Is the Universe Hitting You Over the Head?
You know those times when you hear something, over and over, until you just know the universe is trying to tell you something? We'll I'm having one of those months. Everywhere I turn around, I run into the concept of rules that writers should live by, and someone (okay, mostly me) questioning whether or not it's okay to break them.
Committing Suicide. Or Magic.First, I do believe we have to know the rules, get intimate with them, and think about why they are "the rules."
Next, before we decide to break one of those "rules," I think we need to consider it in context with our own work and see if we have a truly valid reason/inspiration for breaking it.
Finally, I am certain that if we break "the rules," we are risking failure. But we also risk committing art. And magic. And a piece of truth that will reach out from our hearts straight into the hearts of our readers.
Ultimately, the decision to follow a "rule" or break it must be yours. Do you follow and play it safe? Or walk the gangplank, stare into the eyes of the shark, and risk making a great big bellyflop into infested waters? You might die. Or you might have the most adrenaline-charged swim of your life, with an amazing story at the end of it.
WinnerFirst and foremost, the winner of Libba Bray's BEAUTY QUEENS is LisaPotts. Lisa, please email me your addy and I will get that out to you next week.
If you didn't win, I highly recommend you pick up this amazing book. If you're a Libba Bray fan, you won't be disappointed. And if you've never had the pleasure yet, quick, what are you waiting for? Click the pic to get it. You'll snarf, you'll roll your eyes, and you'll see things in different ways. You'll be amazed at what comes out of Libba's superbrain. I promise.
From Goodreads:
The fifty contestants in the Miss Teen Dream pageant thought this was going to be a fun trip to the beach, where they could parade in their state-appropriate costumes and compete in front of the cameras. But sadly, their airplane had another idea crashing on a desert island and leaving the survivors stranded with little food, little water, and practically no eyeliner.
What's a beauty queen to do? Continue to practice for the talent portion of the program--or wrestle snakes to the ground? Get a perfect tan--or learn to run wild? And what should happen when the sexy pirates show up? Welcome to the heart of non-exfoliated darkness. Your tour guide? None other than Libba Bray, the hilarious, sensational, Printz Award-winning author of A Great and Terrible Beauty and Going Bovine. The result is a novel that will make you laugh, make you think, and make you never see beauty the same way again.Next Week's BookNext, we need to pick what we're going to talk about on Monday. Ideas anyone? I'm trying to think of all the amazing books I've read recently, and frankly there are so many the list would be ridiculous. So once again I'm going to throw it out to you. What novels have you read that have been mind-blowing? Life-changing? Inspiring to you as a writer?
Drop your suggestions in the comments! I can't wait to hear what has made you stop and think!
Happy reading,
Martina
Today marks the first of our Writers' Book Talks, and the first book we're going to do is
Libba Bray's Going Bovine. Here's what
Goodreads has about it:
Going Bovine by Libba Bray
All 16-year-old Cameron wants is to get through high school—and life in general—with a minimum of effort. It’s not a lot to ask. But that’s before he’s given some bad news: he’s sick and he’s going to die. Which totally sucks. Hope arrives in the winged form of Dulcie, a loopy punk angel/possible hallucination with a bad sugar habit. She tells Cam there is a cure—if he’s willing to go in search of it. With the help of a death-obsessed, video-gaming dwarf and a yard gnome, Cam sets off on the mother of all road trips through a twisted America into the heart of what matters most.
On a slightly unrelated note, the above paragraph, would make a great query letter, wouldn't it? It sets up the plot, the inciting incident, and the main characters, and it even gives you a good idea of the voice in which the story is told.
What the summary above doesn't set us up for is that the story tips its hat to Cervantes' Don Quixote de La Mancha, but twists that around to very overtly give us a microcosm of some issues facing kids today. In the Cervantes story, the antihero, Don Quixote, read too many novels and overdosed on chivalry, honor, glory, and knights errant much the way kids (and many adults) today overdose on video games or movies. Convinced the real world sucks because it doesn't live up to his expectations, Don Quixote sets off to win some glory of his own in honor of the fair peasant maiden Dulcinea. Accompanied and constantly berated by his skewed perception of the world and his trusty "squire" Pancho, Don Quixote creates nothing but disaster for everyone he tries to help at first. All the while that he battles through his adventures, we see Don Quixote's madness. Even he seems dimly aware of it in brief glimpses of sanity, until eventually, he comes to see the world more realistically at the end and, declaring himself sane, makes us wonder if he ever was crazy or only faking. Cervantes pulls off a masterpiece of slight-of-hand, leaving the reader constantly questioning.
