Tell Me a Story I Haven't Heard Before

I know there are tons of books out there that are designed to give you tips on how to write a good plot and how to make your characters likeable. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with reading them and learning from them.

I also think that if you are going to become the best writer you can be, you have to throw those books out. Those are the old way of writing. Those books teach you formulas that you’re going to move past. The history of literature is about people doing new things. Not just using words in different ways, or making up new forms of poetry, but telling different kinds of stories, refusing to give in to reader expectation, and going beyond formula. That’s what you’re going to do ideally.

So here are some rules:
1.    In a murder mystery, the body has to be discovered in chapter one.
2.    The hero needs a sidekick that is goofy and makes him look more competent.
3.    The romance is never resolved until the bigger plot elements are.
4.    The heroine should always look hot, no matter how hard she is running.
5.    The white people are the stars of the show, but you can add some POC around the edges.
6.    No one cares about real physics. Just have stuff blow up when you want to pick up the pacing.
7.    If the detective can’t figure out who the murderer is from the first body, just pile them up to increase the suspense.
8.    The villain always explains his reasons right before he kills the hero.
9.    Things should always look darkest before the dawn.
10.    There must be a secret reveal that makes the hero reconsider everything before recommitting to the quest and finding triumph.

You know you’ve seen all of these a thousand times. You know that on some level, the audience expects these things. And those books on how to write often tell you to do just this because it’s the “formula for success.”
Well, F#$%^&* that.

The best formula for successful writing is to write stuff no one has written before. And to do it well. Tell stories that take twists and turns that are unexpected. Write about real people who think about the world in different ways. Write the way only you can write. That means including all the weird stuff you wish your favorite stories had in them, the stuff you are an expert at that all your friends laugh about. That’s the good stuff. That’s your genius. Not the things you grudgingly put in because “all the other books have it.”

I am so tired of writers asking what the new “trend” in publishing is. I don’t care. I don’t follow the rules like that, if you believe in such rules. If you want advice about that, I guess you should probably find another writer to read, not me.

When I read, I want to enter a world I’ve never seen before. I want things to happen in a new order. And then I want stuff to happen I never would have guessed at. I don’t want J.J. Abrams. Yeah, sorry J.J. He isn’t completely hopeless, but the clichés are just too much for me. I don’t need to have the girlfriend held by the villain at gunpoint in every single story I read. I don’t need to see the child threatened by the terrorist to put the father in motion.

Tell me a story I haven’t heard before. Tell me one that crosses genres, that defies the rules, that thumbs its nose at reader’s expectations. Tell me a story that turns me upside down and makes me wonder if I’ve ever seen the world right side up before. Tell me a story that makes me wonder why I am still reading it. Tell me a story that I can’t put down. Tell me a story that my mother would be shocked at. Tell me a story that would get banned because it pushes too many buttons.

Tell me a story that makes me want to throw it across the room, and then scramble up, pick it back up, and start reading it from the beginning all over again, so I can learn your tricks and maybe, just maybe, start making up a new rulebook about how to write so people learn to steal from someone new.