Writers, do you wanna be a rule follower? A nice little meek writer who follows all the commandments out there on social media?
I hope you’re a bit of a rebel and wanna write some stories that break rules. If so, keep reading and I’m gonna tell you exactly how to do it. Plus, if you’ve broken one of these rules, make sure to comment below on which one.
1. Characters Must Change
This rule is so important that it’s at the heart of the hero’s journey, which shows the transformation of a hero changing from zero to hero. And every writing guru out there pounds this idea into our heads. Characters must change by the end. Without a character arc, do you even have a story? Or so we’re told.
Yet with episodic fiction, sometimes we see characters who are exactly the same at the beginning as they are at the end. Take, for example, Lee Child’s Jack Reacher. In all 28 books, he is exactly the same character: loyal, honorable, stoic, laconic — I mean, the man barely talks. Independent drifter who owns nothing but a toothbrush, and violent. Oh, did I mention violent? Violent.
But notice that these are episodic stories told in series. That is usually the storytelling form that allows for a lack of change. So in general, most characters should change. It’s a rule for a reason. But if each story starts over and doesn’t build on the previous ones, then you can have a static character.
2. The Main Character Should Solve the Problem
This honestly seems like the most foundational writing rule of all time. If the main character doesn’t solve the problem, are they even the main character? Do you even have a story?
Well, look at War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. Specifically, look at the ending where aliens are defeated. Normally, we would assume that the human protagonist defeated them in some way. That would be the most emotionally fulfilling storyline, the one that readers would expect. But nope — all the aliens get sick from Earth germs and they die.
This is a perfect deus ex machina ending, which means “God from machine.” Basically, in old plays, God used to come down into the set and resolve all the issues. But that’s not a very satisfying ending. So basically, people fought aliens for the entire book, but nothing they did made any difference, and then the aliens died not as a result of humans doing anything at all.
So how does this still work? Because it’s one of the most famous books of all time. It’s been made into multiple movies. So the book is basically saying: well, we can’t fight a superior alien race, we would lose for sure. And yet H.G. Wells didn’t want the aliens to win, so he broke the storytelling rules to allow the humans to win.
3. The Protagonist Should Be Active
This seems pretty common sense, don’t you think? I mean, if you have a protagonist who isn’t doing much of anything, it’s not a very exciting story.
But Donna Tartt breaks this rule. In her novel The Goldfinch, there’s a pretty good chunk of the book where the main character’s not really doing anything at all. He’s sitting in a hotel room being very passive, isolating. It’s kind of boring. His friend Boris solves the main problem — Boris is the one who goes out and actually gets the Goldfinch painting back, and it happens off-screen, so we don’t even get to see his friend getting the painting back. We hear about it later, third-hand, through Boris telling him.
This truly breaks all the storytelling rules about making your main character active. I think it works though because of this character’s personality. They are extremely indecisive, and they’re also kind of depressed. If the protagonist had switched into, like, action hero mode and gone out and rescued the painting, that would’ve been very out of character. Plus, it’s also a decision by the author not to neatly tie up the ending.
4. Your Protagonist Should Be Likable
I hear this tired rule trotted out all the time by workshop leaders and by authors online who think they know more than they do. But in their defense, does it make it easier when readers like your main character? Well, yes. Yes, it does. You’ll probably sell more copies.
But is it possible to write a great book where the main character is unlikable? Absolutely. The examples are almost too many to count, but I’ll just name a few:
- Ignatius J. Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces is one of the most unlikable characters of all time, but I can’t stop enjoying that book.
- Amy Dunne in Gone Girl — ugh, she was horrifying.
- Humbert Humbert in Lolita — sexually abusing minors is not exactly heroic material.
- Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange, who’s committing ultraviolence against innocent people, but the book is still a really good read.
If you choose to break this rule, then your goal is to make your character fascinating, not likable. Readers keep reading fascinating characters. A morally repugnant yet fascinating character will keep your reader’s attention.
5. Your Character Should Have Flaws
Every character has to have flaws, right? If your character is flawless, then they seem fake and unrealistic, and readers aren’t gonna believe that they’re an actual person. There’s even a term for this — if your flawless character is female, they are called a Mary Sue (not to be confused with Mary Jane).
But even this rule has been broken. There are some flawless characters out there, and they actually work. Take, for example, Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. The prince is genuinely flawless. There is nothing wrong with that man. He is the nicest person ever. Really, the only thing wrong with him is a medical condition — the man has epilepsy, but certainly no character flaws.
