When to Break the Rules
And why the quality of your writing matters above all else
I am a very rule-abiding person (this drives my husband bananas, because I will follow the rules even if they do not matter and in fact make my life slightly harder – rules, as Monica Geller once said, control the fun).
But I am not unaware of how many people do not share this quirk, not least because the question I get most often from authors at the moment is, ‘do you always have to follow the rules?’, often with a list of other, usually incredibly bestselling books/authors who break them.
So today we’re going to talk about breaking the rules, and at the end, for paid readers, I’ll work through some of the times that breaking the rules might be positively encouraged – and how to do it.
When to break the rules
The short answer is that you can break the rules whenever you want. Of course you can! (I originally wrote here that there are no book police, which I cannot stand behind given the book bannings going on – but at least there are no book police banning books for inconsistent POV, to my knowledge.) Some of the rules are more like guidelines anyway, and there are many exceptions to them.
The longer answer is that to break the rules in a way that doesn’t impact the reading experience you should do it with intention and for a purpose – when it serves the story better than to follow them. If your thriller cannot be told in 100,000 words, but needs 120,000, then cutting out a sixth of the story isn’t going to make for the best book possible, even if convention says that thrillers should be 70–100,000 words. Or if dropping speech marks makes your dialogue more immersive and naturalistic for the reader in a way that adds to the style and voice of your novel, then forcibly sticking them back in isn’t going to make for a better book.
So there are certainly reasons you might want to decide to break a rule or two along the way. And though some will argue that many authors don’t know or care about the rules, and so aren’t breaking them on purpose, I would bet a lot of money that all good authors read a lot – and if you read a lot then you are absorbing the rules and conventions, understanding what makes a good story, a good twist and a good denouement, even if you don’t consciously know that that’s what you’re doing. I don’t believe that good writing, whether it’s the kind that follows the rules or flouts them, comes about by accident. It’s craft. It’s always purposeful.
But, look, if reading about the rules isn’t working for you, then ignore them! Sometimes knowing the rules can help you work out what isn’t working in a novel, but no one can argue that there aren’t myriad exceptionally good writers out there who wouldn’t be able to tell you the rules if you held them at gunpoint – and many books which break them and yet are impactful and moving and well-written and sell in huge numbers.
I suppose what it comes down to is this: what are you trying to achieve? If you want to find an agent and secure a traditional publishing deal, then abiding by the ‘rules’ when it comes to word count and genre conventions will likely help you. If you can tell there is something wrong with your writing but you don’t know what, then studying writing advice might be useful. If, however, you have a story that you’re itching to get out and you don’t mind what happens to it after that then you can do whatever you like: mix genres, hop between character POVs several times a page, make your book as long or as short as you please.
If you want to write the absolute best book you can, then I strongly believe the rules will help you – whether by giving you a framework to write inside, or by showing you ways you can push those boundaries – with intention and purpose – and improve the reading experience by doing so.
The better you are as a writer, the less the rules apply to you – but by then you’ll have written enough that you’ll have followed the rules, experimented with them, pushed them – whether you’ve done it consciously or not.
As always the caveat remains that if any writing advice you are given – and of course I include the writing advice I give – does not help you write your book, then you should confidently and without regret walk away from it.
When breaking the rules works
It creates a strong voice or style which immerses the reader. For example:
Dropping speech tags to show a quick-paced conversation
Dropping speech marks for minimalist, more natural-feeling conversation Using little punctuation or extremely long stream-of-consciousness sentences to immerse the reader and create a specific atmosphere
Head-hopping between different characters’ POVs to immerse the reader or create an effect, such as a group of characters becoming closer or working as one
It challenges or subverts genre expectations. For example:
Creating twists or reveals in unexpected places, or turning the standard story arc on its head
Keeping word count short for an impactful self-contained story – or building layers of story to create a longer novel
Using an experimental format to add depth or originality, and to tell the story in a more impactful way
It allows you to create an intentional effect. For example:
Breaking a rule to create a specific feeling or spark a reaction in the reader, by deliberately going against expectations
Consciously playing with rules and understanding why they are generally considered best practice and the impact you are having on the reader and your work by not following them
When breaking the rules doesn’t work
It creates confusion, not impact
It’s done by accident or lack of control of the material, not for an intentional purpose or effect
It distracts from the story rather than strengthening it
It leads to style over substance
How to break the rules with purpose
Two rules that authors often query are word count conventions and head-hopping. Here’s how you can break the rules with impact.
