Thank you,

terry

I really do believe that those oft-repeated Rules of Writing do represent a collective wisdom about how to create a great reading experience for your audience. I think there’s more to it, in this case, than just fashion.

I do agree with you, though, that the novel as we know it today is merely the latest version of the age-old art of storytelling. While I, as a writer, would like to believe that my works are timeless and will be appreciated through the ensuing ages of history, I can’t. A critical look at the changes of history shows that for what it is: pure ego.

The demands of oral tradition, its reliance on memory, forced storytellers into the epic verse structure, where a story was decomposed into small, memorizable parts. The adoption of writing at first followed that same structure–it’s what everybody knew–before evolving into other, more narrative, forms and presently to the novel as we know it today. Tomorrow’s writers will surely take advantage of technology and their own creativity to invent new storytelling forms that I can’t even begin to imagine.

Whatever they come up with will probably be pretty cool. But I’ll bet you twenty Galactic Credits right now that whatever they invent, it will incorporate and build on the Rules of Writing that we rely on today. Paper novels (or even e-book ones) of 50 to 150 thousand words may go the way of the Dodo, but those lessons won’t. Our tribal wisdom will endure.

The idea that there is progress in the world of fiction akin to the progress that is made in scientific fields is a rather contentious one. (Newton’s “shoulders of giants” quote is perfectly apt for science. Not so for the arts.) My own impression is that in all the arts there is merely change, never progress.

Take the world of film-making for example. There is no doubt that the “rules of film-making” have changed over the past fifty years and that films are now much more formulaic but also more fast-paced and action-oriented. (Incidentally, the same “show-not-tell” rule seems to apply to films as it does to novels. Which is why there is so little dialogue in films these days!) Films are obviously different now but are they better? Personally, I do not think so.

You can apply the same argument to all the arts – is music better now than it was 200 years ago? Surely we understand the ‘rules’ so much better. What about sculpture? Or painting? Or do we simply have a different fashion now?

As for the idea that novelists were stumbling about in the dark, inventing a whole new art form in the Nineteenth Century, it’s possible to interpret things that way, but it’s also possible to see the novel as just another variant in a chain of storytelling practices stretching back to prehistoric times.

Finally, I don’t want to suggest that any aspiring writer should not follow today’s set of rules. As I said in the post, they are the only rules that will lead to publication. Break them and you may satisfy your aesthetic sensibilities but you will not find a publisher. For better or worse, the rules describe what people want to buy at the moment. Even the very best, established writers break them at their own peril.

You’re hinting at that old writing maxim “you can break any of the rules of writing, so long as it works.” Which, IMHO, is another way of saying that if you know what you’re doing, you’re free to treat the rules as mere guidelines.

Asimov, I would agree, certainly knew what he was doing.

You also touch on the point that “good” or “bad” judgments about writing are always subjective. What was considered good in the 1800s wasn’t still good (unless it was a previously-famous “Classic”) by the 1950s, and what was considered good then isn’t so hot now. Jane Austen probably would, if she got her hands on it, consider Harry Potter an utter load of rubbish.

On the other hand, it might just blow her freaking socks off.

What your post doesn’t consider is that a) writers have certainly learned a lot about how to write an effective novel in the century+ since the modern novel was more or less invented. It would be absurd to suggest otherwise.

In an era of extremely limited publishing opportunities, when the mere act of writing a manuscript was an incredibly laborious quill-and-ink endeavour, there just weren’t that many novels out there. Those early novelists, much like the early programmers of the ’50s and ’60s, were feeling their way in the dark through unfamiliar territory. Of course some of them wrote amazing, timeless works. But most didn’t. And that, I argue, is why a lot of the Classics are pretty much unreadable to a modern audience. I still can’t get through Moby Dick; Ishamel just won’t get to the flippin’ point there in that first chapter.

A lot has happened since then. Even since Asimov. We fortunate 21st century authors stand high on the shoulders of giants.

Collectively, we have learned a lot about how to write an effective novel, and these lessons have been codified in the oral tradition of our tribe: “show, don’t tell,” “don’t use adverbs,” et cetera.

Those rules exist precisely because they have been shown to be effective guidelines for writing fiction that best engages the reader in a great reading experience.

The rules work. 99 times out of a hundred, if a great reading experience is your goal, those rules will help you get there. But as gifted writers of Asimov’s day and our own continue to show, if you know your stuff enough to understand when and how to break the rules without breaking the reader’s experience, then hell yeah, break ‘em!

And, Janette, as for all those would-be genre writers, most of those who do start to write something will never finish, and many of those who finish will do nothing with it, and very few of those who try to do something will ever succeed. A sweet smile is the only possible response.