Writing Craft Is More Than the Rules

Almost from the time we can hold a pencil (or hit a key these days), we are taught the “rules” of writing. Punctuation. The grammar forms of Standard English. Beginning. Middle. End. When we learn to write for the masses, we start hearing the word “craft” bandied about. Learning “craft” is related to the specifics for different forms of writing: journalism versus script-writing vs short story vs novel vs memoir vs creative non-fiction.

Craft is the tools and techniques we use to convey our concept, theme, and premise to the reader through vivid interpretations of real or imagined life. Craft is often relayed to the writer simply as a set of rules. No adverbs. Vary your syntax. Eliminate the use of was, had, that, so, well, even, just, really. Show, don’t tell. Limit your similes. Most of them apply to all types of writing. Some are specific to fiction, such as, never start with the weather or someone waking up, or worse, going to sleep. You’ve heard these before. What’s a writer to do when we’re following the rules, but our work is still flat or confusing or dense or something that our writer’s group just can’t put their finger on, but whatever it is, isn’t working?

Let me give you another rule we’ve all heard. Write with purpose. What does that mean exactly? On the surface, it means have a plan, or if you’re writing without a plan, write to reach the end you have in mind. It means write with determination. Put your butt in the chair and write. Teach a lesson. Illuminate a concept. Illustrate a theme. Write with purpose can mean all those things, but it also means something deeper. It means that craft is more than just the rules.

There are purposes for the rules and there’s a reason the rules have been truncated over the years to short declarative sentences. Do this. Don’t do that. Why? Because writing is hard. Because teaching writing is hard. Because every teacher knows there is a certain amount of discovery in the writing process that newbie writers can only learn by writing. Because people and writers and teachers are only human and Game of Thrones is calling.

If we really want to up our craft and write work that will resonate with readers, it’s vital to learn or discover the purposes behind those standard rules. More experienced writers have muscle memory when it comes to them, but ten to one they know why the rules work. It isn’t enough to follow them. We must embrace them, which means you and me and that guy with his head buried in his laptop at Starbucks, whether we’re writing the Great American Novel or the best Physics textbook ever, must know why the rules are working for us or they aren’t.

Recently, I’ve seen a lot of writing gymnastics performed to avoid “was” and “had” in narrative voice because that’s a rule, right? The purpose behind that rule is creating active versus passive sentence structure. “I was running down…” vs, “I ran down…”. “He had to speak to…” versus “He spoke to…” Why do we need active writing? “Was” and “had” puts an arm’s length of distance between the character and the reader, lessening the ability for the reader to engage with the character and get in her head. Sentence structures containing them take longer to read and have a slower rhythm. They slow the pace of the scene. Eliminating them speeds the action up. It can ratchet up the tension if needed, as well. And if we know why eliminating them helps a scene, we know why adding them might be exactly what the scene needs. And why every writing rule we know is often broken by the writers we admire most: for a purpose.

Let’s look at “No adverbs”. Adverbs are a short cut. If you do the work to establish mood or atmosphere or both through action, description, and dialogue, you won’t need that adverb telling your reader the defining action happened “slowly”, “seriously”, or “suddenly”. Is it a lot more work? Yep. Is it writing with a purpose? Yep. Do we occasionally need a shortcut? Absolutely. Sometimes we just need to get there and an adverb is the best way. See what I did there?

Why can’t you start your novel with weather? Well, you can, if the weather is a character or affecting a character, or being related to the reader by a character. What’s the key word here? Character. Consciously or not, readers read to feel, to learn about themselves and how they are alike or different from other people and how they fit into the world. That’s why most writing rules apply to both fiction and non-fiction. Make them feel something about the weather or understand how a character is feeling about the weather. Get them questioning why those feels are happening and they’ll keep reading to answer that question.

In the case of craft, sitting down and writing by the rules only gets us so far. Understanding the purpose behind those rules and why and when to apply them is key to “writing with purpose” and to your success in engaging readers. Please share your thoughts on, or your experience of, discovering the purpose behind a writing “rule”. Join me on the first Friday of each month for exploration, discovery, and discussion of the writing life.