Tools not rules

So let me repeat, once more: literature not only breaks the rules, but makes us realize that there are none.

Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer

Writing in Reading as a Writer, Francine Prose says she taught creative writing classes using rules until she realized the best writers broke those same rules on their way to creating masterpieces. Anton Chekhov's classic short story "The Lady with the Dog" is famous for breaking rules.

Another writing teacher, Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, puts the focus not on rules but rather on tools. His valuable guidebook for writers of all kinds, amateurs and professionals alike, is Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer, published in 2006. The word essential in the subtitle is unfortunate, for it implies something mandatory, and thus a rule. A tool, on the other hand, is something that may be useful sometimes, but not always. A handyman doesn't necessarily use both a hammer and a screwdriver on every project.

In St. Petersburg I once heard Clark speak on the subject of writing, and he spoke at length on a six-word sentence written by William Shakespeare in Macbeth and discussed early in this book: "The Queen, my lord, is dead." He noted that Shakespeare might have ordered the same six words differently, "The Queen is dead, my lord" or "My lord, the Queen is dead." So what makes Shakespeare's order the best one? Because it places the subject of the sentence near the front, where it usually works best in a clear sentence, and saves the key word, dead, for the end, where it will have the most impact.

Roy Peter Clark

"Order words for emphasis" is the second tool in Clark's toolbox. Others include "Activate your verbs" (but notice Shakespeare chose a passive verb for his sentence), "Fear not the long sentence," "Vary the length of paragraphs," "Work from a plan" and "Learn from your critics."

Clark advises against reading his book in one sitting, although it may be short enough for some readers to accomplish this. A carpenter in training cannot master all the tools in the toolbox at the same time, and neither can a writer in training, and that includes anyone who opens this book. I took his advice and read one chapter a day, but that still may be too quickly to master many of these tools. Many take time both to digest and to implement, such as that one about learning from one's critics. Even the best writers may never master that one.