Once upon a time, in many-turreted Nova Eboracum, several gatekeepers of Book Publishing met in their favourite inn to dine on the delicacies from distant Kathai and Italia, and drink some wine, as they were wont to do every third day of the week. But then one of them sighed bitterly as she sipped her Falernian.
"What is the matter, dear friend," another gatekeeper asked.
"Prologues," the lady said, "prologues disguised as Lost Ancient Chronicles written by a Wizard With Three Apostrophes In His Name that detail several years worth of worldbuilding and explain how the Famous Sword got lost and what the Famous Sword looks like so the reader will immediately know it is the Famous Sword when the Farmboy finds it in some Very Unlikely Place."
The other gatekeepers nodded. They all had seen prologues like that.
"But prologues are not the only problem;" a heavyset man said in a booming voice. "I have seen too much dialogue of late. The sort that reads: 'Blablaba,' says Character A. 'Blubberblubber,' says Character B. 'Blablaba.' 'Blubberblubber.' We never learn anything about the characters who speak, or about the place where the seemingly Important Conversation occurs."
"This is a bad thing to do," the other gatekeepers agreed.
"We should make a list," an elderly gentleman suggested. "A list to help aspiring writers avoid those faults and write better books. For we do not want to read any more prologues that are essays in worldbuilding and dialogues that go nowhere." And he took a quill, ink, and a scroll and wrote:
-- Thou Shalt Not Begin Thy Novel With Prologues or Dialogue. --
"Or longwinded descriptions of a landscape," a young man said. "I had three of those in my Pile of Despair this week."
"For they suck and bore the reader," a slightly overweight and more than slightly tipsy lady giggled.
"Now, dear friend, suck is not a word we should use. It doesn't fit the tone of this tale," the heavyset man said.
"Whatever," the tipsy lady retorted. "I don't have problems with a few colloquialisms, but I do have a problem with speech tags. 'He lovingly ejaculated' gives you a very wrong image." She giggled again. "And 'exclaimed loudly' is one adverb too many. Writers really should be more careful with those."
The elderly gentleman wrote:
-- Thou Shalt Not Use Any Speech Tag But 'Said' for 'Said' is Good and Invisbile, and Thou Shalt Refrain From the Use of Adverbs For They Are Evil. --
An apprentice gatekeeper, a pretty girl with a snake tattoo coiling around her wrist, said in a timid voice. "May I add that my head feels like a ping pong ball tonight because of all that head hopping I found in the latest manuscript I read?"
"You may." The elderly gentleman smiled at her in a benevolent way. "I will add it to the list."
-- Thou Shalt Not Write Omniscient Viewpoint. --
And so the gatekeepers sat for long hours and drank a lot of wine and came up with a long list of RULES born of their experience with bad writing, and a fairy distributed the RULES all over the writing sites on the Great Magic Net so writers would not longer make such mistakes as writing prologues, use unusual speech tags, or Heaven forbid, add an adverb somewhere.
And for some time the gatekeepers were happy because they hoped their Piles of Doom would soon be purged of Bad Manuscripts.
But when the gatekeepers met again some turns of the moon later, they wondered what had gone wrong. They got perfect manuscripts now, no prologues, adverbs, daring speech tags, POVs other than limited third past tense, but the stories were all boring and bland and lacking any personal touch that would tell a writer apart.
Yet hope was not all lost, for humans are rebels by nature, and soon some writers started to question the RULES and would ignore them to write exciting prologues, carefully add some adverbs and colour, and use less common POVs, and the gatekeepers were happy again for they found some gems in their Piles of Doom, and in the end those gems were worth reading a few worldbuilding essays disguised as prologue and flinching at some clumsy speech tags and inappropriate adverbs.
And both witers and agents lived happily ever after. At least on good days.
Hope you enjoy it. I got the idea after reading some of the threads here that deal with the sense and nonsense of rules.
Nova Eboracum is New York, of course.
"What is the matter, dear friend," another gatekeeper asked.
"Prologues," the lady said, "prologues disguised as Lost Ancient Chronicles written by a Wizard With Three Apostrophes In His Name that detail several years worth of worldbuilding and explain how the Famous Sword got lost and what the Famous Sword looks like so the reader will immediately know it is the Famous Sword when the Farmboy finds it in some Very Unlikely Place."
The other gatekeepers nodded. They all had seen prologues like that.
"But prologues are not the only problem;" a heavyset man said in a booming voice. "I have seen too much dialogue of late. The sort that reads: 'Blablaba,' says Character A. 'Blubberblubber,' says Character B. 'Blablaba.' 'Blubberblubber.' We never learn anything about the characters who speak, or about the place where the seemingly Important Conversation occurs."
"This is a bad thing to do," the other gatekeepers agreed.
"We should make a list," an elderly gentleman suggested. "A list to help aspiring writers avoid those faults and write better books. For we do not want to read any more prologues that are essays in worldbuilding and dialogues that go nowhere." And he took a quill, ink, and a scroll and wrote:
-- Thou Shalt Not Begin Thy Novel With Prologues or Dialogue. --
"Or longwinded descriptions of a landscape," a young man said. "I had three of those in my Pile of Despair this week."
"For they suck and bore the reader," a slightly overweight and more than slightly tipsy lady giggled.
"Now, dear friend, suck is not a word we should use. It doesn't fit the tone of this tale," the heavyset man said.
"Whatever," the tipsy lady retorted. "I don't have problems with a few colloquialisms, but I do have a problem with speech tags. 'He lovingly ejaculated' gives you a very wrong image." She giggled again. "And 'exclaimed loudly' is one adverb too many. Writers really should be more careful with those."
The elderly gentleman wrote:
-- Thou Shalt Not Use Any Speech Tag But 'Said' for 'Said' is Good and Invisbile, and Thou Shalt Refrain From the Use of Adverbs For They Are Evil. --
An apprentice gatekeeper, a pretty girl with a snake tattoo coiling around her wrist, said in a timid voice. "May I add that my head feels like a ping pong ball tonight because of all that head hopping I found in the latest manuscript I read?"
"You may." The elderly gentleman smiled at her in a benevolent way. "I will add it to the list."
-- Thou Shalt Not Write Omniscient Viewpoint. --
And so the gatekeepers sat for long hours and drank a lot of wine and came up with a long list of RULES born of their experience with bad writing, and a fairy distributed the RULES all over the writing sites on the Great Magic Net so writers would not longer make such mistakes as writing prologues, use unusual speech tags, or Heaven forbid, add an adverb somewhere.
And for some time the gatekeepers were happy because they hoped their Piles of Doom would soon be purged of Bad Manuscripts.
But when the gatekeepers met again some turns of the moon later, they wondered what had gone wrong. They got perfect manuscripts now, no prologues, adverbs, daring speech tags, POVs other than limited third past tense, but the stories were all boring and bland and lacking any personal touch that would tell a writer apart.
Yet hope was not all lost, for humans are rebels by nature, and soon some writers started to question the RULES and would ignore them to write exciting prologues, carefully add some adverbs and colour, and use less common POVs, and the gatekeepers were happy again for they found some gems in their Piles of Doom, and in the end those gems were worth reading a few worldbuilding essays disguised as prologue and flinching at some clumsy speech tags and inappropriate adverbs.
And both witers and agents lived happily ever after. At least on good days.
Hope you enjoy it. I got the idea after reading some of the threads here that deal with the sense and nonsense of rules.
Nova Eboracum is New York, of course.
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