If you're a writer, you've probably seen a list of writing rules. And those can be good. They can be useful. But they can also make things worse for beginner and intermediate writers who try to follow them.
There are also loads of different lists, from people like Stephen King and Ursula Le Guin. I'm here with a bit of advice on how to use those lists of rules - and how not to - if you want to make your writing better.
Orson Welles writing rules
Orson Welles wrote my favourite set of writing rules, so that seems like a good place to start.
- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the ative.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Most of Welles' rules help make your prose more readable. There's a reason readability tests like Flesch Kincaid are based on word and sentence length - shorter words and sentences are generally easier to read. (That 'generally' is important - more on that later.)
If your work is easy to read, the prose isn't getting in the way of the story. There are exceptions, sure, but you generally don't want your readers reaching for the dictionary or struggling through hundred-word sentences.
Adverbs
Another tip I always remember is from Stephen King's book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft: "I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs."
An adverb is a word that describes a verb - usually ending in 'ly'. In the sentence, "They ran quickly through the storm," the word 'quickly' can be cut, since 'quickly' is the normal pace at which we run.
Newer writers often use too many adverbs (and adjectives), so this is generally good advice (there's that word again).
How do you know which words to cut?
This is the tricky part. Being edited by someone who knows their stuff is really useful, and I'm grateful to have been trained by some journalists and pro writers in my time. There are also some common examples, although this is by no means an exhaustive list:
- Very
- Can
- That
- Of (especially in 'all of')
- Then
- For example
You'll get to know with practice, which basically means you'll learn to see when something is unnecessary.
There are also some great free tools out there that can help you out. Hemingway Editor is a great example. Just copy/paste your work in the box and it'll highlight sentences that are too long, unnecessary words, and more.
When rule following goes wrong
If you're really paying attention, you'll have noticed that I've used a bunch of unnecessary words in this piece. I used a 'that' I didn't need just then. But why?
The trouble with cutting every unnecessary word and being obsessed with super-short sentences is that you end up with soulless, choppy prose.
I'm going to pick on Lee Child here. He's incredibly successful and unlikely to care about anything I say. His first book, Killing Floor, has some of the worst prose I've ever seen in print. Seriously. You can read the opening of it here (scroll a long way down).
Here's the first paragraph:
I WAS ARRESTED IN ENO’S DINER. AT TWELVE O’CLOCK. I was eating eggs and drinking coffee. A late breakfast, not lunch. I was wet and tired after a long walk in heavy rain. All the way from the highway to the edge of town.
For me, this isn't professional-quality work. It's too choppy and fragmented.
Short sentences are generally better than long sentences, but for prose to sing, you need a variety of sentence lengths. And although fragments - sentences that don't have all the grammatical elements of a sentence - are OK to use, they should be used sparingly.
Writers will often use super-short sentences and fragments in action scenes to increase the pace and up the tension. If you do that for the whole book, it gets old really fast.
I guess this comes back to Welles' last rule, about ignoring the other rules. It's tricky, because beginning writers often give up on rules too soon, or don't know how to apply them, and they end up with what we call 'purple prose' - too wordy, too flowery, too hard to read.
But applying rules too strictly has it's own problems. My writing has been described as 'lyrical', and to achieve that effect I often employ poetic meter in my sentences. That means leaving words there I could have cut. It's a conscious decision; I'm fully aware that I could cut something and choose to leave it; but to do that, you have to fully understand the rule you're breaking.
A Note on Objectivity
Some of you might love Killing Floor. That's cool. We often say that writing (and art in general) is subjective, and what works for one person may not work for another. I believe that's true.
However, there's also an element of craft in writing that's unavoidable. A carpenter can look at a chair and tell it's poorly made, just as they can look at a chair they don't like and tell it's been made well. For me, that first Jack Reacher book is poorly written. What it does *well* is character. That's what makes the book memorable and (I believe) explains the popularity of the series.
Maybe the later ones are better too. He's certainly doing *something* right.
Ursula Le Guin on style
I want to leave with a quote from one of my all-time favourite writers, Ursula Le Guin. I was tempted to use the one where she roasts Hemingway over his short sentences, but I think I'll leave you with this instead, from Steering The Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story:
“Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can’t dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it.”