How to Write Well. Step 5: Break the rules

Here's a fun fact: the Coen Brothers don't outline their plots before they write. That should come as a big surprise to anyone who has seen their movies. They’ve written and directed complex films like “Fargo,” “No Country for Old Men,” and “The Big Lebowski”; movies with dozens of characters, interweaving plotlines, and plot twists galore. How could the Coen Brothers not outline as they write their scripts?

They don’t have to. And you don’t have to either.

When writing it’s important not to worry too much about the rules you learned in school. I’m sure you learned lots of important tips and tricks that have worked for lots of people throughout the years, but there’s a world of difference between a tip and a rule.

Before I go any further with this idea, let me add one important caveat: some rules should almost never be broken. Please don’t misspell a word unless you have a very good reason for doing so, and the rules of grammar are as close to sacred as you get in writing. If you want people to understand what you write (and communication is our goal when writing), then spelling and grammar are important.

What I’m talking about are the “rules” that can often put a creative writer into a box that stifles creativity. Rules like “always outline before you write,” “never split infinitives,” and “never start a sentence with ‘and’ or ‘but.’” These aren’t hard and fast rules, they’re stylistic recommendations.

Outlines

The outline is one of the worst offenders. Many writers have a brilliant idea for a story, lifelike characters, and then - instead of letting those characters loose on a page and seeing where they go - the writer outlines the whole story ahead of time. The writer winds up putting their characters and their setting into a straightjacket, all because that’s what they’re “supposed” to do. That’s the rule.

If you like to outline, that’s fine. But you don’t have to outline. That’s the beauty of the writing process: your end product should be clear and well written, but how you get there is up to you.

How do I personally write? Usually, I come up with an idea, have some characters in mind, and then start. I like to be as surprised as my readers about where the story is going. I’ve mentioned this saying before on this blog: “If I have to think about it, it’s not worth writing.” That just means that I don’t like to over-plan. If I have an idea for later in my story, I’ll jot it down. But I try to steer clear of a hard and fast outline.

One of my goals in this blog is to help you relax about your writing. Don’t overthink, don’t stress out about all the rules, and don’t edit while you write. Just write. It really is that simple.

If your characters are developed, let them go wherever they want to. It can be the same for nonfiction. If you’re writing a news article, write a story that you’d like to read. When I write a complicated article on the town budget I’ll often write a rough outline, but for features about interesting people or events it’s often easier to just tell a story without being tied down by pre-planning. If you’re writing a term paper, outlines can be helpful, but they might be a waste of time for you. The process is your own. Figure out what works best for you.

There are lots of other “rules” you don’t have to follow. Have you ever been told not to split an infinitive? Well one of the most beloved TV shows of all time certainly got away with it. In fact, they coined a phrase that has entered our everyday speech. Star Trek split an infinitive with its famous “to boldly go where no man has gone before” line. And that’s fine. “To go boldly where no man has gone before” doesn’t have nearly the same ring to it, so they broke the “rule.”

What other “rules” do you like to break in your own writing? Or are you a rule-follower through and through? Let us know in the comments. 

p.s. For more on the Coen Brothers’ writing process, you can go to this article, which includes a great quote from them on the subject of outlines: “[It’s] a floating outline. If we’re writing scene B, we have some clear idea of what scene C might be and a slightly fuzzier idea of what D might be and a vague idea of what the ramifications of that might be – or maybe not. It just kind of falls off into darkness.”