Libba Bray achieves a similar bit of trickery. We're never quite sure whether her stoner antihero, Cameron, is lying in a hospital bed slowly having his brain eaten away by mad cow disease, or if he is in fact running around saving the world. The closer he comes to death, the more he becomes engaged in life, in his family, and in the love he starts to feel for Dulcie, the angel who guides him, watches him, and ultimately needs saving herself. But as with Don Quixote's Dulcinea, we're never completely sure if Dulcie or anything Cameron sees is real. There are glimpses of events in the hospital that break through into the quest action (hero's journey) throughout the book, but then there are several places, the phone calls to the parents, for example, where reality and quest intersect in ways that can't be explained. In the same way that Cervantes u
I think very similar to you, Martina. As a writer, I should know and understand the rules, but be willing to break them when doing so makes my story better. Rules, they are more like guidelines, but really only in the hands of someone who is deliberately breaking them to suit their story and not just stumbling along unaware.
Exactly, Susan! But knowing you are making the deliberate decision to do something different is dangerous too. It can lull you into taking things for granted in your ms. An excellent editor just reminded me yesterday that you have to look at EVERY INSTANCE where you break the rule and make sure the decision is valid not just in the grand scheme of things, but also in that particular moment.
Take deciding when to show and when to tell, for example. I did a whole post on it a while ago, and I know the rules. I know where I've made deliberate decisions about telling in one particular ms I've been working on. I thought I was comfortable with it, but when the editor pointed out some instances and I questioned them for perhaps the hundredth time, I realized that even within my decision to "tell" in those instances, I could "show" more.
Reexamination. Reevaluation. Reenvisioning. Rewriting. Revising. If you follow the rules, you need less of all these 'R's -- but that doesn't mean that following the rules is always the right decision.
Martina
Great post. Breaking rules is not something that comes easily to me (rampant rule follower from an early age!), but I'm getting better and more confident at it. My writing voice uses a lot of non-sentences - short, choppy thoughts & phrases. I used to edit them out - but I also edited out the voice. I'm not doing that any more :)
This post is so timely for me. Normally a rule follower, I've recently broken a 'supposed' rule, while writing my synopsis. But honestly, writing the piece the way I have reflects the novel much more clearly. I am comfortable with my decision. :)
I recently read BLINDNESS by Jose Saramago (in translation). There was head-hopping, occasional breaks into second person, very remote narration, but oh my, what a powerful book. With my current WIP, I'm struggling with a protagonist who is not initially very likeable. She is resisting all efforts to soften her up.
When I was in music school a professor told the class, "You come here always playing an F sharp in a C scale when it should be an F natural. When you leave you will know it's supposed to be an F natural. Then you can play the F sharp." In other words, if you know the rules and break them with a good, conscious reason, then it becomes almost ok. So, if your reason's good, go for it!
Oh, thanks for a timely reminder. I agree that you have to know the rules before you can break them, and that even then, you should be very mindful why you've chosen to do so. But I also love that sign you posted: "The biggest mistake you could ever make is being afraid to make one." Thanks for that insight.
How did the rules become the rules in the first place? Who says? And what if it's time for a change? Sorry, perpetual rule breaker speaking. I wholeheartedly agree with Laura B above (and your post) that by knowing the rules (and the reasons behind them) you have the power to know when it's OK to break them. But seriously, did you have to use sharks in your analogy??? Shudder.
Divergent starts with a first person POV character seeing herself in the mirror. This is supposed to be a classic no-no - a cheap way to slip in a description of a character speaking in the I voice. But in Divergent, I thought it was done cleverly. The character is part of a societal faction called Abnegation that is puritanical. They are not allowed to look in mirrors other than on rare occasions. Therefore, a chance to look in the mirror for the character presented a legitmate reason to ruminate on her appearance. There were both character and plot related justifications for the description. It was well done, albeit not the strongest start possible for the novel. Because of that, I almost didn't read the novel! I started an online sample offered by the publisher, saw the seeing-myself-in-the-mirror trope and thought, "Oh, that's against the rules." I almost quit reading right there because the "rules" had conditioned me to expect something subpar from that. I'm so glad I kept going, because I ultimately really enjoyed Divergent!
