Mike C

I still disagree, and I've yet to see any evidence to the contrary. I suspect you'd write every bit as well as you do without the GCSE. I'd also bet there are guys out there with degrees who can't write as well as you.

My point is that good writing is not about being able to conjugate verbs or place commas perfectly. It's a creative act and requires the brain to be wired in a particular way. If it were otherwise then, by simply practising, we could all be Joyce or McEwan. It just ain't so. Crap writers will always be crap writers. Give them a degree in English and they'll be crap writers who can spell.

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Sam Winchester

Brilliant analogy, Mike! I have to say, you have swayed me on the subject. The whole GCSE thing, by the way, was not to improve my writing, instead to prove that I was good enough to achieve top marks. I met people in college last year who, given material to read off an English paper, were brilliant at answering questions, but when it came to creative writing, they hadn't a baldy's notion. I agree that you can't teach creativity, per se - you either have it or you don't. You can, as you said, improve your writing to the point of having a degree, but that still doesn't make you a good author.

Sam.

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Dawnstorm

Hi,

Being the author of the original text, I've followed this thread with some interest. To summarise my point:

1. "Rules" are for theory geeks.
2. Writing is for writers.
3. a) No reason why one person can't be both.
3. b) No reason why one person has to be both.

A few reactions:

That's pretty much what I'm saying, but I have an additional point, and that's where we might be disagreeing (or not):

I don't like the way people call these regularities "rules", or even the weaker version "guidelines". I dislikle the way they're often phrased in the imperative ("Show, don't tell.") And I especially dislike the donts. A prime example is that odious (to me) The Elements of Style. Among others, they tell you to "Use the Active Voice". A useful treatment voice would look in detail at what "voice" (the grammatical concept) actually does, and only after they've done that, they'd give their own evaluation, making it clear that - in the end - the judgement call is up to the writer. But Strunk blows it: The heading itself frames "active voice" as good. The text frames "passive voice" as bad. And the last couple of examples involve constructions that are neither active nor passive, but involve linking verbs, leading generations of writers to think that "there is" is passive voice, when it's just not "active voice". I've seen people on the web ask "tell me how to recognise the passive voice, so I can avoid it." That's what's wrong with rules. If you can't tell it's bad, it probably isn't - to you. Should you then go cut it? You're not going to improve by appropriating someone else's style; you're improving by modifying your own.

The other problem with "rules" is that often people who use the same terms mean different things, but rarely do they bother defining their terms. If they do, often a discussion ensues about the term rather than about writing. At some point, the discussion becomes so divorced from any actual writing that it becomes meaningless. The recent "Show, don't tell" thread here, is a prime example. That thread's basically about the right to use the terms for your pet meaning. I have my own, too; shall I join the fun?

The music analogy will take you only so far. It works better for poetry, where perfomance can be integral (but there's the concept of eye-rhymes, too). In prose, though, you'll usually read the words; audio books involve a separate set of skills that involve voice actors rather than writers.

This has implications:

Playing a musical instrument well is more like reading books out loud. Or - in some ways - it's like calligraphy - painting beautiful letters. The instruments themselves pose limitations on what you can compose; much like the human speech apparatus poses limitations on what sounds we can produce. Practising scales till your fingers bleed is the equivalence of the baby trying out words, or - more relevant to writing - the schoolkid scribbling letter shapes until they're memorised. It's the basic skill set needed to write, but we acquire that before we decide to become writers - in most cases.

Notation is the equivalence to literacy. You can be a great oral story teller. You can have a way with words around the campfire. But you can't be an illiterate writer. (Well, I suppose you can make do with a dictaphone and a secretary; but that's certainly not what I'm advocating. )

Harmonics - scales and chords - and melody runs are pretty close to grammar. Rhythm is equivalent to metre in poetry, and to the stressed/unstressed syllables flow in prose.

The actual "writing rules", such as say "cutting adverbs", have their equivalents in composition theory. "Don't use parallel thrids and fifths," for example (which pretty much invalidates rock, hehe). I've never delved deeply into composition theory, so I can't really judge those "rules", but I suspect that my attitude towards them would be similar to the "writing rules". Ignore the donts. Instead, look at what the elements actually do and make up your own mind.

