Rules of Writing

As you may have gathered if you read my previous post, last week I had one of my periodic crises of confidence about my writing abilities and devoting as much time to it as I currently do. So I looked about to see what I could do to combat it.

Part of it was to take some advice from fellow writers on Twitter and switch subjects for a little while until I get myself moving again. The other thing I did was use that wonderful, dreadful thing, the internets, to see what some of the writers I admire had to say on the subject.

What I ended up reading, and trying to take to heart, were assorted sets of rules put together by some authors. If you’re curious, I put the links below.

Now I said somewhere before, and I stand by the assertion, that no-one can tell you how to write. But that’s not to say that they can’t give you advice that will help you to write. After all, presumably they didn’t get to become consistently best-selling authors without learning a few things along the way.

I think there’s probably a lot to be gained from these rules. There might be a little overlap on some of them and I will admit that I might not follow all of them, all the time. But there’s certainly enough there to help keep me going. At least, until the next crisis.

Neil Gaiman

Stephen King

Elmore Leonard