The closest thing to a rule

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. 

—Somerset Maugham (probably)

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Some thoughts I wrote for a student recently:


If you ever feel your story going down a rabbit hole of wordplay, experimental formatting, layered storytelling . . . pull back and remember that while this can be fun, you don't don’t want it to eclipse the heart of the story. We turn the page because we want to know what happens to a character we care about. It really boils down to that. There really aren’t many rules for writing fiction, but this comes closest to being a universal rule: We turn the page because we want to know what happens to a character we care about.

Yes, there can also be a second and third character we care about.

We don’t have to always like the characters or agree with them. (Just as we don’t always like or agree with the people we care about in real life!)

The world in which they’re operating doesn’t have to be our world, or realistic, though we do have to know the rules of your particular world . . . so we can understand what’s happening to that character we care about.

The characters don’t have to be human: they can be nonhuman animals, spirits, mechanical beings . . .

But we have to believe in them, feel them as 3-dimensional so that it matters to us what happens to them.