I have to put a post up… actually I have 3 posts to put up, of the 22 that hold the house up. I did concrete in 2 more today, so feel a bit like Lady Godiva seeing the edge of the town: “At last I near my close.” It’s quite a physical pastime, and exhaustion doesn’t help my writing. I’m creeping towards the close in the current book, where the biology is delighting me. I… um confess. I do pants a bit on biological details, and sometimes they overtake the entire story and change it.
I’m kind of breaking my own rule here of not pantsing. I hope it works out. The point I want to make is even the most widespread ‘rules’ can be broken – and still have a successful book, popular with readers. Yes, I have been listening to the start of PROJECT HAIL MARY on the way in, to ambulance training. Weir IS breaking many of the ‘rules’. He plainly has the skill to get away with it – and be popular.
There is no inviolate writing rule: except the reader must not hate it… Because if they do, you write for an audience of one.
Mad Genius Club 
3 responses to “Breaking the rules”
I’d like to say that the one rule is “Thou shalt not bore thy reader,” but having plowed through several chapters of highbrow, NYT bestseller literary-fiction, I’m not sure that’s a rule. (Granted, I was not the intended audience, so YMMV).
Wasteth not thy reader’s precious tyme lest ye be hurled from their presence with force, author. I am getting more and more irritated with highly rated stories that know not the basics of pacing, three act structure, and even genre relative reader cookies. I suspect bottage in the ratings system of (mumblety place), but then I am a suspicious soul.
Some rules are easier to break than others. Like don’t start a story with the character waking up.
Whack him with a surprise, or even disorientation, and it works.