I’m relatively new to Twitter. I mean, I’ve
been there a couple years now, but there are some early-adopters who’ve been
there for ten years or more. I remember
a while back when Ernie Cline finally got verified, and he noted that he’d been
on Twitter longer than the Twitter verified account...
Anyway, I
follow a lot of writers, and most of them (and me, too) tend to toss out
storytelling advice of one kind or another.
As best you can in 140 characters, anyway. Sometimes it’s threads, random
encouragements, simple reminders—there’s all sorts of stuff.
Of course,
like any statement made on Twitter, this advice is often followed by a response
like “Well, actually...” You’ve probably
seen it applied to a lot of things beyond just writing advice
In simple terms,
this kind of response is people pointing to an exception to the rule in an
attempt to disprove the rule. And a lot
of the time, they’re doing this to justify their own opinions and
behaviors. I don’t like statement X, or
what it implies, so I’ll find one or two examples where X isn’t true and use it as
proof that X is never true.
Here’s the
thing about approaching writing—or anything in life—with that kind of mindset.
Vesna
Vulovic.
For those
of you who came in late, Vesna was a flight attendant back in the early
‘70s. I’ve mentioned her here
once or thrice before, and a few times at the Coffeehouse. Y’see, her DC-9 was bombed in mid-air back in
1972. She was trapped inside the plane’s
hull as it plunged
six miles to the
ground.
However...
Somehow, through
a near miraculous series of events and conditions, Vesna survived. She fell 33,000
feet, was in the hospital for a couple of months afterwards, and left under her
own power. No wheelchairs. No artificial limbs. No iron plates in the
skull. She was fine. They did a whole Mythbusters episode
about her fall.
Vesna lived
a very full, rich life for another forty-four years, just passing on back in
December. She ended up working as a
political activist for most of her life. And she still holds the Guinness
Record for an uncontrolled fall.
So... this means one of my
characters can fall six miles and live, right?
It really happened, so it must be believable. Heck, I could probably say they fell a mile
without even needing hospital time.
Let’s be
clear on one thing—there are always exceptions to the rule. Always.
Anyone who tells you that something is 100%, never-question-it always
wrong--especially in art--can be ignored. Especially if they
shriek “no exceptions!!”
Here’s the
catch. Exceptions to the rule are very rare. Exceptionally rare, you could say. That’s why they’re the exception to the rule and not the
rule.
For
example, maybe I can point to a dozen people who sold
the first draft of the
first novel they wrote. But I can also
point to the tens of millions of people—actual, literal millions—whose first draft submissions were rejected.
Yeah, there’s a double handful
of authors who sold manuscript full-to-the-brim with
horrible spelling and bad
grammar and
not the slightest clue about formatting. There are hundreds of phone books full of people, though, whose manuscripts were
tossed out almost immediately because of these same issues.
And sure,
we can point at a dozen or so people who got their first book sold because they
knew the right people or were related to the right people or were sleeping with
the right people. But there are also the hundreds of thousands, probably (again)
millions of writers who broke in by
taking their time and writing really good
books.
The
downside of this is... well, none of us want to be in the majority, right?
Nobody likes the thought of
eventually breaking in, we want all the
success and recognition now!
We want to be the exception!
And, yeah,
some folks have gambled everything on being the exception. That’s their entire
business plan. I don’t want to take the time or do the work or try improving
myself and my skills. So I’ll latch onto
anything that says I don’t have to, anything that proves the advice from
that experienced pro is wrong.
Okay. Fine. Just ask yourself one question...
D’you want
to go skydiving without a parachute?
I’m
willing to bet a fairly large-denomination bill that right now someone is
itching to write a “well, actually...” down below that will explain how this
isn’t the same thing. Or that you can go
skydiving without a chute. Or that there are two or three schools of thought
that Ms. Vulovic maybe didn’t fall quite as far as all the reports said. It’s just human nature. Some people need to
argue the way you and I need to breathe.
Even if it
amounts to arguing against parachutes when you go skydiving.
When
professional writers offer advice, they’re handing out parachutes.
So, here’s
my bit of advice for you, and it’s one I hope you’ve seen underlying most of
the stuff I’ve said here since the first post you may have read.
Y’see,
Timmy, the
best thing I can do is
assume I’m
not the exception to the
rule. No matter how clever, how witty,
how perfect my writing is, I should not consider myself to be the one person
who gets to ignore all the established standards. The absolute worst thing I can do is scoff at
the rules and think they don’t apply to me.
No matter how vastly superior my work is, I should always assume I’m
working under
the same conditions as everyone else.
The reason I
should assume this is because the person reading
my work is going to assume it. That’s
what I’m fighting against when I plan on being the exception to the rule. My audience—whether it’s an editor, and
agent, or just someone reading my story for free on their Kindle or on
Wattpad. All these folks have seen
attempts to break the rules again and again and again, and the overwhelming
majority of these attempts have been simply awful.
Remember—exceptions
are rare. Very rare. The vast majority of would-be writers who
break the rules do it for the wrong reasons and in the wrong ways. So when I veer away from the rules, most everyone
is just going to go with the numbers and assume my work is simply awful, too.
Does that
mean all these things won’t happen or can’t be done? Not at all.
My writing may be so utterly, mind-bogglingly spectacular the reader
will forgive and forget those atrociously dull opening pages. The structure could be so rock-hard that no
one notices the abundant typos. It’s
even possible my idea is so fiendishly, unbelievably clever that nobody will
pick up on the fact that every single character is carbon-copied from
Game
of Thrones Yeah, even my dwarf, my
teenage
assassin, and my
Princess of Wyverns.
A nice,
simple rule of thumb. If at any single
point I find myself questioning if something matters—I should assume it
does. Does my
main character need to be developed more than this paragraph? Will
a reader care that I misspelled forty or fifty words? Do I need to make that part of the story
clearer? Should I bother to look up the
exact format rules for this?
My default
answer for all of these questions needs to be yes.
Again, I
shouldn’t be scared to do something new, because if I break the rules—break
them well, mind you—I’ll get noticed
and rewarded for it.
Just
remember a lot of people break the rules because they don’t know what they’re
doing... and I don’t want to get lumped in with them.
Next
week—okay, I have to be honest. The next
few weeks are going to be rough for me, from a blogging point of view. One week from tonight I’m going to be down in
San Diego at
Mysterious Galaxy, talking with Daniel Price about his new book
The Song of the Orphans. If you’re in the area, stop by and hang out with us.
And then
the week after that I’ll be back in San Diego for SDCC. I’m doing at least one
panel, possibly two (but I haven’t heard back on that one, soooooo...), and I
think there may be a signing or two and some cool
Paradox Bound swag we’re giving away...
So we’ll
see what happens next week. As always,
please feel free to make requests below.
Until then,
go write.
I did want to mention my San Diego Comic Con schedule. This kinda
snuck up on me in a couple ways. I wasn’t
sure I was going to be going, and my big plans for the weekend really involved
putting together my Lizardman/Seraphon army for Age of Sigmar. Geek thing, don’t worry if that last sentence
made no sense to you. 
Vesna
Vulovic.
Okay. Fine. Just ask yourself one question...
Does that
mean all these things won’t happen or can’t be done? Not at all.
My writing may be so utterly, mind-bogglingly spectacular the reader
will forgive and forget those atrociously dull opening pages. The structure could be so rock-hard that no
one notices the abundant typos. It’s
even possible my idea is so fiendishly, unbelievably clever that nobody will
pick up on the fact that every single character is carbon-copied from Game
of Thrones Yeah, even my dwarf, my
teenage assassin, and my Princess of Wyverns.