Because of that, this is neither the most successful nor the worst example of a rule-break. It wasn't magic, but it also wasn't the downfall of the novel.
Love this! And I agree that we first have to know the rules and be conscious about breaking them when we do so. I usually am rather rule-adhering in general, although I probably have way too many metaphors and similes for my own good. And fragments. And I love inventing words...I guess we're not "supposed" to do that? To me, it's part of being creative, and it's exciting. That's why I write sci-fi and fantasy, so I can invent things. Magical!
SAVVY by Ingrid Law is still a great example of Telling--and on the first page, yet--and getting away with it. Backflashing and Telling both, bam, right off the bat! But it works as a folksy and chatty voice.
Oh yes, reading the above comment reminded me of ENTWINED--a slight twist in that she sees herself in the reflection of a teapot. I think DIVERGENT's worked more successfully than in ENTWINED, because it was part of the plot and societal rules.
I think of not only breaking rules but experimenting and writing out of comfort zone. Trying to write without thinking of the market and of agents and just letting my creativity go. I'll worry about revising later.
So sorry not to respond sooner! Crazy week, what can I say?
Jemi, I struggle with the same thing. I especially love conjunctions at the start of a sentence where they improve the flow, and I am constantly fighting the Oscar Wilde syndrome of putting them in in the morning and taking them out in the afternoon. There's that little rule-genie sitting on my shoulder saying 'no' all the time.
Sheri, welcome back! Hope you had a great break!!! Voice in a synopsis is important, so I don't blame you. I wonder if you ended up doing it in first person. That's supposed to be one of the unbreakable rules, but I recently read an example where someone hooked an agent that way. If that's what your gut says, you'll always wonder 'what if' if you don't try, right?
Heather, I haven't read that one. Will have to add it to my list. (I'm about to hit triple digits though, I swear.) Unlikeable characters are SO hard. I fought that and fought that in one of my ms, and ultimately had to put in more of the backstory sooner to give the reader some insight (and hopefully sympathy) about why she was the way she was. It's funny though, I was talking to my nephew about Hunger Games yesterday. He's twelve and very smart, and he said he didn't like Katniss at all. (Though he loved the books.) I asked him why, and he said she was too sad and mad all the time. When I pinned him down and asked him what she should have felt, given the situation, he thought about it and ended up saying she needed to be sad and mad. It's so hard, isn't it?
Laura, I LOVE that example! Thanks for sharing it.
Elizabeth, that was more a reminder to myself than anything else. And you are so right, remembering that even after I made the overall decision to break a rule and felt I had a valid reason, I had to remember to still go back and examine every instance where I implemented the "violation" to see if I was handling it in the best way at that specific point in the story. Question everything, then trust your gut, I guess. :D
Diana, lol! Yes, I had to use sharks because they scare me almost as much as failing. #notasharkweeklover
Anonymeet, great point. That Divergent example illustrates something else--skill can overcome the cliche in the "rule." Maybe if we think of the rules as training wheels?
And Carol, your point (and Anonymeets) is really important. With Divergent, it works within a larger, more important context and there are multiple reasons why the reflection works. Against that, you have only the trope. I will confess that I use a reflection too in the same ms we are talking about--in several different places. In my case, I use it in pieces of shattered glass to illustrate the broken, distored way a character sees herself and to contrast that with additional reflections when she begins to see herself more clearly. At the same time, broken glass is an important plot point later all on its own. This doesn't happen to be the rule that I was talking about, but it is definitely another one that I thought long and hard about--and my CPs have, very correctly, called me on it and asked me to make sure my reasons were valid.
That's the bottom line. Know the rule, know the reasons you want to break it. Oddly, as I think about the "rule breaking," I usually either find a way around it or find a way to strengthen the need to break the rule and make the pay off bigger. Giving it that extra thought is never wasted effort.
Oh goodness this post is so helpful I like to write stories and I'm to scared to take a risk and break any rules. Now that I've read this I can see that breaking the rules with your writing could be a great thing. All you have to do is let loose and go with the flow.
if its worth it and you can take the conciequnces then yes if its not and its stupid then nope