Top 5 Rules that Kill Storytelling | Jen Karin Writes

This past Monday, I caught up with a friend and author to have a cuppa and exchange critiques on our current projects. Both of us have been writers for a long time, and know enough about the editing process to provide guidance without squashing the intentions of the writer. It was a helpful morning, both professionally and socially. We will need each other as we head into the realm of agents, rejections, agreements, and reviews.

On the way home, I thought a lot about the subjectivity and, let?s face it, absurdity of the publishing machine, and how trends in publishing compound the absurdity with arbitrary rules about writing, pitching, and selling your work.

As an opinion columnist, it?s hard for me to observe these absurdities without speaking up, especially since I believe many of these rules are killing the story.

There are many to list, but here?s my top 5 rules to break:

Perfect Sentence Structure

Once you learn the rules of grammar, break them. Make them work for you; bend them to your creative will; dedicate your Pulitzer to your fourth-grade teacher. Don?t be sloppy, but don?t be rigid. Why break the rules of perfect sentence structure? Style. Style is what will set your storytelling voice apart from everyone else?s. If we all wrote the same way, following the same rules, here?s what we would hear from readers: zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. For example, I use sentence fragments. Love sentence fragments. Love fragments. Love. They work for me. And if crafted carefully, I have faith that my readers will understand and feel the experience I am creating for them without the proper subject-verb relationship.

Adverb Obliteration

Seriously, why all the hate toward adverbs??If you are new to creative writing, you will most likely hear, ?Don?t use adverbs; adverbs are a sign of lazy writing.? While the advice has merit, the trend to write without adverbs is just that?a trend. You wouldn?t write like Oscar Wilde today, and years from now a new style will be ?in.? Writing should reflect how we speak, and guess what? People use adverbs. So challenge yourself to write without relying on adverbs, but the idea that all adverbs should be obliterated is, simply, silly.

Word Count

I currently have a young adult (YA) manuscript that clocks in at 51,000 words?pretty much on target. But if I want that same story to be picked up by a publisher for the mainstream adult market, I would need to boost that word count to 80,000. And if that same story might be appropriate for the sci-fi fantasy market, that word count needs to jump to 100,000. But be careful! Another talented author friend of mine was told to shave her word count, so her novel would fit on Wal-Mart?s shelves. How many words should your novel be? As many as it takes to tell the story.

Copycat Writing

Publishers want to publish books they know will sell. And who can blame them? It?s a business, after all. How do they know certain books will sell? Because, in a way, they?ve already sold them. You see, they select writers and stories that are very similar to bestsellers from other authors. And they incorporate the help of these bestselling authors to help sell the newest author with lovely quotes on the back of the book. Even book covers are designed to create a connection between an established author and a new author. Don?t model your writing after someone else?s. You?re much too special for that.

Writing for a Market

Each genre has its rules of engagement, again based on successful formulas. That does not mean readers can?t consume, appreciate, and enjoy stories that cross genres or markets. Book-club moms don?t always have to read about domestic heartaches, single women in their twenties deserve more than chick lit, sci-fi loving geeks can get teary eyed over a romance. I love stories that cross the median. My brain jumps around from humorous situations to political conspiracies to literary thoughts to advertising headlines, and so do my book ideas.

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So, what rules should you follow? Write the story that?s inside of you. Be true to that story. Write it the best way you can. Period.

If you do, I know you will find a publisher who will be glad you broke the other rules.

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Source: http://jenkarinwrites.com/2011/05/25/top-5-rules-that-kill-storytelling/

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