the 'rules' of writing, i.e. what you'll find in a critique....

first off, i don't mean for this to be another endless debate on the value of a critique (or lack thereof). if you don't use critiques or give them, there's really not much for you to add, eh?, so why start a fight?

nor is this meant to be the end-all-be-all of 'how to write effectively.' it's just put down here to be some handy advice for those who may not think they're ready for a critique, though some of the 'rules' we tend to spout usually help the material out. it's not comprehensive (at least on my end), so feel free to add. note: if you're concerned about critiques and choose to challenge the very notion of them, there's about a dozen other recent-ish threads to choose from. this ain't one of 'em unless there's an issue with a specific 'rule.'

that said, here are few of the most common 'rules' you'll find broken:

POV ~ regardless of how poorly written a published book is, it's most certainly got a handle on the POV (point of view).

tense ~ like POV, the worst authors (bad writers often call themselves 'authors') have a handle on the tense. very often inexperienced writers will slip from present tense to past tense without realizing it.

beginning a sentence with an '-ing' word ~ sometimes a writer has the character start off the sentence doing something that ends in '-ing' and towards the middle or end has the character performing a different action at the same time. for example: 'Looking out the window at the falling snow, Biff painted the ceiling with blood.' not the best example, but the idea is that the character can't be doing two things at the same time.

active/passive voice ~ in this sense, 'passive voice' contains 'passive' verbs (for lack of a better term, but it's pretty well understood). these are 'to be' verbs, such as 'had' and 'were.' 'was,' while not technically a 'passive verb,' tends to make a sentence *sound* passive. of course you should use the voice appropriate for the story, it's really a warning to use passive voice when you *choose* to, not writing 100k words of it because you're ignorant that such a thing exists. you're always going to need these 'passive verbs,' 'was' in particular (eventhough it tends to be one most over-used), it's just that our critical advice is to not make it excessive.

prepositional words ~ words like 'up' and 'down' and 'out' are often used excessively. 'up' is perhaps the biggest culprit on average. it's really pointed out to keep the sentences from being repetitive.

dialogue tags ~ there are plenty of ways the reader can be clued in on as to whom is speaking, and this isn't a list of those. typically, dialogue tags have a bad reputation because they're pointless, such as, "'...do we?" Biff asked,' when biff is the obvious speaker.

info-dumps ~ this is another major problem for new writers, giving the reader excessive exposition/background usually in the form of a prologue (which is why a lot of people hate prologues, i think, lol) and/or huge chunks. again, you have to be the judge of what your target audience expects, but generally three long-winded paragraphs what doesn't seem to have much to do with nothing at the moment isn't advisable. our typical advice is to break the information up, drop a line here and there, keep some for later, and hide it by showing the information.

show, don't tell ~ here's another major error critiquers either get giddy by pointing our or miserable because they see so much of it. lines like, 'biff felt frozen,' will almost invariably get flagged. the idea in the particular example is we want to feel biff's frozeness so we can relate to his situation and character better. showing is also a good way of hiding some of your exposition.

purple prose ~ all of the above have some level of subjectivity to them, though they are what they are 90% of the time. purple prose, on the other hand, i feel has a lot more subjectivity about it. adverbs and adjectives are what makes bad purple prose sound ridiculous. some people like certain levels of purple prose, some hate it all and decry it as poor writing making vain attempts at pulling at heartstrings by creating absurd idyllic situations. or something like that. the best advice i could give is make it appropriate for the story and your audience, but know that excessive purple prose doesn't tend to help the story as much as stroke the author's ego. as with any of these things, your best bet is to research them and find out how, when, where and why these are or aren't the best option. in a critique, most of us point out what we consider to be purple prose and leave it at that.

editing for word count ~ again, this is pretty subjective, just like how the writer decides to arrange his story. you'll hear a lot about reducing the story by 10%. sometimes this is excellent advice, sometimes not so much. sometimes 10% isn't near enough. the benefit of excising 10% is you can get rid of a lot of small, needless words ('passive verbs' and pronouns spring to mind), and can result in you rethinking your prose forever. one of the caveats i've run across is making sure to remove words and not rewriting the sentence that begins with an '-ing' word (see above). one of the benefits is it can help remove a lot of passive voice if you're prone to writing that (which is very common). very often you'll see commentary such as, 'this is a little wordy.' usually the critiquer has a point, but it's up to you how wordy or how sparse you want it.

