Writers in the Storm

by Ellen Buikema

Sometimes taking a walk on the wild side, stepping outside the writing norms, can lead to great results. Here’s why ignoring writing rules can lead to interesting works.

First, Know the Rules Before You Break Them

The main elements are:

• Clarity and Coherence: Ideas are easy to understand and flow logically.
• Grammar and Syntax: Sentences and punctuation are used correctly.
• Structure: Have a clear introduction, body, and conclusion.
• Tone: Use a tone that your readers expect based upon the story’s purpose.

Reasons to Break Those Rules

Breaking the Norms for Effect

Breaking writing norms is best done as a deliberate choice to strengthen the power of your writing. Consider a personal narrative. Using unusual sentence structures can mirror an experience, especially for chaotic exploits.

How to Break the Rules

Very short sentences give a feeling of urgency. “I said stop!” So does using an action verb before the subject instead of the more common Subject, verb, object.  “Watch out for those buzzy, candy-filled kids!”

Think about the reason you’re writing and what you want to get across. If straying from norms serves a purpose, it’s worth trying.

Engaging and Distinctive Voice

A unique voice can make your writing shine. When you stick to the norms, your writing won’t stand out. Breaking the rules to create a distinctive style that allows your readers to relate on a personal level. For example, blog posts can benefit from a conversational, more personal tone that doesn’t strictly follow formal writing rules.

How to Break the Rules

Write as if you are having a conversation with a friend. Use colloquialisms, contractions, and a relaxed voice to make your writing feel real and keep your readers engaged.

“For years, I’ve kept my two worlds separate.

There’s Jenny, the fiction writer, lover of craft, believer in the power of story. And there’s Jen, the Storyselling Sherpa, who helps businesses articulate their difference so they can build trust and increase revenue.

I’ve never really blended the two.

But in 2023, while spending long hours in a chemo chair, wondering whether I’d get through to the other side, something became very clear: Life is too short to do work you don’t believe in.”  —  Jenny Hansen

Enhanced Emotional Impact

Now and then, breaking the rules can boost the emotional impact of your writing. You can create a sense of urgency by using unconventional formats or grammar. For instance, using sentence fragments or varied punctuation can control rhythm, understanding of the sentences, heighten emotions, and add tension more effectively than following traditional rules for writing.

How to Break the Rules

Use short, impactful sentences for suspense and a sense of urgency. Play with punctuation to create drama or rhythm. “For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.”  —  Earnest Hemingway

Genre Shifts

Readers have different expectations, depending on the genre. For instance, a reader of romance novels expects a happy ending.

What’s considered a norm in one genre might be uncommon in another. Fantasy and science fiction genres often alter the rules with the creation of imaginative worlds and invented languages.

How to Break the Rules

As part of research, read several genre-specific stories to get a feel for what the authors composed. See if their methods/ideas are a good fit for your narrative, regardless of traditional writing rules.

J.R.R. Tolkien, who’s Elvish is my favorite invented language, is said to have developed languages for fun. This interesting article is about the topic of inventing fictional languages.

Innovative Perspectives

Rule breaking can change your paradigm, leading to new perspectives and fresh ideas. Nontraditional approaches might unlock creative problem-solving.

How to Break the Rules

Challenge existing perspectives. Experiment with different viewpoints, even if they are very different from established norms.

The Improbability of Love, by Hannah Rothschild, is told from the viewpoint of a painting.

Reader Engagement

Writing outside of the norm can make readers curious. Readers may be more interested in a story that invites them to engage in new ways, making the reading experience memorable.

How to Break the Rules

Weave interactive elements into your writing. Create a narrative that encourages readers to think and engage with the story’s content. Try interactive narratives in your story. Have alternate endings.

Here are 20 classic novels that almost had different endings.

An interesting story with many possible alternatives is Pretty Little Mistakes by Heather McElhatton, with more than 150 possible endings.

Unleash Creativity

Letting go of rigid rules allows for more creativity. For example, Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs, with a nonlinear and disjointed narrative, reflecting the protagonist's addiction and fragmented consciousness. And Mark Z. Danielson's House of Leaves by Michael Seidlinger who’s novel is known for its unusual layout.

Varied:

• Words per page
• Text direction, sometimes sideways
• Pages filled with footnotes

 All reflecting the confusing, labyrinth-like nature of the house.

How to Break the Rules

Try experimenting with non-linear storytelling. Let thoughts and ideas flow in a stream-of-consciousness fashion even if it means ignoring standard grammar rules.

Final Thoughts

Writing norms and conventions have their place, however breaking the rules can lead to great results. Defying traditional rules can set up new and different possibilities for your writing.

