The Rules of Fantasy

Writers spend a lot of time writing rules of fantasy, and then even more time figuring out a way around those same rules.

Is this just perversity?

I don’t think so. I think that we all know instinctively that this is the way that mastery of any discipline works. First, you learn all the rules. Then you go about systematically figuring out how to break them.

It’s one of the reasons that it can be confusing to writers who are being taught “the rules” to see so many more advanced writers breaking all those rules.

The “rules” are invented to explain certain forms and processes on a simplistic level. Once you understand that level, you see how you can manipulate those forms and processes on another level entirely. That’s why they say that once you understand the rules, you don’t need to follow them anymore. Although that makes it sound like the rules aren’t really true.

And they aren’t. But they are. At the same time.

Rules are useful ways of describing things in thumbnail form.

But if you’re a pianist and you always follow the rules, you are likely to be boring. If you are a composer and you follow the rules, you may sound a little derivative. Not inventive. Not mind-blowing.

And yet, when you know the rules, you instinctively see the difference between people who break the rules because they have no idea they exist and people who break the rules because they’re messing with your head and your expectations. And how you appreciate the latter!

Wreck the rules! Destroy them! Build them up again!