So I'd argue: cutting adverbs isn't like scales, it's more ephemaral. It's like, "Don't use maj7 chords" or something. Unless you understand why, it's arbitrary. Once you understand why, you realise it's been silly all along. But the "why" is valuable. Who knows whether this makes sense to anyone?

Oh, how I agree! It's a standard rant of mine. But I get sucked into this again and again. Go figure.

seigfried007

I don't think we were disagreeing. I prefer to think of them as 'guidelines' because, until one has a good grasp of when the "don't"s are appropriate, it's best to avoid them. More like "Avoid at most costs" instead of "don't".

Kinda like "Don't jump off of buildings". Well, when the timing's right, sometimes it's not such a bad thing to do

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Dawnstorm

I do think we disagree a bit, then.

I disagree with the avoidance-strategy for a reason:

Say you tag the word-class "-ly adverb" with "don't". The only way to really get a feeling for the contexts in which adverbs work or don't is to use them and compare. If you avoid them, chances are that the very act of avoiding will skew your taste against adverb, so that "bad adverbs" become a matter of self-fulfilling prophecy. (Why, after all, would you avoid "nice" things?)

The second side-effect is that by avoiding a stock-structure you're forced to overuse other structures, which may create yet another "don't" in the future. Vicious circle. (In the case of adverbs, I've seen people replace a single, efficient adverb with a clunky adverbial phrase.)

If you don't understand what you're doing "rules" create bad writing. Your intuitive usage may be as bad, but at least it's genuine. You can work on that and prosper. Rules? I'm not so sure.

I actually think that the dos and donts, applied without understanding, create bad writing, rather than preventing it.

I do like the advice "Don't jump off buildings," but then taste doesn't really affect the outcome of the action (though intention might affect the desirability of the outcome - "Don't jump off buildings, unless you seek pain, mutilation or death.")

seigfried007

Nah, I was meaning "Don't jump off buildings... unless there's a deep lake, the building's on fire, there's a bunch of firemen at the bottom with that blow-up cushion, you have some kind of parachute, the building is mostly below-ground or just plain short so the fall isn't so far..."

I'll ditto rules without understanding. Rules shouldn't be there for the sake of having rules, and any kind of compliance or rebellion concerning rules ought to be well thought out. Even concerning guidelines, advice, etc. If you don't know why the rule exists, ask or otherwise do some research, and, when you get your answers, decide to what extent that tidbit of advice applies to you and your writing.

I've seen more weak verbs with silly adverbs and other taboos those tidbits of well-intentioned advice were aimed for than over-kills in the opposite direction. Both are made in that odd state of "I don't neccessarily know what I'm doing."

When everything is said and done, how does the piece flow? Can you understand what the heck happened and why it happened? So long as those questions are answered "Yes" I don't see what else matters concerning the rules.

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Dawnstorm

More, perhaps. But when the rules misfire, the effects tend to be more desastorous to the specific text, as well as more detrimental to the author. For example, I can always tell when one of fave unpublished authors had one critique too many. The punctuation becames better, but the text becomes dull.

I suspect how you view "rules" depends a lot on your experience with critiques, and that's quite prone to selective attention. (The difference between our views appears to be minor, in any case. [Edit: gah! That smiley's creepy.])

Olly Buckle

I have read most of this thread with interest and felt there were some good points and interesting arguments. there were two points which were made in passing but not brought together. One was that there are many of us who could use help with grammar or phrasing so that we present ideas with greater clarity. The other was that there are many of us who do not have that "Nelson touch" that will make us great writers. However, I am not sure how many newspapers, journals, magazines, instruction manuals, junk mail leaflets etc. are produced each day but an awful lot of people earn their living writing things. Then there are all the people who wish to write a poem for a loved one, a memoir for a grandchild, something that has value for personal reasons, even if only a letter. Having learned the rules through use and critique is invaluable to these people, whom , I agree, are probably the vast majority of our members and possibly all of us. Specialist academies look splendid and high art thrills but what really drives civilisation and culture is the education of the mass of the people.

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Just Jim

Some conversation ! Good thoughts on both sides. Plus some BS.