Get feedback from your Beta readers on how the broken rule sounds. That can help determine if you’ve found your writing voice.

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About Ellen

Author, speaker, and former teacher, Ellen L. Buikema has written Parenting ... A Work in Progress, non-fiction for parents, and The Adventures of Charlie Chameleon chapter book series with stories encouraging the development of empathy—sprinkling humor wherever possible. Her Works in Progress are The Hobo Code, YA historical fiction and The Crystal Key, MG Magical Realism/ Sci-Fi, a glaze of time travel.

Find her at https://ellenbuikema.com or on Amazon.

Top Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

by Joseph Lallo

If you’d asked me a few years ago to define myself as an author, I probably would have called myself a novelist. (Actually, I probably would have argued with you about whether or not I was an author because of impostor syndrome issues that we won’t get into here.) Regardless of how I would have answered in the past, though, I can’t ignore that a large part of my writing time and at this point the bulk (by title count) of my literary output has been in the form of short stories. I never would have predicted this would be the case.

For one thing, keeping things short is not a strength of mine. For another, short stories are a bit of a puzzle when it comes to things like marketing. But time makes fools of us all, and I’ve developed a genuine affection for short-form writing. It offers unique opportunities, and lends itself to some inventive methods of composition that can really shake up a writing process and keep things feeling fresh. What have I learned? Let’s get into it!

Short Is Sweet Method

It is always good to start with “why” before you go into “how.” Why would you dabble in short stories? Well, speed, for starters. It may shock you to discover this, but short stories are short. When I’m firing on all cylinders on a writing project, my daily word quota is on the order of 3000 words. That means a properly planned short story (or one where I really hit my stride while pantsing it) can be a one-day affair.

In a business where it’s not out of the ordinary to take weeks or months to finish a piece, getting a first draft in the “done” column in a few hours is a real shot in the arm, even if revisions might extend that a bit.

Short stories are low stakes, too. A wise man once said that grapes are the fruit of opportunity. If you get a bad one, who cares? There’s always a bunch more waiting for you. Short stories are the same way. You certainly can labor over every sentence, but you can just as easily cut loose and even get a little experimental, because a short story is a small-time investment. For you that means if it doesn’t satisfy you, who cares, it was a breeze to create. And if a reader doesn’t like it, they don’t feel betrayed by having squandered hours of precious free time reading it.

I could go into detail about how shorts are well-suited to readers who are accustomed to social media-length posts, or how shorter things are better suited to giveaways or shares on your blog, but what I’d rather talk about today is the methods I use to generate short stories.

Variations on a Theme Method

I recently released the fourth in my series of short story collections, Paradoxes and Dragons. As the name would suggest, the collections tend to have stories that contain fire-breathers and time travelers. Earlier I established that short stories are a small-time investment. Whereas I’d be inclined to think long and hard about the specific angle of an idea that I’d want to focus a full novel on, I don’t have to limit myself nearly as much with a short story.

It is hardly rare for me to muse to myself–for example–that I’d like to write a take on a fairy tale. Maybe something that plays with the tropes of the genre a bit. Rather than committing to a single interpretation, I challenge myself to construct an array of stories that are variations. I’ll list out, in this example, aspects of the fairy tales that I find interesting or otherwise genre defining.

Princesses, knights, dragons, wizards, magic, narrators, explicit lessons to be learned, etcetera. Then I’ll start grouping them up into potential ideas.

• What if the dragon is the knight, one who thinks he’s playing out the fairy tale playbook by “rescuing” a princess from her palace?
• What if the narrator starts to lose control of things, and genre-savvy characters object to the plot’s trajectory?

In no time at all, I’ll have a list of premises.

As often as not, I’ll stumble upon ideas that hadn’t even occurred to me at the beginning of the process. And I can pick my favorite to develop, or just throw caution to the wind and write all of them. It’s astonishingly effective at getting the juices flowing. But it invites the observation: Isn’t that just a way to brainstorm short stories, not necessarily a method for writing short stories?

Why, yes! Aren’t you a keen observer of detail? Once you have ideas that are well-suited to shorts, you can move on to the “short specific” construction methods I’ve come to favor, such as…

Just The Intro Method

When you only have a few thousand words to tell a story, you can’t always fit a full plot. Short stories and serials are among the few story formats that will let you get away with that, so I often indulge myself in a little bit of “let the reader fill in the blanks.” Let’s go back to one of those examples from above.

