Successful novelists and breaking the rules...

preyer said:

nice post, but i think you're over-complicating it.

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Would you believe you're not the first to tell me that?

what you seem to refer to as intuition, i call rote.

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Rote doesn't quite describe it. It's more like "response triggered by a text, depending on taste". To the extent that "responses" are habitualised, rote's involved, too, but it's it not the most important ingredient (and it's definitely not what makes intuition useful).

you might think you're being creative because you've never heard of the cliche, but who's fault is that?

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Well, the line "you must know the rules to break them" incourages people to think that, say, to use a verb in the passive voice (appropriately) is daring and experimental. That's silly. It's just applying the passive voice the way it's meant to be applied.

i've done hundreds of critiques over the years, and i can't recall a single one where there's been absolutely no consideration or knowledge of the rules and the original being better than the revision after the passive voice has been rooted out, ridiculous adverbs and flowery adjectives have been snipped, unnecessary dialogue tags slashed, etc.. it hardly ruined whatever artistic quality there was, it just made what's there more readable.

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There we are. Impossible to resolve without practical examples.

I haven't done hundreds of critiques. Must be my tendency to overcomplicate things. If I believed in rules, I'd probably be a quicker critic, I suppose. As it is, I'm terribly slow (trying to put my own reaction to the text into perspective to figure out why the text threw me takes time).

Or perhaps I'm a bit of a snob who doesn't pay attention to stories who can be improved by rules? Possible. I don't think so, but a possibility. I'll have to look into that.

most of the writers i see have no editing technique whatsoever. does that lead to effective writing? not in my book. nor does the idea 'editing? we don't need no stinkin' editing!' appear as advice from *any* professional's corner i've ever seen.

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Well, editors won't say that. They'd be out of their jobs. (Kidding; editing is vital!)

i can't think of an analogy that supports the other side's viewpoint. rock, country, the blues and pop music almost always follow the exact same patterns.

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Is that surprising? If it didn't, you wouldn't find it the appropriate sections. You play the things you listen to; it gets second nature. How many people play stuff they don't listen to?

of course, someone could say that 'stairway to heaven' doesn't, but the point is those guys were drenched in the 'rules' and were highly educated about the theory. they just didn't wing it and out popped a masterpiece.

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Clearly "Stairway to Heaven" isn't something you improvise after a couple of drinks (or sniffs, or shots). Since I never argued against education, I don't see the point against my position there. (Btw, the late sixties to early seventies were a bit of an experimental period anyway.)

but, yeah, any schmuck can pick up a guitar and within an hour bang out power chords that sounds something like 'smoke on the water' just like any slob can pick up a pen and practice their native language and wind up with a story of sorts.

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Bowie sounds silly if he tries (heard his the Who-covers? heard him do Chuck Berry?)

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We should do a "edit published authors according to the rules" thread. That should be fun.

...the Chicago Manual of Style is helpful..but every writer has their own style, don't they...?

To my way of thinking, the business of rules and guidelines is more a matter of what works than what is wrong or right. The notion that one can ignore precepts that have come down through generations of editing is an invitation to mediocrity. Read slush pile. My book won't work, or read well, unless I learn how to use the English language properly to tell a story.

That said, I don't think publishing editors today have the time (or ability in some cases) to mark manuscripts as they used to. I think their concerns with marketability and competing with associates for print drive them to depend on the agent/author team for such polish. This would account for the sometimes glaring grievances by established writers that slip into print. It's a slap in the face to budding writers who watch the rejections come in while big names shovel the manure they're counseled to avoid.

Those of us who've been at it a while have watched attention to detail erode as the faces, mores, and agenda change in the industry. With all that, it boils down to the writer's personal concern with integrity and quality, and that can only come from studying what works and doing one's best to do likewise.