I'm new to creative writing. I've done technical writing and been paid for it, but this is new to me.

The "rules" are serving a purpose. I write the way I think, or the way I feel at the moment. Sometimes it takes two or three paragraphs before I get to any action. Often I write in a passive voice. I forget to use dialog effectively, especially since I often write about animals.

Then, when I'm ready to rewrite I pay attention to what I'm learning from a class, reading, and the critiques I get here. And I rewrite like hell. I'm learning to apply all the rules.

But I don't throw the original version away. Once I'm comfortable that I can write a tight story, with action and tension and a protagonist all in the first paragraph, then I will go back to my original version, and revise it again.

Then the rules I use will be MY rules.

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Dawnstorm

And all the other types of beginnings are best viewed as deviations from this prototype. And of course only the good writers can deviate effectively. First, they'll start by replacing the protagonist with the deuteragonist. Next the tritagonist, and so on, until they're comfortable to start with a paragraph that contains nothing but walk-on-walk-off characters. That's when they know they're really good.

[If you weren't as tongue-in-cheek above I think you were, I'm sorry for the tone in my reply. Writing forums have left me a bit paranoid.]

Seriously, I think that the idea of a "default" in writing is harmful, as it discourages development in any other way than conformism. You're right that the "rules" serve a purpose, and generally that purpose is to propagate a certain taste or standard. It assumes that all learning should start from a single place; a point of view that favours the teacher over the student, as the teacher can teach the same thing over again to thousands of writers and if the students don't improve that's their fault. Rather than enabling students to look at what they've written with a critical eye, they divert the attention to the rule and make critiques an exercise in box-ticking.

Heh, you must excuse me. That's where I come from, so that's what colours my language. I'm an educated nitpick, so to speak. But I'm really not saying all this to propagate "high art". Actually, it's the "high art" places that often spout these rules in the first place. Literary movements, and such. In your above terms: I'm arguing that the education of the mass of the people is currently driven by the idea of "high art" and "specialist academies", the latter of which also includes marketing. All those fancy rules come from above, from self-styled specialists. The more you know, the more you develope your bullshit detector, the more you profit from what they're saying, as the interesting core is easer to get to. It always lies beyond the rule level.

The people who need the rules the most are the ones most vulnerable to their dangers. That said, there are degrees of ruleboundness:

1. Spelling. Highly rulebound - there are some variants, but mostly a misspelling is just that. A misspelling. (But something like "n00bz" is not a spelling error; it's a deliberate excursion into another system, one that offers more spelling freedom, but has developed quite a few conventions itself.)

2. Grammar. Moderately rulebound. For example, when you say that "these people, whom , I agree, are probably the vast majority of our members" I'd point out that "whom" should "who". Why would I point that out? Because I think that you, like most native speakers, usually use "who" for the subjective case, and because I think that you would have used "who", if "I agree" hadn't interfered. Verbs of cognition such as "consider", "think", "suspect", etc. often have a more or less common structure: "I [verb] [object] to be..." ("I suspect him to be a coward,"). I think that this structure might have interfered, here. BUT: I can be wrong! See? You can think about what I said and then conclude that, no, that's not true. If I merely told you it's wrong, you'd have no defense at all; you'd just have to bow to (or challange) my superior education. Which gets neither of us anywhere. Grammar rules are usually trickier than spelling rules; grammar takes care of itself, while spelling tends to devolve quickly.

3./4. Style Rules, Composition Rules: This is the level where rules finally become a medium for pushing taste. If your taste and your teachers taste are compatible, you prosper. If your taste and your teachers taste are at odds, you either wither or rebel. (My web-experience tells me, most wither.) But bear in mind that "taste" is a factor in the real world, and carries with it prejudice. (Listen to style rules when you're writing job applications, by all means. My argument is that fiction is different. What I'm buying when I'm buying a book is surprise, not a standardasised platform to compare all those books on.)

From that it follows, that if you actually want to push taste, using rules to express yourself is a plus. You've got a chance at silencing your less confident opposition. More power to you (but expect opposition from rule-bashers such as me). This is how you get literary movements. This is not how you get good writers.

[I should learn to rant less, hehe.]

