The main character should be at least one or a mix of these 4 things: Likable, Relatable, Understandable, and/or Interesting. What they should never be is Boring.
Regarding characters that don't change -- yes, of course, such characters are well suited to serialized stories like Jack Reacher or James Bond or Sherlock Holmes -- but it's important to remember that, at one time, there was only a single Sherlock Holmes story, a single James Bond novel, a single Jack Reacher novel -- and if those hadn't succeeded, standing on their own, there wouldn't have been more. So those stories, with central characters that don't change, have to work on their own. Obviously, you have characters who, when faced with the challenges of the story, need to change in order to accomplish the ultimate goal, whatever it might be. But there are other stories, ones in which the hero embodies some fundamental moral virtue which the events of the story will test -- and the need is for that character to hold on to whatever those virtues may be in the face of ever-growing obstacles -- and ultimately, it's by holding on -- it's by staying true to his nature, that he ultimately succeeds. And that works in a single story or in a series of stories.
Exactly. In my opinion, characters like Reacher or Sherlock Holmes can be static because they themselves are not what I call "the main driver of interest". The stories are not about them, really, but about the action they participate in or the the mysteries they solve. These are the two remaining "drivers of interest": action and mystery. And when they come to the fore the characters can be static - in fact, sometimes even *should* be, if you want to keep the book reasonably short.
Sometimes an author thinks they are breaking a rule, and are doing something we figured out 5 generations ago doesn't work, with a library of commentary as to why. Life is such a fun cycle xD
@@QEsposito510 "we" here is the general historical community of authors and literary critics. Now, what I wrote is more of a "falsifiable statement" than a rule, so I am afraid it can't be broken. One exercise that is really interesting is taking something that looks "new", or "rule breaking" in pop culture and formula fiction, and then see if anyone did that before, chances are that someone did. One example is starting a story in the middle of it, and finishing before the logical ending, like major characters presented in the middle of an uprising, and then the story finishing up without a wrap up before the uprising being done. Sounds innovative, until you read the Iliad.
Imo all rules can be broken... As long as it's done *well* and with purpose. Can't be breaking rules left and right just for the sake of it. Rules are there for a reason, especially in writing. Nobody's gonna come after u for breaking any of them they're just basically the summary of collected knowledge from generations of writing
And what rules would that be? There are only two rules: - Be interesting - Be understandable If you can achieve that you can do anything. You can easily make head hopping work, have characters that don't change, make static protagonists if other things are interesting and moving, etc.
I would say any rule can be broken, but it's best to understand why they’re rules and why you're breaking it. Just to be different isn't good enough. Hell, I've even seen stories without plots, which is probably one of the more universal rules of story telling, but it can still work. If you want an example of what I mean, Disney's Fantasia (at least most of the shorts in it) is a piece of work without a plot that still works for what it's trying to do. Many poems are writings without plots, etc...
prince myshkin made the same mistake the King of Kings made... "I was ashamed of myself when I realised life was a costume party and I attended with my real face." all the world is a stage...to be ones self...or not to be...that is the question...
Here is how my book measures up. 1. Characters must change - Mostly follows. My protagonist changes, one major supporting character (the villain) changes, and one major supporting character is static. 2. Main character should solve the problem - Breaks. My protagonist fights to the bitter end to solve the problem but ultimately fails. 3. The Protagonist Should Be Active - Follows. My protagonist is very active. 4. The Protagonist Should Be Likable - Follows. My protagonist is a rural homeschooler who means absolutely no harm to anyone. 5. Your Character Should Have Flaws - Somewhat. He's morally straight and narrow, but he's a young guy who's pushed into an extreme situation. The villain starts out good but his flaws cause him to become evil as the story progresses. 6. Don't Head Hop - Conditionally Follows. I change perspective frequently, but it's always got a chapter break to make it clear. 7. Show Don't Tell - Mostly Follows. I describe most events that occur in the story, but there are times when I have long periods of time go by very fast. 8. Don't Switch Point of Views - Follows. It's always third-person limited. 9. Don't Have Too Many Characters - Follows. There's like four or five characters that have more than a couple of pages of spotlight in the novel, with a larger group of small characters. like the villain's henchmen, random people the main character has short-term interactions with, etc.