And yet Dostoevsky makes the story work by having everyone hate him. See, if you have a perfect character, you still have to create conflict, so just have all your other characters resent this character’s superiority, and voila, you have a story.
6. Don’t Head-Hop
This is basically a point-of-view mistake. Even when you’re writing omniscient, you’re not supposed to tell the reader about the thoughts of one character and then jump into another character’s thoughts. That’s because hopping between heads ends up confusing the reader.
And yet, I do see this rule broken sometimes, particularly in genre books. Consider Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which was made into the movie Blade Runner. Philip K. Dick isn’t obnoxious about it — he just tells us what the main character’s thinking and then what his wife is thinking, and then jumps back and forth.
If you want to break this rule, I’ll tell you one thing: I almost never see head-hopping between a whole group of people. When this rule is broken, it’s usually just two characters in a scene, and you momentarily drop into a second character’s brain. So the goal is to stay mainly in one character’s brain and then briefly dip into another character’s thoughts.
Still, I gotta say, out of all the rules on this list, this is actually the one that I refuse to break. I’ll consider breaking all the other ones, but this one’s actually sacred to me. Still, you make your own decision.
7. Show, Don’t Tell
Come on, you kinda knew I was gonna cover this one, didn’t you? This rule could also be phrased as create scenes, not summary. In general, it’s a good rule to show the reader what is actually happening and not tell them about a vast swath of time.
But out of all the rules on this list, this is the one that’s been broken most often and by most of the greatest writers who have ever lived. Certainly, South American writers break this rule all the time. The first one that sprang to my mind was Roberto Bolaño’s 2666. The man summarizes wildly — entire dinner conversations in a paragraph, months of time in a single page. He tells you constantly rather than showing you.
Another good example would be the four-book Neapolitan series by Elena Ferrante. She lets you hear the ticker tape of her characters’ thoughts and summarizes these grand swaths of time rather than immersing you in set scenes with definite beginnings and ends.
And when you break this rule frequently, your book stops feeling like a movie and starts to feel like something only a book can do. It gives you more access to the characters’ inner sanctum of thoughts and fears. So there are a lot of really good reasons to break this rule, and if you only wanna break one rule on this list, this is it.
8. Don’t Switch Points of View
It is widely considered a mistake to switch points of view in the middle of your story, especially from something like first person to third person. It’s disorienting for the reader because one minute they’re being told about these characters, and the next minute we’re hearing directly from the characters themselves.
But check out Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees. You might have heard of her more famous books, The Poisonwood Bible and Demon Copperhead. But in The Bean Trees, the first chapter’s in first person, and then the next chapter’s in third. They keep alternating like that throughout the book.
So to break this rule well, you really need a chapter break. As long as you can create a chapter break, then you can alternate between first and third, and it will be less confusing. Also, another piece of advice is making sure you have different characters for first person and for third person — it’s much rarer to find this rule broken when you have the same character speaking in both first person and third person.
Honestly, at the heart of a lot of these rules is the golden rule: don’t confuse the reader. So as long as the reader understands what you’re doing, they will come along for the ride.
9. Don’t Have Too Many Characters
Confession time: I have told a lot of writers to follow this rule, and it’s usually because I’ve edited a lot of novels where I say, “This would be a better book if you took out such-and-such a character.” And here’s why I give this advice so often. Fewer characters make your book into an easier read because readers will simply find it less challenging to understand. It won’t confuse your readers because it’ll be less likely that they forget who is who, and it will make the story more cohesive because you’ll have fewer plot lines jiggling all around.
I know, I sound like I’m trying to get you to follow this rule, but let’s look at someone who breaks this rule in fantastic fashion. George R.R. Martin is sitting over there giving me the stink eye. In Game of Thrones, good old George doesn’t seem to hold back from naming almost every single person that seemingly is alive in his universe.
So what are the advantages of breaking this rule and having characters galore in your novel? Well, having a gazillion characters does make the world feel real and populated. It also gives you tons of opportunity to explore complex family and group relationships, and you have the opportunity to build all these characters across a lengthy series.
So populate your world as much as you want to. Just be wary of the downsides: it can be harder to end that storyline, it’s harder to maintain control over all those storylines, and it can be harder to win over the readers.
All right. Happy rule-breaking, and please subscribe.
