Sometimes a writing thing comes up in regular life. Not often. Not as often as I’d like. But here and there, a question or a difference of opinion will show up on my doorstep (aka subreddits).
When that happens, I have something to say about it most times.
This is one of those times. Let’s talk about rules in creative writing.
Pretend we’re at a table together. You and me. We have drinks in front of us, and between us, on the table, there are two, slim shoeboxes. The kind Converse come in.
I make you a deal.
Now, I’m me. Except richer. I’m not a genie, I’m not looking to screw you on this. For the sake of this, assume that everything is on the level, and there’s no weasling to be done on your side or mine.
I tell you that each of these boxes contains 100 photographs, the products of two different photographers. They have similar lives, they visited similar places this year. None of the photos have people in them.
Box A contains photos taken by a photographer with absolutely no experience. She knows how to operate her iPhone camera, and she knows how to snap a photo, filter it in Instagram, all that shit. But she’s never had any formal training, never had a class, never read an article about 10 things you can do to improve your photography today (and #7 will blow your dick tip off). She is a complete and utter amateur.
Box B contains photos taken by someone who, though not a professional by any means, has some experience. She took a semester of photo in high school, has read a couple articles and had her dick tip blown off by item 7 (or had some part of her blown off, I guess). She’s aware of the rule of thirds, of the idea that closer is always better.
Here’s the question:
If you pick one of these boxes and hang the photos in your home for one year, I will pay you $100,000. The catch is, you cannot look in the box before you pick.
Sight unseen, you have to pick a box with 100 photos created by someone who has never heard the rules, or 100 photos taken by someone who knows the rules.
And remember, no squirrelly bullshit. No hanging the photos in one big stack so you only see the front, no hanging them in a room you don’t use. These photos will be the primary art in your home for the next year.
How do you choose?
…
This is the argument we are often engaged in when we talk about whether it’s better to know the rules or just make art. This, to me, is a version of what we’re talking about.
I can tell you that I would go for the person who knows the rules. And here’s how I’d make the decision.
Box A is a total amateur. Some would argue that her pictures would be uninhibited. Less likely to fall into the trap of being the same old picture that you could buy on a poster at any Target. Perhaps, being unencumbered by the rules, she would show a creative, artistic streak.
Going with Box A is gambling on the possibility that you’ve got a savant whose talent would only be lessened by structure.
Box B is someone who has experience and knows the rules, and she has a conscious, repeatable decision-making structure.
That’s my perspective. I kinda think this thing where people are ruined by rules and structure is bullshit.
You can choose to ignore rules in your own work. But when you’re stuck, you can’t choose to have a rule gifted to you in that moment.
This probably sounds like the old argument, “Rules are meant to be broken.” But I don’t agree with that either.
Rules are meant to help us flag our own work and figure out when things are going right and when they’re going wrong.
The ironclad rule of never using adjectives is, of course, never ironclad. However, it’s a good rule to have in your head, because when you DO use an adjective, it gives you just a moment of pause to think, “Can I use something better, deeper, and more descriptive? Am I using this to rush through something that should have a slower pace? How does this fit with the rest of what I write?”
There are rules about dialog tags. Do I use “said” 100% of the time, or do I let a “shouted” slip through? And again, the rule isn’t about making the decision, it’s not about removing authority from the writer. It’s about sending up a flare. If I type “shouted”, then when I go back through, I’ll wonder if there’s a way I can show the shout. What’s happening with the character’s body? Is there a vein in his forehead? Does his skin color change? If I decide to stick with “shout”, I’ll move it to a spot before the text so the reader knows that this is to be read as a shout.
When you use rules as flags in this way, you give yourself more options. More possibilities. Not fewer.
…
I know what some of you are thinking. “But so-and-so had no training, and she didn’t follow the rules, and she’s a huge success!”
And you’re right. That person is a success.
But you’re also wrong. We can hurl names of famous authors back and forth all damn day. He studied at Iowa. She was a dishwasher. You can find a successful, wonderful writer from just about any background.
We could make a spreadsheet and find out the best set of factors. We could use math and everything.
But all we’d do is find out who sold the most books. And that’s not why I’m writing this. I’m not the best person to take advice from when it comes to selling a lot of books. There are lots of other people who can give you much better advice on that topic than I can. Ask them. Ask a writer about the best way to make a lot of money from your work. My guess is you’ll get a lot of laughs from people who respond, and the ones who do consider their writing a business venture won’t respond at all.