I agree with everything you said and have broken all 9 rules, especially the head-hop one. I write lit fic and I like writing in third-person omniscient because I like writing ensemble characters. Omniscient gives me a lot of freedom to juggle my 5-7 characters. I organise my head-hops into different paragraphs (my rule is to NEVER head-hop in one paragraph), and always begin the paragraph with the character's name. Richard Powers does this too for The Overstory.
The problem is that many writer do not understand why we have these rules so when they break them it is very often done very poorly. Also many writers do not know how to break these rules so the story work. I think there so little books that break these rules and still it work because it can be hard to do on the too many character rule- you forgot having too many characters can cause the reader not connect to characters bc they are not given time to breath andso they become so flat overall good video
The trick is to learn the rules inside and out so an author knows when and how to break them properly, because there is a proper way to break the rules. In some cases, an author may only need to bend the rules to make their story work. An example would be a villain origin story. To subvert expectations, have it start out as a hero's journey and get the reader to root for the villain. Have them be heroic and interesting and do some good things while planting the seeds for the character flaws that will magnified when they fall and become the villain. Have it when they go through their whole arc and arrive back at to their normal world, nothing is better and everything is worse. Have them go through the whole hero's cycle only to be kicked back down the steps and fall further than where they started. Let them spiral. And when they reach the bottom, let them be so angry and embittered that they rage against the world they tried to help and thrive in and instead try to make it burn. Then parallel the new hero's flaws and story with the villain's to show how similar the two are without having to say anything. Maybe show how close the hero could be to falling down the same path the villain did or give the hero traits that contrast against key points in the villain's personality that caused his fall and show why the hero is different and special. Perhaps you want to keep the villain as the protagonist. Have him go through his fall arc in reverse, overcome the same challenges that kicked him down the first time. Have him overcome the flaws and trials that defeated him before. Then have him go through the hero's journey again to become the hero once more even though they know they could be kicked down again or it might not work out. They do this not because it benefits them, but because it's the right thing to do. There are ways you can play around with story structure to tie into the larger themes of your work while creating something that feels subversive while still adhering to traditional story structures. Basically, the best advice for writers is to craft a story that works. If following the rules makes your story work better, do that. If you need to bend or break the rules to make your story work, do that. Just make your story work. Don't worry too much about it being subversive or innovative; those are passing trends and tacky marketing tricks anyway
The problem is we use the word “rules” which if taken literally means “this is what you are suppose to do” when a better word might be “guidelines or suggestions”
I noticed Stephen King did head hoping in IT, The Tommyknockers, The Stand...And switches POVs in Christine. But, its Stephen King so..... Also, Brett Easton Ellis does the best POV switch of all time IMO in his novel American Psycho near the end for one chapter it goes from first person to third person. It is unexpected and an insane ride.
King does a lot of things which detract from the quality of his work. His success has never been dependent on him being a great writer, he's first and foremost an entertainer and a guy who comes up with creepy concepts.
Head hoping. My rule for my latest novel is to establish a RIGID PECKING ORDER. When two characters are “on camera” the one always gets the Head perspective. So my main always gets the spotlight. Then if she is off camera the pecking order kicks in. During ensemble scenarios i pick one character. If it’s truly important that the reader knows a characters feelings i either create a scene for that character to own, or i have a “human” dialogue where feelings are expressed in an interesting manner. I also use what one character knows to leak world building to the reader without other characters needing to know the same.
My character changed but they did so "off-screen" and the story was set in the dreamscape where people come to feel safe and cozy. You see them feel freed up and more comfortable at the end but you don't really know why because - like everything else in the dream world, nothing matters. It also breaks the "don't 'it was all a dream' the audience" rule. It's episodic though.
About switching from third person to first, check out Immortal Techniques ‘Dance with the Devil’. While it’s a rap, the principles relevant. After pulling off arguably the greatist sick twist in the history of writing- publish or print, he switches to first person for a coda twist. I’m getting teary eyed just thinking about it. You won’t be disappointed.
