Breaking rules

Go on. You can do it.

If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun. -Katharine Hepburn

Dear Writers,

Greetings from Maryland! I’m sitting on the couch, watching the snow come down, making oatmeal, and getting ready to hunker down and write. This week, I also finished my notebook consolidation. My favorite discovery were some notes on the rule, “Show don’t tell,” which I thought was totally sacred until someone told me: Not really. I wrote in the margins:

Embrace your narrative voice. Break a rule! YEAH!

(My kids can confirm that I have a slippery relationship with rules.)

On the one hand, I am a pleaser. I want everyone to be happy. I go out of my way to include everyone. (That’s why you will never see me post a best books list! I don’t like the idea of anyone feeling left out.) As I watched my kids make their way through school, I saw how following the rules resulted in good grades. Praise. New opportunities. It meant: they were listening.

Following ground rules gave them the freedom to take chances elsewhere.

On the other hand, RULES SCHMULES! Shouldn’t breaking rules be part of the creative mindset?

I wanted to play. Travel a different way.

More than ten years ago, I took inventory of my very full toolbox and quickly came to the conclusion that following too many rules (too soon) can lead to boring, predictable storytelling. All those lectures about brands? I didn’t care.

As a reader, I read to be surprised! I love when I find a book that does something no one else has attempted. I love trying things that no one expects from me. There is a freedom to bucking trends and following my own whims.

Are you ready to stretch? And groan? And play? And reach further than before?

While there are a few rules I don’t ever break (like avoiding passive voice), there are plenty that I smash to smithereens. I like adverbs. And exclamation points. And sentence fragments. (Point taken.) And very short chapters and paragraphs. And I’m pretty sure that breaking these rules has made writing more enjoyable and thus, more effective.

So, what is the writing rule you can’t imagine breaking? It may be a rule that helped you in the past. It might be a rule you learned from someone you really expected. It might be a rule you think makes you sound more writerly.

What if you broke it? What might happen then? Give it a try, and if you feel like, let me know how it felt and what it revealed!

Have a great writing week!

Sarah