There are no rules; there are only actions and consequences.

This article is my word of caution: take any writing advice, including mine, with a grain of salt. There are no rules; there are only actions and consequences. Educate yourself on the consequences so you know which actions are worth taking.

Like many of you, I have been writing since I was a child. I became serious about it when, in 2002, I got up the nerve to show my writing to someone else and get some feedback. I followed up that traumatic experience with “how to” books on writing and a trip to North Caroline, where Orson Scott Card gave me his take on writing. Through all that, and through practice, practice, practice, I’ve learned a lot of the ins and outs of writing. I understand how overusing the verb “to be” can make your writing flat and how adverbs tend to be heavy handed and uninspiring. I’ve learned that starting a story with a line of dialogue is not usually a good idea and that withholding information from the reader tends to be annoying rather than mysterious.

I’ve learned all that – but more important than the WHAT is the WHY. Whenever you learn a new “rule” or technique, don’t just do it blindly. Get to the bottom of it. What does it do for your story? How does it help it come alive? What happens if you don’t do it?

Any rule can be broken. Any rule. You can break rules of grammar in certain situations. In case you missed it, I just did. “Any rule” is not a complete sentence. By breaking that rule, I may have caused some people to question my knowledge of basic grammar. I may have ruined my credibility as a writer. Why did I take that risk? I took it because sometimes, a sentence fragment can be used as a way of emphasizing a point. In this case, when I said, “Any rule can be broken,” I meant, “Any rule.”

You can be sure that when you choose an action, you will turn off a certain group of readers with that choice. Typically, if you want to sell your fiction, you are looking to eliminate as few readers as possible while still turning out a story you can take pride in.

A word of caution: In case you missed it, this article is not a permission slip to forget the rules. In fact, I am telling you just the opposite. To properly break the rules, you need to know them inside and out.

As I continue my series of articles on tips for writers, I will do my best to talk about consequences and the WHY of it instead of just the WHAT.