@@tattoodude8946 A sci- fi fantasy I see? Seeing it involves fallen Angels , a good Segway into a counter apologist, ‘Genetically Modified Sceptic’, position that sci fi is a theology of sorts. The meta theme if you will. I have trouble following sci fi plots, so I’m writing- trying to write, one of my own, that even I can understand.😊
A great book is WE APPY FEW, the story of a hundred year old man telling young Henry 8th his account of the battle of Agincourt. It questions the nature of history, truth, language, and politics. Definitely worth a read.
Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo, a Mexican author, is a good example of a story that switches from first to third person narration. It's one of the most astonishing novels I've ever read. A great example of an unlikeable main character is Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. One of the greatest books ever written! Notes from Underground, by the same author, is another. As for H G Well's War of the Worlds... Wells had a scientific cast of mind, and he recognised that if we were invaded in the manner described in his story, in all likelihood it would be the bacteria and viruses present on our planet which would finish them off. It's probably what would happen, and that makes it a satisfying conclusion.
I was actually thinking about a story in both first and third person - had the plot idea and characters ready, but was unsure when I picked up and read King's Christine for the first time. Great use of it and I was like, "OK - yeah! I can make that work." The funny part was that after I finished Christine, I followed it up with The Amulet of Samarkand by sheer coincidence! I guess the writing gods really want me to write this book in a 1st/3rd person style!
Great video! You should check out Simon Jimenez’s The Spear Cuts Through Water. He brilliantly interweaves first, third AND second person POVs. The frame story is in second person. The main narrative is in third person, but it is interspersed with Greek chorus-like interjections from side characters giving commentary on things or events in the main story. One of the most imaginative and best written books I’ve ever read.
There are no rules in writing, just guidelines and conventions. Here's the rule that comes from that: the greater your skill as a writer, the more you can get away with diverging from convention. Hence, probably the greatest writer of the last two generations, Cormac McCarthy, c could do whatever he wanted. And diverge he did.
Show most of the time but use telling when a character is telling other characters some the reader already witnessed. Transitions are also "telling" but are essential to cover time gaps. You don't need to show a character driving across town unless something important happens on the trip. As for the characters who don't change, they are guides for characters who do change or they change their world in a meaningful way.
I just found your page. You've got the best advice I've seen yet! I agree 100% with the head-hopping. I take great pains to ensure I adhere to one POV, even in a multi-POV book.
Just to be clear, these writers have mastered their craft before they broke the rules. They knew how to make up for their rule breaking so that their stories would still work. If you don’t know how to compensate, your story will fall apart. Reacher works because he changes the lives and opinions of people around him.
YES! Otherwise known as 'the flat arc.' Most main characters in a novel series have them, and they are especially common in the the detective, crime and action/thriller genres, for precisely the reason you state. And you're also right on the first point too. I can't remember who said it first, but there's a great quote that goes something like: "Learn the writing rules to know when, how and why to break them. Break the writing rules to know when, how and why they matter."
You just described the state of literature in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Every one of these rules were broken by the Modernists, such as Conrad, Faulkner, Joyce, and Wolf just over one hundred years ago. These contemporary authors aren't breaking new ground; they are selectively following suit.
Rules are good. Rules give you a ground to stand on. Break the rules only if you really understand them. If you break it and fail, all you'll get to hear is 'We told you so'. Be very sure of what you are doing. And just because you managed to break a rule successfully once, it doesn't mean you can break it all the time.
A way to break the 1st/3rd person rule is to have an in-world narrator. That character is telling you about another character doing stuff, but can interject with their own perspective and opinions.
One of my favorite works is one where the author pretty deliberately breaks probably most of the classic storytelling rules in some of the craziest ways; Homestuck. I know it has a... reputation... (and the fandom even more so), but I definitely recommend it to almost any writer, even if just on the basis that there's nothing else quite like it and it shows how outside-the-box ambitious you can get if you're willing to break the rules. Some people hate it (and honestly, that's a perfectly understandable reaction), but some people (myself included) love it; and you can never really predict which people will be which until they actually read it.
6:15 I really like the way Alexa Donne talks about this rule (show don’t tell). She refers to it as “dramatizing” (showing) vs. “narrating” (telling). And there are times for both. No books truly follow the show don’t tell rule to a T
Thanks for telling me exactly how to not do what people tell me to do lol. Personally I head hop between more than two characters in a scene all the time but I guess that’s because I’m confident I can do it in a way that makes sense for the reader.
