When Writing Rules Get in the Way of a Good Story
Case studies in too much of a good thing
I was recently reading a book that in theory I should have loved. It had all my favorite tropes, great characters, and witty dialogue. But I ended up giving up on it a quarter of the way through after many frustrated attempts to get into it.
When I realized the problem, I knew it was something I wanted to write about. After all, the story was following some important rules — too well.
The Delicate Balance between In Media Res and Confusion
The book I couldn’t finish had the opposite problem of a lot of stories. Advice is often given to start the action in media res — in the middle of things — so that you cut to the important part as fast as possible. This advice is especially applicable to people who overwrite. They know their characters so well and follow them through so many moments that we could get narration of twenty-four hours of every character’s day.
Thus, the advice: start as close to the end as possible, and get out as early as possible.
It’s good advice for overwriters, but it isn’t good advice for underwriters, or for anyone who takes it to an extreme. The book I read did this for every scene of the book, and what resulted wasn’t a tightly paced, interesting read. Instead, each scene felt disjointed — the book was a collection of scenes, rather than a plot where each action clearly led to the next one. In addition, I found myself confused.
I’m not going to name or quote the book here, but let’s write a quick example, then edit it to show how to capture in media res without losing the reader in the process.
“Will you stop breathing down my neck?” Jessica wrenched her notebook away from Rachel.
“If you’d have answered my question, I wouldn’t be here anymore.” Rachel rummaged through the journal, not even cautious with the pages.
Jessica lunged toward her and grabbed a shirtsleeve. “You selfish, nosy, rotten blueberry, I swear. That is not yours.”
The smoke alarm cried out from the kitchen, interrupting the fight, but both girls ignored it, their eyes focused on one another instead.
“The smoke! We need to grab Mittens!”
“Hardly. I’m getting the cookies.” Jessica set her journal on the counter and pulled out the cookies, coughing.
We’re missing at least two lines before this passage starts. Rachel asked a question, and Jessica ignored it. However, halfway through the scene, the oven beeps and cookies start to burn. That means we are missing more of the beginning. We didn’t know there were cookies in the oven; if we did, there would be more tension in Jessica and Rachel deciding to fight about the journal while the timer counted down in the kitchen.
Although there are more issues I’d want to address in a full edit, the final one related to in media res is a lack of knowing a character’s goal. If I don’t know what a character wants, I can’t root for them. Of course, this doesn’t have to be explicitly on the page, like, “Jessica wanted to find the code hidden in Scott’s notes that would tell her where to meet tonight for their romance.” In fact, it’s better to imply it. But let’s see this in action. Remember, my main goals as I write this are:
- Start early enough that we see Rachel asking a question.
- Know or imply that there are cookies in the oven, so the tension is higher.
- Give Jessica a goal the readers can root for.
Jessica thought she was alone. She slumped into their lumpy old recliner with the journal Scott had slipped into her backpack this afternoon. A little bit of quiet, and she’d break the code and know where to meet him once everyone was asleep. A little bit of concentration, and then she’d be on her way. Not that concentration came easily when thinking of what she and Scott might do together.
She’d barely made it two pages when someone tapped on her shoulder. “How long do I cook chocolate chip cookies for?”
“Not now, Rachel. I’m trying to concentrate.” Her little sister was always in the way, always sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. She just wanted an excuse to bother Jessica. Like always.
But Rachel didn’t move. She stayed there, hovering beside the chair, close enough her breath rattled the edges of the journal, which moved like branches on a haunted autumn evening. “Will you stop breathing down my neck?”
“I just want to see — ” Rachel said, cutting herself off as she lunged for the journal. It didn’t work, and Jessica wrenched it back.
“I said go away.”
Rachel crossed her arms stubbornly over her chest. “If you’d have answered my question, I wouldn’t be here anymore.”
While Jessica tried to formulate an answer, Rachel grabbed the journal out of her lap and rummaged through the pages, not even being cautious if they tore. If she managed to rip the one with the secret code…
Jessica grabbed Rachel’s shirtsleeve. “You selfish, nosy, rotten blueberry, I swear. That is not yours.”
The smoke alarm cried out from the kitchen.
“I told you I had a question!” Rachel said. She dropped the journal on the ground and crawled away. “We need to save Mittens before the smoke gets her!”
Jessica couldn’t bring herself to care much for the cat when her journal could go up in flames too. They needed to get the cookies out before smoke became fire. “I’m getting the cookies.”
Did you feel like you had more context? More understanding of the dominoes from one line to the next, and the reasons that Jessica and Rachel acted the way they did?
Despite advice to the contrary, short scenes can often benefit from context, explanations, and internalizations of the goal.
This is only one example of how over-applying a rule can get in the way of telling a good story. Here’s another, one that applies more to a line edit than a developmental edit.
Breaking Rules for Effect
Newer writers and critiquers often have to resist the temptation of getting so caught up in the rules they miss the art of a story. I know several who have struggled with this, insisting on things like perfect grammar within dialogue or removing all fragments (like happened to a Medium story to me that I talk about here).
I got feedback on my Enchantress novel that focused so hard on the rules it missed the story, and in no other part was this more evident than a scene in which Celeste is getting measured for a ball gown.
To me, the point of that scene was her powerlessness, the lack of agency she felt when conforming to societal expectations. Everything happened to her. Since everything happened to her, I constructed almost the entire scene in the passive voice.
She was immediately surrounded. Celeste looked toward the door and the temporary freedom that lay on the other side of it. With no one in the way, she could very nearly reach the handle and leave, but one of her ladies had taken a measuring tape to her shoulders while another evaluated her waist. She was turned and poked and yanked and judged.
Her arms were raised to a cross, stretched nearly to the door she wanted so badly to exit through. The measuring tape wrapped around her chest. Her feet were sampled and sized. Everywhere was a touch she had not asked for and did not want, to satisfy an end she did not care about.
The comments I got on this passage were something like, “This is passive. Who is the agent here? Can you reword so it is in active voice?”
And, no, I can’t. Or, well, I could. But sometimes the best way to create a certain effect is to break rules. Celeste doesn’t feel like she has agency in this scene, and the best way to show that — I thought — was to take it from her all the way down to the level of sentence structure.
While “use active voice” is extremely common writing advice, again, there are cases where it doesn’t make sense.
Practical Application
Have you ever felt you held too tightly to a rule, and missed the forest for the trees in your own writing? Have you been given conventional advice you had intentionally ignored? Can you think of any books that break rules so well you wish you could emulate them?