5 writing rules you should break

warning, there might be some “controversial” takes here

in it for the plot

Jun 09, 2026

Hi friends,

Hope you’re doing fantastic.

Should we talk about something as entertaining as rules? Or rather, some that I want to pick a part ever so slightly.

Every writer learns rules. Show don’t tell. Write every day. Kill your darlings. Write what you know.

It’s easy to assume that every published author follows them, and that’s why their books exist and ours don’t.

Here’s the truth: most writing rules are misunderstood, overapplied, or just wrong. Let’s dive into what they are and when to break them.

Warning, there might be some “controversial” takes here, so I’m keen to hear your opinions about these and if you agree.

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1. “Show, don’t tell”

The rule: Don’t tell the reader what a character feels, show it through action, dialogue, and physical sensation. Instead of “she was nervous,” write the bitten nails, the pacing, the way she can’t finish her sentences.

Why you should break it: Showing is not automatically better than telling. It depends on what the moment needs. Sometimes three paragraphs of physical sensation is exactly right. Other times it’s self-indulgent, slow, and frankly exhausting to read. Not every emotion in your novel deserves a close-up.

What to do instead: Ask yourself what the moment requires. A pivotal scene where your character finally breaks down? Show it. A transition where you need to convey that six miserable months passed? Tell it. “She was heartbroken for a long time after that” is four words. It trusts the reader. Sometimes that’s the right call. Show when it earns its space. Tell when it doesn’t.

2. “Write every day”

The rule: “Real” writers write every single day, no exceptions. If you miss a day, you lose momentum. The habit is everything.

Why you should break it: This rule was designed for people whose lives are structured around writing. If you have a full-time job, a family, or any kind of life outside your desk, “write every day or you’re failing” is a fast track to burnout and shame spirals. You miss one day, then two, and suddenly you’ve decided you’re not a real writer, all because you didn’t hit an arbitrary daily quota.

What to do instead: Build a consistent rhythm that fits your actual life. That might be four mornings a week, or every weekday on your lunch break, or three focused sessions on the weekend. What matters is that you show up regularly enough to stay in the story. A writer who turns up three times a week for two years will finish a book. A writer who burns out trying to write every day won’t.

3. “Kill your darlings”

The rule: Don’t get precious about a line, a scene, or a character just because you love it. If it doesn’t serve the story, cut it.

Why you should break it: This is good advice that’s been taken too far. It was never meant to mean “distrust everything you love about your writing.” But that’s how many writers have internalised it, and as a result they cut the best things they’ve ever written. The strange, specific, idiosyncratic lines that only they could have written. The scenes that feel too weird, too personal, too much. They sand it all down until what’s left is smooth and safe and forgettable.

What to do instead: Change the question. Instead of “do I love this?” ask “does this serve the story?” Those are different questions, and the answer can be both. Your darlings are often darlings for a reason, they’re the moments where your actual voice broke through. Keep them unless they genuinely don’t belong, not just because they make you feel something.

4. “Write what you know”

The rule: Write from your own experience. Stick to what’s familiar. Don’t pretend to understand lives or worlds you haven’t lived.

Why you should break it: Taken literally, this rule would mean no historical fiction, no fantasy, no science fiction, basically no imagination. It would mean a working-class writer couldn’t write about wealth, or that you’d need to have lost a child before you could write a grieving parent. That’s not a rule.

What to do instead: Write what you know emotionally. You don’t need to know what it’s like to live in Tudor England. You do need to know what it’s like to be afraid, to want something desperately, to make a choice you can’t take back. That interior knowledge is what you bring. Research handles the surface details, the clothes, the language, the setting. Your job is to make the characters feel true from the inside out.

5. “Start with action”

The rule: Don’t open with backstory, description, or a character waking up and looking in a mirror. Something has to happen from page one.

Why you should break it: This rule has produced a lot of thrillers that open with someone bleeding in a ditch… and nothing else. Readers don’t stay for action. They stay for characters they’re invested in, and investment takes a few pages to build.

What to do instead: Your opening doesn’t need action, it needs interest. That can come from a voice so distinctive you’d follow it anywhere, a character with an immediately compelling problem, a world that feels vivid and strange, or a question that demands an answer. Read the opening of Normal People, or Conversations with Friends, or The Secret History, none of them open with a chase scene. They open with a person, a dynamic, an atmosphere.

So at the end of the day, here is my “hot take”..
Learn the rules. Understand why they exist. And then use your own judgement about when they apply.

What do you think of these rules and do you follow them?

Discussion about this post

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