Oh, I've broken most of them over the course of my series. The one I break most continuously...and gleefully...is the head hopping commandment. I like Omniscient for the greater opportunity to introduce situational irony. When I delve into another character's mind, I always broadcast which character's mind we're about to delve into by grounding the scene with an action tag beforehand. And I don't do it indiscriminately. Most often it's to show the character's internal turmoil being at odds with what's visible from their composure. I really don't think "show don't tell" should be taught, ever. Teach them how to properly pace scenes, how to transition over moments that don't serve the story's progression. That trite expression serves only to confuse, not clarify; all because some of us were too lazy to be bothered explaining the concept properly.
The rules surrounding the main character, about them having to be rounded, likable, and flawed, can be broken if they're being studied by the story. How would a character with this specific personality deal with this situation, and how would they affect the world and people around them? If the protagonist has to be static, then have them be a catalyst for the setting, plot, and side characters, almost like a plot device rather than a character. For example, characters like the paragon or the antihero are usually stubborn and unchanging, so what happens when they meet each other? On the other hand, the rules about the main character needing to be active or to solve a problem can be broken by exploring the character's inner thoughts or giving them a smaller conflict separate from the overarching narrative. For example, perhaps, while the whole world is going insane, the main character's only goal is to stay sane.
With the many characters one is… you can have as many as you want… if you’ll use them. If you’re just throwing names for characters that will never show up again… then yeah that’s annoying
All of these are more like guidelines than actual rules. However, writers need to understand why they work and why they're so successful before deciding to break them purposefully.
I recently wrote a scene where I head hopped between several people in a single scene. It was for a very chaotic battle. In a way, it was really more like several mini scenes, each having it's own pov. However I combined them all, and it is rapid fire switching from one to the next, to the next. I think it worked very well.
For people that would like to try the 'Switching POVS': read The BoneShard Daughter by Andrea Stewart! Very interesting technically. She incorporates 2 first persons and 3 third persons. However, it still works because the characters start off in different places so it's not confusing.
About "show don't tell" - it is not a rule, it's a big sorry mess. People cannot even agree on what it means.... As for the variation mentioned here, though (scenes, not summaries) - well, if a rule is being broken *all the time* , what does it say about it....? Here comes my mantra: there are no rules, just tools. Scenes are for the important moments; all the rest may be summarized. And often should be. I've seen a video recently where an editor was sharing practical tips, and she said: do not describe "passages"! As it happens, I know very well what she meant, from my own experience with my first novel. You have something important happening at point A, then another important event at point B, but you need to get the protagonist from A to B first. And you find yourself describing the journey, step by step, turning out boring twaddle, because the journey needs to be there, but it is NOT important, so you don't really have any interesting ideas about it. THAT's when you summarize, summarize, summarize. Summaries are not "worse" than scenes; they just serve a different purpose and create a different impression.
As a reader, I hate head hopping so much! But admittedly, the first story I ever wrote when I was 17, head hopped all the time. I rewrote it into an omniscient POV but didn't love it. But with my incoming time travel romance. I broke POV again this time writing it with 1st and 3rd POV.
Great advice. LOL, hits all the buttons for my novel. At 5:43, head hopping, the Ur example of this might be the Illuminatus Trilogy. POV shifts often within the same paragraph multiple times. And yet, it works.
Illuminatus also has a bajillion characters. Wilson does it again in the Schroedinger’s Cat trilogy, and in there he also jumps parallel universes, where the same character can be radically different people with different backstories and personalities.
@@charleholst3881 And let's not talk about the mounted stuffed teleporting penis (Epicene Wildblood's, IIRC) which is the one element tying all the universes together.
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I thought Vonnegut or Pynchon were gone to be mentioned on this one. They're really rule breakers hahaha
Dune has some of the best head hopping I've ever read. It's teleportation quick. You blink and your in a new character's POV. It can even happen multiple times in a short paragraph. And. It. Is WONDERFUL.