The reason I’m writing this is because I wanted to say something against this idea that, in art, learning the rules, studying artists, is somehow a bad idea. That study will taint you. That the voices and works of other artists will take over your mind, and you’ll never be an individual. That understanding what Raymond Carver is doing will impregnante you, like Raymond Carver’s work is that facehugger from the Alien movies, and his work will implant an egg in your chest, and you’ll be a vessel for Raymond Carver’s work until it bursts forth from your chest, and Raymond Carver’s voice is the only thing that survives this exchange while you die with a hole in your chest and a really strange story that you’ll never get to tell anyone.
I just don’t think that’s true. I don’t think you’ll find a lot of artists who haven’t read very much.
…
The problem might be the idea of art. When it comes to art, anything can be art. Anything can be intentional.
I suppose I’m not really speaking to someone like a language poet, someone who hears a music in the words on a page and stops there. Whose goal isn’t storytelling.
Let’s think about it like craft. Let’s wrap it up that way. Get rid of the two boxes of photos, and instead, I’m offering you two dining tables, sight unseen. Same size, same materials, same budget. One crafted by someone who has made a table before, whose work is to make tables that are flat, level, and hold shit. The other table is made by a renowned artist.
Table A is made by the artist. Because A is for Artist. Sesame Street logic at work here.
Table B is made by the craftsman.
You have to have one of these in your home for the next year, after which I give you $100k.
With a table, it’s a little easier. Because the rules of what a table should do are clearer. A table should be level. It should have a good surface area. It should be within certain height ranges in order to be useful.
The craft table will probably fulfill these and not much else. The art table probably won’t fulfill these, but will be fun to look at.
I’d take Table B. The craftsman. And the reason gets back to how I feel about writing.
My goal, in any piece, is to tell a story. I want readers to understand the story, follow my logic, all of that. I never want someone to say, “Wait, what? Where are we? What’s happening? I thought that guy was dead.”
If I had to get ugly and divisive about it, I’d say I’m a craftsman first, artist second. I’d say I prefer to make a table that’s sturdy, and then dress it up, make it nice, and refine the design to be beautiful without compromising the structure.
Because the truth is, good writing is both. The best work, it’s an intersection of craft and art. It’s a balance. Different artists have different balances. A table doesn’t have to be ugly to be functional, and a table doesn’t have to be worthless to be artistic. A story doesn’t have to be heavily artistic to work, and it’s possible to have a piece go by on artistic charm alone.
Craft without art is a manual. Art without craft is a cut-up newspaper scattered on the floor. Both have their uses and their entertainments. Both have their drawbacks.
…
We are a lot more than a collection of rules. There’s not a machine that you can put an idea into and have great writing come out. If this whole endeavor could be codified, then it would be.
What I really want to say here is that rules don’t take the magic out of writing or writers.
Let me tell you what, to me, has been the magic of writing.
When I started to feel good about this stuff, when I started to feel that maybe I knew what I was doing, was when I was able to look at my own work, know it was shitty, and pick out the things I could do to make it better. When I could look back over ten pages of my own work and say, “Why did you rush through that, dummy? And this! These characters hugged and all you said was ‘they hugged.’ Are you kidding me? What the fuck?”
When I wrote something good and I knew why it was good, and when I wrote something shitty and I knew why it was shitty.
When I could bring a piece to a group or a teacher and know, beforehand, what the general reaction would probably be. When there was less mystery on that end because I was more in control.
When my work started to feel less like an alignment of stars, and more like the scales tilted towards hard work. The stars are still there, and they still fuck me hard sometimes. But instead of the regular, outer space stars, now they’re planetarium stars. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still that crazy, phallic star machine in the center of the room that I don’t fully understand. But I know how to turn that fucker on. I know how to tilt it. When it stops working, I’ve got some steps to take right away. I know enough to fix the most common problems, and I know when to throw in the towel, and I know when to call in some help.
The magic isn’t about this rush of inspiration that I grab onto and hold tight as long as I can before I get thrown.
The magic comes when your rules start to feel like a living, real reader inside your head. Someone who calls you on your shit.
The magic comes when you read essays like this one and know right away whether the suggestions are something that work for you or not.
The magic comes when you become Bob the Fucking Builder, when someone asks if we can fix it, and you say, “Fuck yeah we can!”
The magic is that you start to know, just a little, what the fuck you’re doing.