A Sense of Doubt blog post #4048 - There are No Rules! Writing Wednesday for 2603.18

A Sense of Doubt blog post #4048 - There are No Rules! Writing Wednesday for 2603.18

I have never liked rules. 

My reaction to rules has always been that they are made to be broken or worse that they just do not apply to me. Many would argue (and rightly so) that this attitude is a result of my privileged upbringing, and that I am an entitled male with power fantasy issues.

That's my general reaction to the idea of rules as a concept, but this post is not a general critique of rules, rule breaking, and male privilege (let alone white, upper middle class privilege), this post is about writing and specifically rules in writing.

Probably the most famous of all writing rules is SHOW DON'T TELL.

When I first heard that old chestnut, my reaction was "well, except..."

Immediately, my mind went to exceptions because of how I see rules.

Slavish following of rules seems to be a standard of writing workshops from readers who operate more on auto-pilot than actually engaging their brain in critical thinking.

I had many stories returned to me marked up with lots of "show don't tell" in the margins and not a thoughtful reaction of how information is conveyed. 

Because writers need to EXPLAIN THINGS to readers, ESPECIALLY for writers of speculative fiction (fantasy, science fiction, etc.).

Last year, I posted the famous (at least among speculative fiction writers), TURKEY CITY LEXICON that addresses this issue of "background":

Wednesday, August 20, 2025

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3837 - TURKEY CITY LEXICON - Rules for Writing in Science Fiction

Here's one such sage advice:

The Edges of Ideas

The solution to the “Info-Dump” problem (how to fill in the background). The theory is that, as above, the mechanics of an interstellar drive (the center of the idea) is not important: all that matters is the impact on your characters: they can get to other planets in a few months, and, oh yeah, it gives them hallucinations about past lives. Or, more radically: the physics of TV transmission is the center of an idea; on the edges of it we find people turning into couch potatoes because they no longer have to leave home for entertainment. Or, more bluntly: we don’t need info dump at all. We just need a clear picture of how people’s lives have been affected by their background. This is also known as “carrying extrapolation into the fabric of daily life.”

This is very good critical thinking. It goes directly to the issue I have been working to ameliorate in my writing for years. I suspect it's an issue for everyone, especially world-building speculative writers.

When we spend so much time in our notes files building our world, we want to show off our shiny toys. But readers are more interested in the STORY.

A writer friend of mine said "I don't care what the chair looks like; I care about dialogue."

Now, granted, she is a VERY dialogue-driven writer. Not that that's a bad thing. Not at all. But not all writers lean into dialogue as much as she does.

Looking at the advice above, the question is not how the interstellar drive works but rather does the reader need to know how the interstellar drive works?

So, if I am sharing how the interstellar drive works in my story because knowing how it works is essential for the story moving forward, then writing SHOW DON'T TELL next to my information is really bad advice.

And how exactly do I "show" how the interstellar drive works? Do I need to write from the perspective of the hydrogen atom or whatever? Like if I was writing about what happens to a drug in the body, I would write from the pill's POV and chart its course in narrative? Really?

Probably not. I say probably because I know of a book that has a bog and its cycles of nature as a POV character in a book (The Bog Queen by Anna North).

Also, I was reading this article this morning supposedly asserting that Netflix tells creators to "repeat the plot frequently because most viewers are only paying partial attention as they are on their phones."

This article:

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tv/articles/netflix-execs-no-don-t-224212652.html

Netflix denies the allegation, but it's really not all that surprising. People's attention is a massive commodity.

But back to my point, information must be conveyed. The issue is not that one cannot ever "tell" the reader things. The issue is how much to tell and how to deliver that information amid the narrative flow.

Here's another bit of the TURKEY CITY LEXICON that is relevant to my point:

Infodump

Large chunk of indigestible expository matter intended to explain the background situation. Info-dumps can be covert, as in fake newspaper or “Encyclopedia Galactica” articles, or overt, in which all action stops as the author assumes center stage and lectures. Info-dumps are also known as “expository lumps.” The use of brief, deft, inoffensive info-dumps is known as “kuttnering,” after Henry Kuttner. When information is worked unobtrusively into the story’s basic structure, this is known as “heinleining.”

In early drafts of CYBERSPELL, my sword/sorcery/cyberpunk mashup, my CWOP -- Current Work in Progress -- I had quite a bit of info dump and I dropped some of it via that old “Encyclopedia Galactica” article form (Hello Asimov!).

But as I have returned to working on the book, I have been more focused on withholding from the reader and, of course, completely avoiding things like an “Encyclopedia Galactica” article.

