Much of good writing is about breaking rules. I remember my 4th grade teacher saying we must never begin a sentence with the word, "And." Oh, please. I do it all the time. You probably do it, all God's children do it, and it works fine. The teacher was just trying to get us to write proper, complete sentences. Good for him, because it's like learning opera if you want to sing, or ballet if you want to dance: Learn the classic, the best, the grandest way to do things, and then you can branch off from there and sing country or dance hip-hop.
Same with writing. There's another sentence he would have circled in red pencil. The point is that, once you know what you're doing, you can bend the rules. I used to tell students, "It's okay to break writing rules, as long as you don't get caught." This means, as long as the reader doesn't frown and resent the way you did it, thus breaking that magical spell of being lost in your story. If you break rules for no good reason, and it irritates the reader, you will get "caught," so to speak. Thus, don't misspell. Don't use poor grammar. But if you want your characters to interrupt each other to show how impatient they are, then it works. Or if your writing is conversational, it's okay to start a sentence with "And."
AND, despite having said it's okay to break rules, here's where I come to my list of no-no's for writers. The following are cheap devices, wrong turns, and techniques to avoid:
Dream sequences. Everyone resents being played. You're watching a TV show and you can't believe the main character is shooting his friend! Whaaat?! Suddenly the main character sits straight up in bed, covered with sweat and panting. Whew-- it was only a dream! (Years ago these horrid scenes were also accompanied by harp music and wavy filming.) The viewer, or the reader, has no idea this is all imaginary, and your surprise is not anticipated, thus not appreciated. It feels like a bad April Fool's joke on the wrong day of the year.
Last-minute Villains. Do not write a suspenseful tale with a culprit who shows up in the last quarter of the book. The murderer, the bad guy, must be woven throughout the story so readers can go back, see clues, and put it all together. How could they possibly guess it's the policeman himself, if the policeman only shows up at the eleventh hour? Sloppy and lazy.
Belated clues. Like the villain who is hidden until the last minute, clues should not be held in secret from the reader, either. Let the reader know what the hero knows, or you're not playing fair.
Oft-repeated phrases or scenes. You can only have one shark attack, one psycho staring out a window, one person rumored to be a witch, one secret panel in a bookcase, one talking parrot-- you get the idea. Things that are unusual or highly dramatic cannot keep happening; it stretches credulity too far. As for phrases, repeating your favorites is annoying.
The Amazing Save. A helicopter that comes to the rescue out of nowhere, a magic wand that just happens to roll over to the imprisoned hero, a psychic who warns him to go another way-- any supernatural occurence that benefits the hero is taking the easy way out. The hero needs to devise his own rescue, not suddenly meet a talking monkey that leads him down a hidden alley.
The Amazing Defeat. There cannot be a sudden attack by intergalactic aliens, a weapon or a poison that doesn't exist yet, a villain who suddenly gains supernatural powers, an unexplainable injury or illness that ruins everything. Yes, you want your hero to encounter insurmountable odds, but not cheaply. You don't want your readers rolling their eyes at the ludicrous twist you just gave them.
Silliness. Don't surprise readers with an evil twin-- or any twin-- not involved in the story all along. Don't have ethnic people using phrases or words a racist would assign them. Don't write about bimbos or thugs as if they're one-dimensional. Don't have people fall in love and get married within two days' time. Don't tell the moral of the story (it should be obvious, if you have to have one at all). Don't use bathroom humor. In short, eliminate immaturity from your writing.
Now, go ahead and break the rules. Just not these rules.
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