Repetition sells. When a certain piece of entertainment, such as TV shows, movies, music, and novels, are built around a strict formula or standard, audiences don’t need to guess what the piece will be. They have already a good idea of what they are buying.
I’ve talked about this before: rules of consistency will make it easier to sell your work and keep your audience loyal.
Now, it’s time to talk a bit about how to define a formula, and how to apply it to every work. For that, I will use the ten rules principle, inspired by Elmore Leonard’s Ten Rules of Writing.
A lot of people think that Elmore Leonard’s rules refer to “how to write a good book.” But, it actually describes “How Elmore Leonard writes a book.” They are rules of consistency for his work. He followed them well, and kept his stories standardized with these rules. When readers buy his books, they already have well defined expectations.
So, I’m inviting you, author, to create your ten rules of writing. Why ten? You may ask. Because it’s a good, round number. Like George Carlin used to say, referring to the Ten Commandments, ten sounds official.
Elmore Leonard’s Rules
Let’s first consider Elmore Leonard’s ten rules:
Never open a book with weather.
Avoid prologues.
Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.
Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said”: “he admonished gravely.”
Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”
Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.
Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
And the ultimate rule:
“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
Now, if you notice his rules, most of them refers to the style of prose. There are little to no rules describing how characters, setting, and plot should be. They describe the lexicon (rule #7), level of detail of descriptions (rules #8 and #9), novel structure (rules #10 and #2), avoidance of cliches (rules #6 and #1), rules for dialog representation (#3 and #4), and the ultimate goal of his prose: make it sound like natural speech when reading.
Now, let’s compare to other authors, who had other rules for writing:
George Orwell’s Six Rules
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 active.
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.
These rules also refer to the style of writing, specifically about choices of words. They seem to promote an idea of terseness—avoid useless words, make active voice, and stick to simple English.
Kurt Vonnegut’s Rules
Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
Start as close to the end as possible.
Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
These rules are interesting, because unlike the examples before, they do not list only “prose rules,” i.e. rules of how prose should be written. Some of these, like #5, #6, #3, and #8, refer to plot structure. Meanwhile, #2 refers to character.
Neil Gaiman’s Rules
Write.
Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.
Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.
Put it aside. Read it pretending you’ve never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.
Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.
Laugh at your own jokes.
The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.
Some of these rules refer to a way to overcome writer’s block (#1 and #2). Some refer to productivity: avoid starting new projects before finishing the current one (#3). Other rules refer to receiving criticism (#8).
The author seems to be preoccupied with the labor of writing: the process of sitting down, typing words, revisioning, and receiving criticism.
Creating Your Own Rules
Rules of consistency refer to any of the “pillars” of writing, which are:
- Character
- Plot
- Setting (Time + Space)
- Themes
- Aesthetic
- Form (The organization of chapters, book length, serialization, etc.)
- Labor (the process of writing, editing, and publishing)
It’s important to have consistency in all these elements, even if they are not explicitly defined in your rules.
For example, “Labor” consistency is finding the right tool for the work and sticking to it. If you write one book with pen and paper and another book with a digital word processor, the results will come out very different. The tool greatly interferes on how the prose will sound like.
Consistence of Aesthetics is keeping consistence in the choice of words and prose. For example, if you write with a lot of terseness, don’t publish a book with purple prose all of the sudden. The audience will find it weird.
Consider your work: which of these elements are the most important to define your writing style?
To answer this question, you need to consider which one of these elements you will vary the most—and which you will keep consistent throughout your career.
Take Elmore Leonard, for example. His rules refer almost entirely to Aesthetic and Form. They define that his prose should be terse, with occasional use of vernacular and natural sound when reading out loud. But, they do not define that he should always create a nerdy male protagonist, or that all his novels should be a linear detective story.
As such, he can apply his aesthetic style and form to any genre, from Western to Crime Novel, to World War II espionage thriller. Regardless of the genre he is writing, he maintains consistency of aesthetic.
My Personal Rules
So, I will expose my own ten personal rules for writing:
Having a fire inside is more important than being good
Explanation: a character without fire is boring, regardless of being good or evil. Make characters with a strong will to live, a strong drive, a major goal, or something that “keeps them burning,” regardless if they’re good or evil
Explore terrible parents and the impact that they have on a character’s life and psyche
Explanation: one of the greatest conflicts in adult life comes from resentments and bad relationships between parents and adult children. Depict these conflicts fully.
Allow your protagonist to commit gross mistakes
Explanation: good people can also commit gross mistakes and cause a great deal of damage in the world. Let your characters experience this, and struggle to repair the damage they caused and redeem themselves.
Use very specific and technical words when describing things like settings, objects, animals, buildings, plants, machines, clothes, etc.
Explanation: there are words for every specific thing in most areas of human knowledge. Use them. Enrich the text. Even if the reader doesn’t comprehend them, they will be interested in knowing what they mean. For example, when describing architecture, use terms like “architrave” and “pediment.” When describing landforms, use terms like “cove” and “tidal flat.” Don’t use a bunch of simple words to describe something that has already been named.
Don’t be afraid of the weird and the grotesque
Explanation: weird and grotesque things make your story unique. Don’t be afraid of using them just because they are unsettling.
Don’t forget sense of humor
Explanation: make use of jokes, irony, and other things that will make the reader laugh. Laughing is engaging and pleasant.
Give a chance for redemption
Explanation: everybody has the potential to make evil. Allow people to redeem themselves, and explore what redemption truly means.
Intelligence is one of the greatest attributes
Explanation: make intelligent characters, who solve problems with their brains rather than muscles. Make sure even the ones with great muscles know how to use their brains. Reading is a brainy activity and readers identify themselves with intelligent characters.
Write with Vim using Markdown. Review each paragraph after writing it and before continuing the prose. When the chapter is ready, review it entirely before committing to the main branch. That way, you will reduce final-prose revision
Explanation: use always the same tool—one that is compatible to any system and can be easily converted to publishing formats like PDF and EPUB. Diminish “straw text,” i.e. text that is being discarded to be rewritten. Keep productive.
Know when it’s time to write prose with high or low abstraction
Explanation: prose of high abstraction is very summarized, and a lot happens in a short amount of reading time. Low abstraction happens slowly and closer to real life. Make sure when it’s time to timeskip with broad strokes, and when it’s time to give detail to a scene.
Your Rules
Now, it’s your turn. Create ten rules (the official number) for writing, and make sure they incorporate the pillars of prose that you intend to keep consistent throughout your career, be it character, plot, setting, aesthetic, style, form, or themes.
Once you define them, stick to them—they will follow you throughout your entire career. Choose wisely!