You Don’t Need Permission to Break a Writing Rule

There is no shortage of writing advice on the internet. If anything, there is far too much of it.

You can spend an evening watching videos about how to improve your novel and emerge with a list of rules long enough to ensure you never write another word. You must show rather than tell, remove every unnecessary adjective, avoid prologues, begin with action, keep your chapters short, give every character an immediate goal and never use a word ending in “ly” unless you want somebody on Reddit to find you.

Most of this advice began with a sensible idea. The problem is what happens when a useful suggestion is repeated often enough that it starts to sound like a law.

While writing Shadows Before the Dawn, I absorbed an enormous amount of advice. Some came from writing courses and YouTube videos, some from other writers, and some from agents and editors who understood the publishing industry far better than I did. Much of it helped me, but a surprising amount directly contradicted something I had been told five minutes earlier.

The clearest example was “show, don’t tell.” I heard it everywhere, and I tried to follow it. Instead of explaining that two kingdoms distrusted one another, I needed to show that distrust through the way their people spoke and behaved. Rather than telling the reader that a character was frightened, I needed to let them feel it through what the character noticed, thought and did.

That all made sense. Then I began speaking to people about the length of my book.

Shadows Before the Dawn was a large novel, particularly for an unknown author trying to publish his first book. I was told that I needed to cut it substantially, and one suggestion was that I should stop showing so much and simply tell the reader what had happened.

Apparently, I needed to show rather than tell, except when I needed to tell rather than show.

This is the point where writing advice becomes considerably less comforting.

Three judges and three different answers

We discussed contradictory writing advice in an episode of No One Cares You Wrote a Book with our first guest, fantasy and science-fiction author Chantel Burnham.

Chantel told us about submitting the opening chapter of her novel to a writing competition. Her story was set in Scotland, and she had included elements of Scottish dialect in the dialogue. Three judges read the same chapter and offered their professional feedback.

One said there was too much dialect and it made the dialogue difficult to read. Another said there was not enough. The third thought she had used exactly the right amount and should not change anything.

It is difficult to act on feedback when the combined recommendation is to add more, remove some and leave everything precisely as it is.

That story captures the problem with writing advice rather well. We often ask for a definitive answer, but the people answering are still readers. They bring their own preferences, expectations and experiences to the page. Even knowledgeable readers can disagree completely about the same piece of writing.

The answer cannot be to ignore all criticism and declare yourself a misunderstood genius. That approach is certainly easier on the ego, but it is unlikely to improve the book. The answer is to understand what a piece of advice is trying to achieve before deciding whether your story needs it.

“Show, don’t tell” does not mean “never tell”

There are scenes in Shadows Before the Dawn that needed to be shown properly. Important relationships had to develop in front of the reader. Battles needed enough detail to feel dangerous rather than appearing as a short note confirming that everyone had gone off to fight. The decisions that changed a character’s path required time, consequence and space on the page.

Other things simply needed to be explained.

Not every journey requires three chapters of aching feet and declining food supplies. Not every piece of history needs to become a flashback, and a character does not have to stare meaningfully into the distance while remembering an event that the narrator could have explained in two sentences.

If everything is shown, nothing is given particular weight. The small moments expand until they occupy the same amount of space as the events that actually change the story. A novel becomes longer, the pace slows and the reader may begin to suspect that reaching the next kingdom will take roughly as long as building a real one.

Telling is one of the ways a writer controls pace. It moves us across time, connects scenes and gives the reader information without forcing them to experience every moment required to obtain it. Showing allows us to slow down when the experience itself matters.

The advice is not wrong. It is incomplete.

“Show, don’t tell” is useful when it reminds a writer not to explain away every emotion, conflict or important event. It becomes unhelpful when it makes them afraid to tell the reader anything at all.

Learn the rule before you break it

During the episode, Chantel compared writing to Picasso’s art. Before Picasso could distort the human face in a way that became unmistakably his own, he had to understand how it was structured in the first place. He learned the fundamentals before choosing what to change.

Writing works in much the same way. Rules help us recognise the foundations of a story. They teach us why a scene needs purpose, why a character needs agency and why pages of uninterrupted exposition can test even the most committed fantasy reader.

The difficulty is that social media tends to remove the explanation and preserve only the command.

“Consider whether this prologue is necessary” becomes “never write a prologue.” “Adverbs can weaken an imprecise verb” becomes “delete every adverb.” “Readers need a reason to continue” becomes “someone must be murdered on the first page.”