Mike C

I keep coming back to this, appreciative of what you're saying, but somewhat resistant to it. Your last few points clarify, but still I resist.

Spelling/grammar are givens. They are rules that (with exceptions so few they can be ignored) should be cast in stone. You have to know how to form coherent sentences.

But the other rules (which we all love to bash so much) are, at critical points in your writing, equally important, and should be rammed down every new writer's throat.

Show, don't tell. Use passive voice. Be mindful of dialogue tags. All that, and more. Sure, sometimes you have to tell. Sometimes passive voice works better. Whatever. But by taking the framework and trying to work within it, you then start to make informed choices. You have a full set of tools in the box. Without that at least as a starting point you end up with nonsensical work that wastes the writer's as well as the reader's time.

Language can be as precise as a mathematical formula, or as loose and free as bebop, and we should be armed with the knowledge of how to make it so. Good writing doesn't happen by accident.

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seigfried007

Sure you don't mean active voice? (I'm snickering behind a hand, perfectly prepared to duck and run, btw )

The ability to use all the tools is different than ramming them down in the creative sense. We get the rules--the hard, fast rules--of grammar down our throats all the way through school.

I don't think passive voice and show, don't tell place quite as high as being articulate in general--and they can be taught easily with a few examples. I don't like the 'hammering' thing because impressionable minds treat them as mighty things to be upheld--like correct syntax, spelling, etc.--rather than making up their own minds and listening to the flow and content.

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Mike C

Yeah, good catch. Meh.

But I stand by the rest. If you're taught the rules - have them hammered into you - then when you depart from them it will be because you've considered the alternatives and made an intelligent choice, not because you never knew the difference. And minds impressionable enough to be damaged by this approach will never write anything noteworthy anyway. I've taught SF masterclasses to gifted teenagers and my brightest ever prospect was the guy who, when I suggested he rewrite a passage in a certain way, came back next class and said "I did what you said here, and it worked ok, but I didn't do it here because I thought my way was better". Informed choice.

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seigfried007

I think what Dawnstorm was talking about are the people who don't have that granule of wisdom--that 'freedom of choice' in art--to make informed choices because they've been brow-beaten with 'the rules' as these "thou shalt surely die"-stone-tablet kinda concepts. A lot of people get that treatment in creative writing courses and from critters online (and from pros, and books, and the list goes one eternally) to the point where their creative mind to editing is numb and they simply don't trust themselves to write any other way. Worse yet, these people who have ingested these rules invariably vomit them forth like a plague on other impressionable writers.

A rule is something that shouldn't be broken for the common good--don't jump out of planes, don't randomly open fire on civilians, use your darn turn signal.

Show, don't tell and using active voice are more like guidelines--gentle bands of nylon or rope leading you in the right direction on this glorious path of making your idea understood. You can push them or even hop over them, but the fact remians that--when utilized well--they make storytelling easier on both the author and the reader.

Think of a story kind of like a hiking trail. Stray too much and you may get lost, die in an avalanche, fall off a cliff, be mauled by a rabid cougar or even shot by pot-farming rednecks. However, sticking to the trail makes you (and your story) a bit less likely to meet with a bad end. You can wander over the path too--one not need always stick to its very center, rigidly, dogmatically, robotically and thus kill the soul of the piece by watching one's feet and measuring the width of a beautiful natural trail by never lifting his eyes to see the sunlight filtering through new green leaves, fish in a nearby creek or the graceful bounds of a fleeing doe. You miss these things when you are so busy sticking to the plan and watching your every step.

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Mike C

I disagree. Rules are made to be bent, broken and disregarded - but only once you know them inside out and know what you can get away with. The poor souls without a granule of wisdom should be disregarded - they'll never make the grade anyway. Writing isn't - as far as I'm concerned, anyway - an egalitarian pasttime where we all do nice stuff and pat eachother on the backs. Writing is both art and science, and should be performed with passion or not at all. But you need the science to enable the art, and once you have a good grasp of both you can forget them and concentrate on passion.

Don't think of writing as a mundane activity like hiking. It's like sex, and sometimes damned good sex. Once you have technique mastered, you can forget it and surrender to the passion, get good and sweaty and make it an experience that you and your reader will never forget.

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