"Rules" on Writing Part One

I recently came across an article that was all about everything you shouldn't do while writing that went something like this:

Don't use prologues
Don't talk about the weather
Don't use adverbs
Don't use description about the setting
Don't use exclamation marks
Don't use anything other than said to carry dialogue
Don't use regional dialogue
Don't describe characters  
Don't use big paragraphs


Wow. That is a lot of don'ts. And you know what they all boil down to? No writing at all. If you can't do anything listed above, then you can't tell a story at all now can you? If these rules were followed, your story would be a paragraph at best with your characters talking about nothing, and they would simply "say" everything.

So you know what I have to say about writing rules? Screw them. Don't even think about them at all when you're writing. If you follow the rules then you completely lose what fiction is supposed to be. Fiction is all about telling the truth as you see it and breaking all the rules to tell the story how it wants to be told. I mean, if everyone followed the "rules" of writing, everyone would write the same, which would mean reading would be boring and no one would have a favorite author.

My advice is to ignore all of these rules and write a story how it wants to come out. Maybe it wants to be written in a flowing artsy fashion. Maybe it wants to be terse and to the point. Maybe it wants to move at breakneck speed. Maybe it wants you to linger for a while within its pages. Whatever the case may be, always write the story how it wants to come out.

With that being said, every author does have their own no-no's they try to avoid when writing. Personally I think of none of mine when writing a first draft because it's the story that matters at that point, not the technique. For the majority of writers, their first draft is usually a piece of crap anyway, but that's why revisions were invented. 

When getting into the revision process, I do have things I begin to add or weed out. Mostly I add because I'm a skeleton writer and want to get the scenes out as quickly as possible so I can discover what happens next, so there usually isn't very much in the first draft that makes the characters and their world come alive for the reader. While doing revisions I tend to break almost every rule above in order to make my story come alive and do my best to make the reader feel like they're in the same world as the characters.

In subsequent posts I'll touch on each of the "Don'ts" listed above and why I agree and disagree with every single one. By no means do I claim to be an expert at fiction writing, and this is not a how-to on writing (Stephen King pretty much dominated that in his book ON WRITING). These are simply my humble thoughts and opinions on what I think constitutes good fiction, and readers are more than welcome to share their own and open up discussions.