those are some of the main 'rules' i can think of off the top of my head, and these are all very common 'mistakes.' granted, a lot of a critique advice is written in stone just as a lot of it is pure opinion. with the exception of purple prose, these are more in the middle, but leaning towards the stoney part slightly, imo (some more than others). and it's true that you'll find these broken quite often in published stories and, hey, that's fantastic, but it's like i've always said, 'my critique isn't the fast track to getting published, but there's a good chance it'll make it a better story.' the idea is not to write out of ignorance, rather make the story the best you can by choosing all, some or none of the 'rules' and make it more attractive to the editor and audience. after all, it makes no sense not to write better than the next guy if you can help it, eh? that is, is it likely to hurt the story if you remove the passive voice? probably not, but it's a decision you have to make ~ smart writing is about excercising the right options. you have to know what those options are.

anyone care to add to the 'rules'?

thanks, pd. i hope it helps someone consider their story for such things and gain the confidence of seeking peer approval.

lol, that's true.

and you're right, conversations are one of the most common ways to hide your exposition. as a writer, i see it constantly, but a reader shouldn't notice or care that much if it's done well. honestly, i try to avoid it if i can because i think it's obvious and i want the challenge of doing it better or at least differently. that's just me, though, and i never claimed (except jokingly) that i was a good writer, lol.

for those thinking about it for the first time, avoid 'as you know, bob...' conversations meant to give information to the reader. this is when one character is telling another character something both characters already know, but it's being said to tell the reader what's going on.

my pet peeve is 'creation prologues,' where for a thousand words we learn the names of fifty-three gods and how the universe was created. these often have unoriginal sides like 'light' and the 'dark'. these are also 'critical to the story'... or so the author would have you believe.

for those who operate from a thematic standpoint, using metaphors might help with some exposition issues. i think that's a moderately advanced concept, though, and pretty much not really inbounds with the idea i'm trying to get across.

ironically, and this is probably due to me being in the sci-fi/fantasy genre, but even in the most extended info-dumps are there rarely any real details worth noting. they're usually no more interesting than reading a history textbook.

i also believe certain styles lend themselves towards exposition, such as when the narrator is almost a character in themselves (i forget what the term is for this) and first-person. i think most writers will find the story at odds with itself when you're writing in third-person limited and there are tons and tons of things the writer thinks we should know, but the character wouldn't.

there are enough ways to hide exposition rather than just letting it all out in one big plop unless you've got a damn good reason. not that it's *never* something you could do, but in a general context it's not a good thing.

oops, i didn't mean 'that's true' to you, mum, lol. i was responding to pd... too late, obviously.

that's a good way of putting it, 'best practices.' i doubt you'd find many editors who would argue vehomently against using any of the these appropriately, which is what i said in the OP to do. the idea here is to get these ideas out there so a beginner can advance his technique.

yeah, seun, some people hate the 'rules.' and they can stay out of my thread, thank you very much.

once you involve yourself heavily in an active voice, i think there may be a tendacy towards ending more words with '-ed,' which makes the sentence sound stronger usually. i haven't really found many writers with an '-ing' problem (except sometimes at the beginning of sentences), where they don't mix word endings up without having to think about it. i pointed out the '-ing' as openers because i feel as editing for word count happens there are a lot of times when doing that eliminates several words, but then you run the risk of the character doing two things at once. just something to watch out for, and i don't think there's much gray area there, lol.

mel, you're exactly who i've started this thread for. you may have heard of some of the rules, or heard talk about them, but maybe not necessarily know exactly what they are, per se. these are the most common ones i find on average. but, if someone reads these and doesn't know what 'passive voice' is, it's well worth researching. i doubt knowledge of these 'rules' will make anyone a worse writer, lol. that's not to say you'll automatically be published as a result of using them, either. and most of these make for effective communication without so much regard to style/genre. a lot of these 'rules' are what editors claim they want to see (then publish the exact opposite). (note that i use these 'rules' in my writing (usually/at least i try) and i don't think i'm mistaken for being a bad writer.)

yep, mel, this is for you and all the others who might wonder what we'll say in a critique... (insert barry white voice) but mostly for the laides. oh, yeah.

again, this is meant as somewhat generic advice not applicable to every story. info-dumping in small doses is something most of us will still pick out just FYI, but i think we all understand that sometimes it's necessary. we'll often point it out just so the writer is aware of it, not to say it's 'wrong' in every instance. i think we all want to be cognizant of our writing weaknesses and strengths, don't we? think of this stuff as 'the writer's code,' very similar to 'the pirate's code.'