Suppose your characters stage a revolt on your narrator. It would feel awfully rushed or crowded to blaze through the introduction of the characters, the establishment of the norm, the breaking of the norm, the battle of wills, and the new normal of the narrator adjusting to the genre-savvy characters, then sending them on an adventure in this curious new situation. So, who says you have to?

When I’m working in short stories, I feel it is entirely acceptable to really sink my teeth into an introduction or premise, then hurl the characters off into the reader’s imagination with more of a trajectory than an actual plot. You’re not fully exploring the story. You’re inciting it and giving your audience a chance to imagine that world for themselves.

Doing things this way allows you to write concepts that might not withstand scrutiny for more than a few chapters. Alternatively, it might leave your audience wanting more without necessarily doing a cliffhanger. It also leaves the concept open for expansion and sequels. And all the while, it gets in and out before an idea overstays its welcome. Of course, if you’re more of an “en medias res” sort of writer…

Just the Climax Method

Have you ever listened to a song and imagined a whole stirring, exciting scene in your head? Have you ever then had the heartache of realizing there was no place within any of your existing settings where such a scene would fit? Now, you can always engage in the time-honored tradition of creating an entire new setting just to use that scene. Lord knows I have. But if you don’t want to spend months of your life to justify a music video, you can use a short story to get right to the good stuff.

There’s a bit of a trick to doing this well. When you’re just writing the intro, your story starts where a normal story would. If you are writing a longer tale that begins en medias res, you will have time to flesh out the mess the reader has been dropped into sight unseen. A short story that skips to the climax needs to be a little more helpful in establishing character, setting, and motivation during the action. This can be a pitfall, as the easiest way to do this is to just tell the reader explicitly. But that’s almost certainly going to be a “telling rather than showing” situation, which is frequently a no-no.

Methods for Starting in the Middle

The way I handle situations like this involves, first, writing all that awesome action and intrigue as though who, where, and why didn’t matter in the slightest. The why will usually work itself out along the way–rare is the person who’s doing something worthwhile that doesn’t at least hint about their reasons for doing it through their words or actions. And maybe that’s enough. “Who” can sometimes be as simple as “the protagonist” in the reader’s mind. And “where” doesn’t need to be more detailed than the descriptions peppered through the action.

When you’re done writing and give it a read through, though, you may find yourself wishing you knew a little more about this or that. Those questions (and only those questions) are the ones you should go back and hint at. Writing in this way gives you a very stripped down, efficient bit of action, and efficient writing is something that most stories can benefit from, so this in particular is good practice for your longer writing.

But if the action isn’t the thing that excites you about a project. What if it’s the idea? Well then…

Just the Concept Method

Kissing cousins with the idea of “Just the Intro” is “Just the Concept.” This is what I call my stories that hinge upon a character or idea so heavily that there isn’t even necessarily a plot. For example, one of my stories is nothing more than a few thousand words of data log from a space probe that’s launched in search of intelligent life. It would be an awfully dull story if I were to try to stretch this concept and structure out to a full-length novel, but for a few thousand words I am able to simply gather up all of the juiciest little quips and observations an artificial intelligence might have during such a mission.

Another common form the concept story takes for me is an interview with an interesting character. Like the Climax idea, this is good practice. A concentrated dose of character building can help teach you to deepen and widen the inner life and history of your characters in your novel-length works. Just write a conversation between two people wherein the characters chat about what makes one or both of them special. Worst case, you’ve textured a one-time-use character. Best case, you’ve assembled the skeleton of a new protagonist.

Re-Read, revise, and release!

If you use one of the methods and forms above, I’m confident you can produce something interesting and bite-sized in no time at all. All that remains now is to clean it up and send it out. I mentioned above that revision can extend the short story’s development time by a bit, but this is where things can wildly diverge. If you’re happy with the story being little more than a toy for your brain, a quick read-through, a pass with a spell-checker, and a reformat into an ebook or manuscript is all it might need.

For other works, you might find yourself carving minute facets into the jewel of the story and producing something worthy of submission to a magazine or anthology. You can spend as much time as you like in the post-production of a piece, but nothing matches the speed of the production itself when you’re working with short stories.

Try for yourself! The only thing you have to lose is an afternoon, and you might just get a killer short out of it!

Have you used any of these methods? Tell us about it in the comments.

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About Joseph

Joseph R. Lallo hails from Bayonne, NJ--the fabled birthplace of George R. R. Martin. He has written dozens of novels and novellas, including the international bestseller The Book of Deacon and the critically acclaimed Free-Wrench series. In addition to writing, he has helped run the Six Figure Authors podcast with Lindsay Buroker and Andrea Pearson. Find Joseph and his books on his website at bookofdeacon.com.

