Writer’s Tip #75: Break the Rules
When you read your story, does it sound off, maybe you can’t quite put your finger on it, but you know you’ve done something wrong? Sometimes–maybe even lots of times–there are simple fixes. These writer’s tips will come at you once a week, giving you plenty of time to go through your story and make the adjustments.
This tip is from Robert Masello, award-winning journalist, television writer, and bestselling author of many novels and nonfiction books like the Medusa Amulet and Vigil. It’s #102 in his Kindle ebook, Robert’s Rules of Writing: 101 Unconventional Lessons Every Writer Should Know (Writers Digest Books 2011). That’s right. He’s showing not telling. We writers understand that approach.
Here’s what he says:
Rule 102. Break the Rules. The cover of the book says 101 Rules—and that’s why I’m writing 102. Just to prove that rules are made for breaking. For example, for every writer who writes in the morning, there’s one who writes only at night. For every writer who plows ahead, never looking back, there’s one who agonizes over every word and cannot go forward without polishing every syllable that has come before. For every writer who works from an elaborate outline, there’s one who flies by the seat of his pants.
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Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman , the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is webmaster for six blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com and TeachHUB, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, monthly contributor to Today’s Author and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. In her free time, she is editor of technology training books for how to integrate technology in education.
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