There are so many writing rules.
You have to begin the story with action and movement. Establish your character immediately, who they are and what they want. Hook your readers fast and then keep the tension high and don’t hold back on drama.
You can find writing rules in books about writing, blogs about writing and from writing conventions. Over the years I collected a journal of advice that I sometimes reference. Some of these rules are vitally important if you want to have a good story.
There are little tricks to make your story easy to understand. For instance: don’t name your characters with the same first letter. Don’t have Ferrah and Fern be your sidekicks. The names are too easy to mix up. Use Ferrah and Dilly. And who is the murderer? That Tom guy, or was it Tim? Which one was he?
Grammar rules are plentiful too. Don’t misuse commas for goodness sake. Don’t just stick them anywhere in your sentence where you may pause.
Understand the rules and your story will be better.
Also, once you understand them you can break them. Very good advice, even though when I was starting out all I wanted to do was break the rules right away. Learning when to ignore them and when to break the rules comes down to experience, but I didn’t understand that when I was first writing. For now I follow the rules and I sometimes make my own.
When I was writing Fairy Doctor Falls in Love * I established a personal set of rules. These silly rules made it interesting for me to write. They’re the inside jokes I used to amuse myself, and I’m going to share them. Don’t worry about spoilers. I’ll be on my best behavior.
Main characters names
The Baron’s name is well, actually I stubbornly call him the Baron throughout most of the book. I did this on purpose. Then I realized that Lillia has a title too. She’s the Doctor to the fairies. Well, when I was struggling with the name for Lillia’s love interest I decided he needed a title. So I named him Marquez (like a Marquess or Marquis). He was almost named Marcello.
Metaphors and Similes and Cursewords
I must have been hungry when I first came up with this rule, but whenever possible I made Lillia curse with food references. She says “Oh Framboise” instead of ‘oh F**k”, and she says “Good Gouda” instead of “Good God”. I just wanted to mix things up. I also tried to make my metaphors and similes food related as well. One of the reasons I did this was to minimize my time thinking of a good appropriate metaphor. Instead of being overwhelmed with descriptions or stuck with a cliche, I focused on food metaphors.
1000 words a day
This one was hard and frustrating to follow, but I wanted to finish the first draft of my story within two months, even though I was working full-time as a baker. So, I disciplined myself. I wrote 1000 words a day, and only occasionally failed to make my word count. I tied this challenged in with Nanowrimo, the National Write a Novel Month, so in November I joined hundreds of other people in attempting to finish my novel. I was a Nanowrimo cheater, but in the end I finished my story as I planned within two months.
The Baron’s Clothes
In the beginning of the story the Baron is wearing plain workout clothes (even if they are a luxury brand). Then his next outfit is a polo shirt and slacks. Slowly over the course of the story his clothes begin to get fancier and fancier. I made sure to gradually set this up and every time he came into a scene I gave him nicer outfit to wear. Why? Because it was funny to me.
What about in the second book? Well… nothing to report so far. Hopefully, I’ll get to post some of my silly rules about the second book. I don’t have any established yet. Maybe that’s why I’m struggling with it. It’s really driving me crazy, even if it’s coming along slowly. Perhaps I have to put more jokes in it. More silliness.
*affiliated link