Top Image via Pixabay.

Querying does something strange to writers. We can spend months, sometimes years, writing and revising a book until we finally reach the point where we believe it's ready. Then we send it out into the world, collect enough rejections, and start wondering if we were wrong all along.

That's the part of querying nobody talks about enough.

Rejection doesn't just sting. If we aren't careful, it can slowly change the way we see our own work. This agent doesn't want my book becomes Nobody wants my book, which eventually becomes the much more dangerous, Maybe my book isn't very good.

I'm about to test that theory firsthand.

It has been twelve years since I queried a book.

Twelve. Years.

The last time I did this, I was at a completely different place in my writing career. Since then, I've published seven books. I've won awards. I've worked as a developmental editor. I've spent years helping other authors figure out what isn't working in their manuscripts and, more importantly, how to fix it.

You'd think all that experience would make querying easier.

It does not.

Apparently, the tiny voice in a writer's head that whispers, What if everyone hates it? has an impressive shelf life. The anxiety I felt twelve years ago when I hit “send” on my very first query is back. And this time, I might actually have more to lose.

Because I really, really believe in this book.

Which means before I send a single query, I've had to decide something important:

Querying gets to help determine what happens next with my book. It doesn't get to determine what I believe about it.

Why Querying Feels Different This Time

There's a strange thing that happens when you've been writing for a long time. You become much better at seeing everything that's wrong with your own work.

Occupational hazard.

Being a developmental editor has only made that worse. I know what sagging middles look like. I know when character motivation isn't strong enough. I know when emotional beats haven't been earned, when tension disappears from a scene, and when a writer is desperately trying to tell something the story should be showing.

Unfortunately, my editor brain doesn't politely clock out when I open one of my own manuscripts.

So when I say I believe in this book, I'm not saying I think it's flawless.

I've torn it apart. Rebuilt pieces of it. Questioned choices. Rewritten scenes. Stared at sentences until words stopped looking like words. I know there are things another editor could make better. There always are.

But I also know what this book is.

I know what I wanted it to be. I know what I wanted readers to feel. And somewhere during all those revisions, I reached that elusive point where I could look at the story and think: Yes. That's it. That's the book I wanted to write.

Which is exactly why querying it scares the hell out of me.

Because there's a difference between knowing rejection is part of publishing and repeatedly watching people reject something you love.

Before Querying, Decide What You Believe

The problem with querying is that writers receive a lot of answers without receiving much information.

An agent might pass because they don't connect with the voice. They might already represent something similar. They might love the premise but not know how to position it. The market might be shifting. Their list might be full. They might simply like the book but not love it enough to spend the next several years championing it.

Or maybe they just don't like it.

All of those possibilities usually arrive in our inbox looking remarkably similar: No.

Get enough of those, and it's very easy for the meaning to change. This agent doesn't want my book becomes Agents don't want my book. And eventually: Maybe my book isn't very good.

That's the part of querying I'm thinking about most as I head back into it. Not the query letter. Not the synopsis. Not even the agent list. I'm thinking about how to protect my relationship with a book I love while repeatedly handing it to strangers and asking them to judge it.

And I've realized the best time to figure that out isn't after the rejections start arriving. It's before I send the first query.

Before querying this book, I want to be able to answer one question:

Why do I believe this manuscript is ready?

Not perfect. Ready.

Those are very different standards.

I believe this is one of the strongest books I've written. I believe I've grown tremendously as a writer since the last time I queried. I've revised it. I've questioned it. I've applied everything I've learned from writing my own books and helping other authors develop theirs.

Most importantly, I believe I've written the story I intended to write.

That's my answer.

Another writer's answer might be completely different. Maybe it's the response from beta readers. Maybe it's finally fixing the structural problem that plagued the manuscript for three drafts. Maybe it's knowing you've taken the book as far as your current skills can take it.

Whatever the answer is, figure it out before you query.

Because once rejection enters the equation, it's remarkably good at moving the goalposts.

Ask Querying the Right Question

There's another question I'm asking myself: What exactly am I asking the querying process to determine?

This one changed everything for me. I'm not querying because I need an agent to tell me whether my book is good. I'm querying because I believe there's a chance it's good enough for an agent to fall in love with it, believe they can sell it, and want to build something with me.

That sounds like a subtle distinction. I don't think it is.

One puts an agent in the position of validating my work. The other asks whether we're the right business and creative match.

Agents aren't grading manuscripts on some universal scale of literary worthiness. They're making decisions about what they love, what they want to represent, what fits their list, and what they believe they can sell.

So, when an agent says no, the answer is: This isn't the book I want to represent. That's all I actually know. Anything I add after that is coming from me.

