It doesn’t matter what the industry is, there is always contradictory advice out there in the world. Designers are sick of white and greige, says one article. Yet in another article I read that the Panton color of the year is Cloud Dancer which I saw described as a shade of white.
Eeny, meeny, miny, mo . . . writing advice is just as varied and contradictory.
- Never use sentence fragments.
- Use sentence fragments to create emphasis.
- A paragraph must have at least 3 sentences.
- A single word can be a paragraph. (Not sure what I mean?)
- Crash!
- Don’t use exclamation marks.
So how do you navigate this mess? First things first, take a close at the various pieces of advice you've received on your latest project. Consider who told you what. Not every piece of advice is equally valuable, and a lot of that depends on who gave the advice to you.
That last one may feel a little harsh, but I’ve been in critique groups with people that I wish I could mute, especially when new writers are around. One author wrote only young adult literature which she actually knew very well. But she was equally opinionated about picture books and early readers. Not every one knows every form and this can make their advice suspect.
Another person I was in a critique group with had been trapped in time. When giving advice, she frequently cited well known books published in the mid-1930s. If you want to sell today, take advice from people whose ideas are based on the current industry.
So whose advice matters? If the advice comes from your editor, it matters. Probably. Most of my books are work-for-hire. While I will periodically dig in my heels, I buy this privilege by giving in to things that aren’t that important to me. I may be the queen of the sentence fragment and the wee short paragraph in my fiction but I give in and do it my editor’s way on nonfiction work-for-hire.
Last but not least, if you break a rule, take a hard look at the piece of writing you've produced. Does it work? Maybe you are breaking the rule to create emphasis. Maybe the rule is valid for narrative but you are breaking it in writing dialogue.
And it works.
I’m not going to say that you should always ignore the rules. Sometimes they are there for a good reason (See Butt in Chair). But there are other times you will discover that they aren’t rules as much as suggestions and that you can get away with doing things your way.
It just has to work.
--SueBE
To get a free copy of Sue’s book, What to Do When Your Book Is Banned, subscribe to her newsletter, One Writer’s Journey, here.
Sue Bradford Edwards' is the author of over 80 books for young readers.
- To find out more about her writing, visit her site and blog.
She is also the instructor for 3 WOW classes which begin on the first Monday of every month. She teaches:
