The Writing Rules

Issue 258

Lisbon, 2017

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Most writing resources begin with rules. To write better, this argument states, a list of commandments must be obeyed. If you browse the writing section of any bookstore, or search for writing techniques online, you’ll come across the usual orthodoxies: words to avoid and words to use, the importance of crossing out adverbs, the utter pointlessness of passive voice sentences, how you should never, of course, begin a sentence with a conjunction.

And there’s some validity in understanding these most common strictures, especially for those new, or for those unsure about, the practice of scribbling across a page. The typical rules can help writers be more efficient. Or help to clarify tricky sentences. Even experienced writers can benefit from the occasional refresher.

Harm only comes when these rules become absolutes, distorting writing into a mere exercise of coloring within the lines. Rules work best when you’re struggling in deep water, when you need ballast to stabilize your ship. But those same rules are oppressive—and quite limiting—when writers never advance past them. Even without discussing any specific writing rule, we can know in advance that every rule has an endpoint, as we know that every page is different. There’s no single rule that’s applicable in all situations. Knowing the rules is vital, yet it’s also vital to know when they should be dismissed.

Writing, at its best, is thinking on the page. Whether the sentences are descriptive or persuasive, whether the writer is reporting or entertaining, readers are transfixed when the page exposes the writer’s journey. A good sentence and paragraph and page carry the reader forward: on a sentence-by-sentence journey through the writer’s mind, focused on the trajectory of thought. For the writer, there’s a little juggling, this impossible game of revealing both the current moment and the direction of that moment. When people struggle to write, the struggle often results from a roadblock between their mind and their pen—they have the sensation, a loose, confused notion of what they want to express, but they can’t put that sensation onto the page.

For those adrift on open water, a few guidelines can provide some support. These are the wind gauges and navigation guides and backup sails of the writing game. The items you need to have mastered long before you confront an unexpected wave. The trouble comes when those same guidelines limit the potential of a sentence, when the writer feels unable to convey the full emotional salience of an experience, or to report events accurately, because of an artificial constraint placed upon the pen: a rubric is a useful guide to begin but it does, eventually, describe the limits of what you can express. You don’t know what you’re going to think before you think it, so you shouldn’t limit your potential for description before you even begin.

What’s awkward is that two principles are true, despite the contradiction: the typical rules are necessary and the typical rules are oppressive. You must first learn them, and then you must discard them. Although I would also recommend, for example, learning to paint a still life before you try your brush at Cubism.

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Are short sentences effective? For what you want to express, they might be best, but there’s no universal answer. Should you consider adverbs blasphemous? It’s unlikely, though there might be a useful insight in that endlessly repeated commandment. And that’s the lesson for all the usual strictures: learn what’s behind each supposed rule, and let that be the takeaway.

Stroll over to the literature section in any bookstore. Grab a novel from the shelf. One by an acclaimed author. Any novel that’s lasted, or that’s taught, for which we’ll at least agree is praised. Nearly any choice will do just fine. Now flip to a random page and check the grammar. How many of the supposed rules are broken? How many of the typical guidelines are ignored?

A letter from Raymond Chandler to The Atlantic puts it nicely:

Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have. I think your proofreader is kindly attempting to steady me on my feet, but much as I appreciate the solicitude, I am really able to steer a fairly clear course, provided I get both sidewalks and the street between.

Before you jump too far into abstraction and begin creating paragraphs that resemble drip paintings, I should add that most authors on the literature shelf would do just fine on a grammar test. Chandler himself credited his ability to capture spoken English on his childhood lessons in grammar, French, and Latin. Hemingway refines this same point in a 1925 letter:

My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a good deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements.

The next great novel won’t follow the current orthodoxy—almost by definition—but the current orthodoxy is where most people should remain. There’s already a capacity for wonder, in fact, within those usual strictures. A writer just has to cultivate the right tools. And if we can’t agree to limit ourselves, we can at least agree that it’s good advice for everyone else.