Know When Querying Is Over

I've also decided I'm not going to query indefinitely. I'm giving myself three months.

During those three months, I'm going to give traditional publishing a real chance. I'm going to research agents, send queries, deal with the waiting, obsessively refresh my inbox even though I absolutely know better, and probably swear more than once.

If the right person says yes, fantastic. If that doesn't happen, I already know what I'm going to do. I'll publish the book myself.

Your plan doesn't have to look anything like mine.

You might query for six months. A year. You might revise and query again. You might shelve the manuscript and write another one. You might decide traditional publishing is the only path you want for this particular book.

The important part isn't having a Plan B.

It's answering the question: What will I do if querying doesn't give me the answer I want?

Because I'll keep querying until somebody says yes isn't really a plan.

At some point, we have to decide what comes next. Having that answer before I start makes querying feel less like surrendering control of my book and more like what it actually is: exploring one possible path for it.

Querying has a job. Its job is to find out whether there's an agent and a traditional publishing path for this book. Its job is not to determine whether the book deserves to be published.

What Querying Rejection Doesn't Get to Decide

There's one final question I'm asking myself before I send that first query. And this might be the most important one. What will I refuse to let rejection convince me of?

I won't let it convince me that writing this book was a waste of time. I won't let it convince me that everything I've learned about storytelling somehow disappeared while I was writing it. And I won't let it convince me that I was foolish for believing in it.

Could I receive feedback that makes me reconsider something in the manuscript? Absolutely.

Could several agents point toward the same problem and make me take another look? Of course.

Believing in your book doesn't mean refusing to learn anything about it. There's a big difference between protecting your confidence and plugging your ears while screaming, My book is perfect!

It's not. No book is. But useful feedback is different from allowing the accumulation of no to become evidence that the book itself has no value.

That's the line I'm trying to draw before I begin.

Four Questions to Answer Before Querying

So, if you're getting ready to enter the query trenches too, maybe don't start with your agent spreadsheet.

Start here:

1. Why do I believe this manuscript is ready?
2. What exactly am I asking the querying process to determine?
3. What will I do if the answer is no?

And finally:

• What will I refuse to let rejection convince me of?

Write the answers down.

Because the version of you who hasn't received a single rejection yet might be a much more reliable judge of your manuscript than the version of you who has opened fifteen form rejections in three weeks and is eating cookies over the sink while reconsidering every life choice that brought you here.

That person should probably not be making major career decisions.

Don't Let Querying Change How You See Your Book

Maybe that's the biggest thing I've learned from being on both sides of the manuscript.

As an editor, I can tell a writer what isn't working for me. I can point to structural problems, character issues, pacing problems, missed opportunities, and places where I think a story could become stronger.

But I can't tell another writer whether their story deserves to exist. Agents can't either. Editors can't. Reviewers can't. Readers can't.

They can decide whether they want it. Whether they enjoyed it. Whether they connected with it. Whether they're willing to invest their time, money, or career in it. Those opinions matter. Sometimes they should even change what we do next.

They just shouldn't be allowed to rewrite everything we believed about our work before we asked for them.

So, before I send my first query, I'm trying to remember the writer who finished this book. The one who read the final chapters and knew she'd written the story she'd been trying to write. I want to remember what I love about it before my inbox gets a vote.

Because maybe an agent will fall in love with this book.

I hope one does.

But if I reach the end of my querying window without that yes, the manuscript won't suddenly contain weaker characters. The romance won't become less compelling. The scenes I love won't somehow disappear from the page.

It will still be the same book. And I will still believe in it.

I'm not querying because I need someone else's permission to do that. I'm querying because I already believe in this book. Now I'm going to find out who else might believe in it, too.

How do you protect your confidence in a book while querying it?

About Jenn Windrow

Jenn Windrow once attempted to write a “normal” book—and promptly bored herself into a coma. So now she sticks to what she does best: writing snarky, kick-butt heroines, broody supernatural men, and more sexual tension than a vampire in a blood bank.

She’s the award-winning author of the Alexis Black novels and the Redeeming Cupid series, where the undead never sparkle and the drama is always delicious. Jenn moonlights as a developmental editor, helping other writers wrangle their wild plots and tangle-free prose.

When not arguing with her characters or muttering about Oxford commas, she can be found binge-watching trash TV, wrangling the slew of animals that live in her house (husband and teenagers included), or telling herself she’ll only have one more cookie.

You can find her at jennwindrow.com or lurking on social media where she pretends to be an extrovert.

Photo by Buddha Elemental 3D on Unsplash