules, tweaking them, bending them, ignoring them and creating rules of our own. If we achieve some success, we can promulgate our own set of rules for future generations to follow, ignore or transform as they please.

Do we need stinkin' rules? You bet—maybe—depends.