How can I share what the reader needs to know in a clear way without explaining everything and yet leave unexplained things intriguing enough to keep the reader reading. This is the current operating system.

So, the whole SHOW DON'T TELL thing: it depends. 

Usually show through action and dialogue as much as possible, but deliver some in exposition, too, just be prudent and sparring.

Another rule that is begging to be broken is "SAID BOOKISMS."

This one really irritated me in a writing workshop with an author with only a few publications lording it over those in the workshop as if they were ALL THAT.

Here's the text again from TURKEY CITY:

“Said” Bookism

An artificial verb used to avoid the word “said.” “Said” is one of the few invisible words in the English language and is almost impossible to overuse. It is much less distracting than “he retorted,” “she inquired,” “he ejaculated,” and other oddities. The term “said-book” comes from certain pamphlets, containing hundreds of purple-prose synonyms for the word “said,” which were sold to aspiring authors from tiny ads in American magazines of the pre-WWII era.

Obviously, the egregious offenders need to be removed, like "he ejaculated" or "she inquired," the last of which is obvious if the dialogue ends with a question mark!

"Said" should surely be the default dialogue tag, Use it most of the time.

But what about yelling or whispering? Not always obvious in context.

Again, a slavish writer being robotic with feedback in workshop, holding to this "rule" as if any tag other than "said" violates the rule and deserves a "said bookism" in the margin.

She was an idiot. Though it is more likely for MEN to be idiots in those ways. Sadly, this time, it was a female person.

Lastly, last year, I published this post that contained a reprint of "On Thud and Plunder" by Poul Anderson plus my thoughts on a book by the great and under appreciated TANITH LEE.

Wednesday, November 5, 2025

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3914 - Writing Wednesday 2511.05 - SoD Reprint of #2360 - ON THUD AND PLUNDER and TANITH LEE's Vazkor Son of Vazkor

One of Anderson's central points is as follows from this snippet:

"... the point is, nobody pretends this is aught but a Never-Never Land, wherein the author is free to arrange geography, history, theology, and the laws of nature to suit himself. Given that freedom, far too many writers nowadays have supposed that anything whatsoever goes, that practical day-to-day details are of no importance and hence they, the writers, have no homework to do before they start spinning their yarns."

And he goes on to discuss smart world building that makes sense and is based on our own histories and cultures, economies and politics.

Anderson engaged in deep-dive critical thinking about how some of these worlds are not well built and do not make a whole lot of sense.

It's a great read for anyone building medieval-style fantasy fiction.

Sadly, it has probably not been read by 95% of the current crop of such authors.

I also posted this last year: 

Thursday, August 14, 2025

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3831 - TWELVE Rules for WRITING

The 13th rule (because it's fun to have 13 in a list of 12) is "There are no rules; invent your own rules."

And that's the crux of the rest of the post.

Thanks for tuning in.


ABOUT THE Image up top:

In certain ancient Germanic traditions, it was believed that there was an island to the west of the world where souls migrated to after death. For some considerable time, it was held that that island was actually Britain. Look at the shore now, glittering with mantic light, shrouded in the smoke of burning bones. See the figures on the soot sand. They've been watching you for so long. Who's really to say that this isn't the island of the dead?

These are the collaborations between myself and painter AJ. Sometimes she sends me an image and I respond to it in text, sometimes I send her a piece of text and she responds with an image. Find her work at brady-pictures.com and her IG.

OPERATIONS

THERE ARE NO RULES IF YOU DECIDE THERE ARE NO RULES

So an artist acquaintance wants to begin writing and drawing his own graphic novel sequence, and asked me for advice. After a little back and forth, I said this:

Orson Welles had done an awful lot of stuff in other media before he went to Hollywood to make a film. Therefore he had no idea what was possible. He had no idea what he was doing and had no idea how a camera or film sets worked. So he got someone to teach him how a camera worked and for everything else he just invented what he needed and decided he didn’t care if it was possible or not. That’s why we all still rewatch CITIZEN KANE today - he invented his own version of cinema.

Do that. Don’t get sunk in how-to books. Figure out your story and then decide for yourself how to tell it. There are no rules if you decide there are no rules.

LINK TO THIS POST
The writing world is drowning in conflicting advice. What if I told you that the very advice you're consuming might be holding you back? Your voice and ideas matter more than what others think.

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What writing "rule" have you broken that actually improved your story? Share below 😄

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2603.18 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3912 days ago & DAD = 566 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.