Sometimes...
25 Things About Writing That Don't Get Said Often Enough
Sometimes less is less and more is more.
Sometimes telling a story demands Telling, not Showing.
Sometimes only an external, ‘third-person’ narrator will do.
Sometimes only far-out psychic distance will do.
Sometimes point-of-view needs changing frequently.
Sometimes a jump-cut between scenes destroys all the narrative tension.
Sometimes present tense is less immediate and more stilted.
Sometimes first person is more distanced and less evocative.
Sometimes third person can go more deeply into a character.
Sometimes ‘filtering’ is exactly what your sentence should contain.
Sometimes only an adjective or three, and an adverb or three, will do.
Sometimes long sentences are more fast-moving, more direct, more dramatic than short sentences.
Sometimes only a passive voice verb will do, and a hatful of was, had, am, is, have and are.
Sometimes being right means being incorrect:
sometimes you should start a sentence with but or and.
sometimes infinitives need splitting and so do phrasal verbs;
sometimes prepositions should go at the end;
sometimes a sentence should be grammatically incomplete;
sometimes it’s more important that punctuation should evoke how something would be said, than the grammatical structure of what is said;
Sometimes a tool needs temporarily treating as a rule, if otherwise your readers won’t understand what you need them to.
Sometimes a prologue is just telling your reader this isn’t the start of the story.
A twist is only a twist and a twisted timeline is only a twisted timeline; neither will turn a dull story into an exciting story.
An epiphany is only an epiphany: it won’t turn a dull character into an interesting character.
A death is only a death: it won’t turn an unsatisfying story into a satisfying story.
An unreliable narrator is only an unreliable narrator: they won’t turn an off-the-peg story into a profound statement of human subjectivity or self-deception or anything else.
Lots of physical story is no compensation for lack of emotional story. Lots of emotional story is no compensation for lack of physical story.
Sometimes the best way to write a sex scene is to write *** and then stop.
Sometimes writer’s block is not caused by the writing at all.
Filling a story with beauty and happiness doesn’t automatically make it bad, false or trite; filling a story with ugliness and misery doesn’t automatically make it good, true or profound.
Sometimes the opposite of each of these is also true.
Don't forget that the Itch of Writing Tool-kit has more help. And don’t forget this:
If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing badly.
Sometimes all that matters is that you do it.
A version of this post first appeared on Typepad in 2014.
Thanks very much for this. I see endless instances of people laying down the law on 'show don't tell', 'don't use adverbs', etc (Facebook writers' groups are rife with it). I feel like I've been writing long enough, including 30 years writing non-fiction professionally, to have a pretty good sense of when to ignore any or all of these maxims, but clearly a lot of less experienced people are all too ready to mistake sound guidelines for unbreakable laws.
Reads something like wisdom to me. Thanks for blessing to play loose with the rules.