The shorter version fits more comfortably into a video titled Five Things You Must Stop Doing as a Writer, but it leaves out the part that is actually useful. It tells you what to do without helping you understand why you might do it.

Once you understand what a rule is protecting, you can decide whether breaking it creates a problem. A slow opening may be exactly right for a story built around atmosphere, but it still needs to give the reader a reason to remain. A long description may create a powerful sense of place, but it should not appear because the author spent three days researching medieval drainage and refuses to let that time go to waste.

The question is not whether you followed the rule. The question is whether the choice works.

Fantasy comes with additional rules

Fantasy writers inherit an entire collection of genre-specific instructions. Do not introduce too many invented words. Explain the magic clearly. Do not explain the magic too clearly. Avoid enormous books if you are a new author, despite the fact that many fantasy readers seem perfectly happy to carry a novel heavy enough to be used in home defence.

Some of these warnings are worth hearing. A reader cannot care about an invented kingdom if they are still trying to remember whether its name refers to a country, a person or a type of ceremonial spoon. A magic system becomes frustrating when its limitations change whenever the characters need to escape. Worldbuilding can overwhelm the story when every conversation turns into a guided historical tour.

However, fantasy also depends on unfamiliarity. We enter these books because we want to encounter places, creatures and ideas that do not exist in our own world. Removing everything that might briefly confuse a reader would make the story easier to understand, but it could also remove the very thing that makes the world worth visiting.

I had to decide which parts of the accepted advice served Shadows Before the Dawn and which would turn it into a different book. I could not make every reader happy. Some people want magic to be explained like a branch of physics, while others prefer it to remain mysterious. Some enjoy a slow journey through a detailed world, and others would like the characters to reach the battle before they have forgotten why it started.

There is no version that satisfies all of them.

Trusting your gut is not the same as ignoring everyone

“Trust your gut” sounds wonderfully simple until several people tell you that your favourite chapter is not working.

Writers need confidence because writing a novel is, on some level, a fairly unreasonable act. You are spending hundreds or thousands of hours creating something with no guarantee that anybody will read it. To continue, you have to believe the story is worth finishing long before you have much evidence to support that belief.

That confidence can also make criticism difficult to hear.

Chris once told me that he could not understand why a particular character was in my book and suggested that I remove her. I knew she would become important later in the series, so I did not follow his advice. However, the reader did not know what I knew. From his position, she appeared occasionally, did something mildly entertaining and then disappeared again while the main story continued without her.

Removing her was not the right solution, but the problem he had identified was real.

I gave her more agency and allowed her importance to emerge earlier. The character remained, but she earned her place in the first book rather than relying on plans that existed only in my head.

That experience taught me something I have returned to often: feedback can identify the correct problem while offering the wrong solution. The writer’s job is not to obey every suggestion. It is to understand why the suggestion was made.

Sometimes you will still decide not to change anything. A reader may simply want a different kind of book. Their dislike is genuine, but that does not mean the story has failed.

Trusting your gut means knowing what you are trying to create well enough to recognise the difference.

Rules are tools, not instructions

The most useful writing advice gives you another way to examine your work. It allows you to ask better questions.

Am I showing this moment because the reader needs to experience it, or because I am afraid to summarise? Is this description building the world, or am I protecting a paragraph I happen to like? Does the prologue create a question the reader wants answered, or is it a history lesson wearing a dramatic cloak? Is this character quiet and mysterious, or have I simply forgotten to give them something to do?

A rule cannot answer those questions for you. It can only remind you to ask them.

That is why two writers can receive the same advice and make completely different choices. One manuscript needs to lose thirty thousand words. Another needs more room to breathe. One opening should move faster. Another needs to slow down long enough for the reader to care about what is happening.

Writing advice becomes dangerous when it replaces judgement rather than supporting it.

I still listen to other writers. I still watch discussions about craft and pay attention when several readers encounter the same problem. I have no intention of deciding that publishing one book has placed me beyond criticism, particularly when writing has a reliable way of exposing how much you still do not know.

But I no longer assume that every confident instruction is a rule my book has broken.

You do not need permission to write a prologue, create an unusual magic system, use an adverb or spend more than three sentences describing something that matters. You are also allowed to tell the reader that three weeks passed without documenting every meal consumed along the way.

You simply need to understand what the accepted rule was trying to prevent, consider whether that problem exists in your work and make the choice deliberately.

You don’t need permission to break a writing rule.

You just need to know why you’re breaking it.