I would argue that Kafka's The Trial breaks the characters must change rule. Joseph K starts confused and ends confused (I guess he does change right at the end when he ends up dead)
I don't understand why people hate head hopping. I suspect this rule will age poorly. I don't see any objective reason why it would be a bad thing (unless we don't know what head we're in).
While I understand the anti head-hopping rule, I feel like it's more of a contemporary thing - reading books older than 80 years, let's say, shows that there was a way of going from one character to another in the same scene that's no longer common in today's fiction. Take one of the parties in Atlas Shrugged for instance - I don't remember the details - but the author takes us from Dagny Taggart to Hank Rearden to Francesco D'Anconia... and it's not all separated neatly by breaks like it would happen in a book written today. Or Pride and Prejudice - one younger friend of mine even told me they felt confused while reading it because of how the author changed the 'head' all the time.
By coincidence, i recently started a reread of Dick's DO ANDROIDS, which i read, once, long ago. I liked, and remember, MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE better. But aren't the husband and wife androids themselves, or have computer chips in their heads that make the android-like? I only ask because that would explain the head-jumping. Androids could be built and designed to read each others' "thoughs," and chips-in-the-brain could allow humans to read each others' minds.
“Heroes much change” is bullshit and utterly ignores the option of a flat character-arc. I break this “rule” regularly, mostly by making it so the hero is already a pretty good person and the only way for them to change would be for the worse.
In a few of my short stories the main charecters aren't active and don't change. That's easy to get away with in Lovecraftian fiction, like I normally write. Because a lot of times the story happens to them, not them making the story Though I still normally have my main charecters change somehow and do things
Another example for breaking rule 8, God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert switches between first and third by being third person most of the time with inserts from Leto II's diary.
In all seriousness...I was never a great fan of rules when it comes to writing. And I am even shocked that there ARE rules and people who follow them. The most interesting books are unconventional trying new things. Im a pantser and its near impossible for me to follow certain writing rules, exept for a few: Continuity, chapters and keeping it understandable, yet interesting. Thats it. I never worry about character arcs and all of that. The story tells me what to do, when to do it and why. And its a nightmare for me to go and plot like crazy. My imagination just doesnt work like that and a create WHILE writing, not beforehand. Sometimes I even get to surprise myself with new ways, new things and even characters, I thought would be around for longer, died very suddenly 🤣 So, yeah, I can say that I write more or less rule-free.
There are some stories that can only be told by breaking lots of rules. We are in danger of making the same mistakes as the music industry. Rules are only guides, it's HOW you break the rules. Then you get Bohemian Rhapsody and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Give me a rule breaker any day.
The main character not solving the problem is what you call a tragic story to use Aristotle. It is quite a big genre... Great content though! Just me being big headed/ besserwisser
Spoiler alert: A good example of an exception to the main character solving the problem would be A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) when Arya kills the night king instead of John Snow. Also a great exception to the head hopping rule.
I'd say there are a ton of main characters in Game of Thrones, rather than just one. And I don't think head hopping applies because it's omniscient narrator, and chapters are devoted to the story of a single character.
Honestly it only comes down to the story and if it's to enough peoples liking. There will always be some who say it's good well others will say it's bad.
Spoiler alert: Not a book, but Martin and Charlie Sheen's movie "The Way" broke almost all the rules. Definitely no hero's journey, just a journey, which was the point of the it.
Psst, it's pronounced "DostoYevsky". The English spelling is a transliteration from the Cyrillic; Russian е sounds like "yeh" except in some specific contexts where it gets kinda contracted.
I think Gabriel Garcia Marquez broke every single one of those rules in The Fall of the patriarch. He changes narrative perspective in the middle of a sentence and also the story is told chronologically backwards.
In my opinion H.G. Wells didn't want the Martians to win. He wanted to show the irony of a species that was powerful enough to take over 19th century London and decimate the human population being defeated by the lowliest lifeforms on Earth, but maybe I read it wrong. If you want to write a story (not necessarily for publication), then just write it. There really are no rules if you just do it for yourself.
I agree. Wells wrote this book in reaction to the plight of the Tasmanian Aborigines who were being wiped out. He shows (to contemporary Western readers) what it is like to be at the other end of a superior force ... and then he turns the tables and shows that superiority can be easily overturned from unexpected quarters. In particular humans of all stripes can be brought down by a bug.
For 1. in antique litterature, I believe character arcs wasn't that much of a thing. I read a collection of Icelandic sagas (=early Middle Age) and the editor commented on one of them that it was one of the earliest examples of character development in litterary history. Odysseus, Gilgamesh, Prince Rama ie don't change much in their stories. I don't know exactly when it became common, maybe in Shakespears time (in the West)? .5 I was guessing you would bring up The Idiot, but I''m not sure I agree. Myshkin has no moral flaws, but he's not at the same time super-CAPABLE, which is part of the Mary Sue concept. He's not actually an idiot, but he's hardly a genius either, he's a bit naive iirr. .7 about books not being movies is such a great point.
Love that insight about Icelandic sagas and how most books didn't have character arcs. You're absolutely right -- it was the birth of the novel when that become a more mandatory part of storytelling -- epics and sagas definitely had different storytelling rules. True, he's not a Mary Sue, and you're right that Myshkin isn't super capable. But he is 100% good.
Doesn't A Song of Ice and Fire head hop the entire story? Every chapter is written from another character's perspective. Every book in the series has many main characters.
Well, I believe he separates it by Chapter, so each chapter has a new character's POV. For it to be head hopping, it has to be every other line, or in the same scene.
Great list. I suppose in a way humans are still defeating the aliens by giving them viruses. In a way, the story shows that Earth is made for Earthlings. But I doubt publishers would allow a new writer to publish War of the Worlds.
The main character doesn’t have to be the main character. In The Great Gatsby, Nick tells us what he sees, but Jay Gatsby is the only one worth watching.
Pretty soon, AI will be able to write novels better than people. I tried imputing popular novels into ChatGPT and it spat out a pretty good novice unique story incorporating elements of what made these popular. It was trash obviously but you can dynamically tweak it. Almost like your own ghost writer. Good for an outline for an idea at least. With the knowledge of all the worlds books out there in the future and the ability to make decisive alterations and have its own creative input, watch AI make a better book than humans in a couple of years with the amount of money going into AI research.
John McClane from 'Die Hard' is an example of a character that doesn't change by the end of the film. He's the same arrogant a-hole at the end of the film that he is in the beginning. I've found that stories with fixed protagonists are generally resolved _due_ to the lead character's unwavering personality.
A better word for the main character than "likeable" is intriguing.
I think relatable is better still. And this can apply to villains as well.
I would say relatable over likable, and intriguing over relatable.
It’s why intriguing works really well with villains.
The main character should be at least one or a mix of these 4 things: Likable, Relatable, Understandable, and/or Interesting.
What they should never be is Boring.
Regarding characters that don't change -- yes, of course, such characters are well suited to serialized stories like Jack Reacher or James Bond or Sherlock Holmes -- but it's important to remember that, at one time, there was only a single Sherlock Holmes story, a single James Bond novel, a single Jack Reacher novel -- and if those hadn't succeeded, standing on their own, there wouldn't have been more.
So those stories, with central characters that don't change, have to work on their own. Obviously, you have characters who, when faced with the challenges of the story, need to change in order to accomplish the ultimate goal, whatever it might be. But there are other stories, ones in which the hero embodies some fundamental moral virtue which the events of the story will test -- and the need is for that character to hold on to whatever those virtues may be in the face of ever-growing obstacles -- and ultimately, it's by holding on -- it's by staying true to his nature, that he ultimately succeeds.
And that works in a single story or in a series of stories.
Exactly. In my opinion, characters like Reacher or Sherlock Holmes can be static because they themselves are not what I call "the main driver of interest". The stories are not about them, really, but about the action they participate in or the the mysteries they solve. These are the two remaining "drivers of interest": action and mystery. And when they come to the fore the characters can be static - in fact, sometimes even *should* be, if you want to keep the book reasonably short.
Sometimes an author thinks they are breaking a rule, and are doing something we figured out 5 generations ago doesn't work, with a library of commentary as to why. Life is such a fun cycle xD
Yep! Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it
Who is we and what are you going to do when they break your rule?
@@QEsposito510 "we" here is the general historical community of authors and literary critics. Now, what I wrote is more of a "falsifiable statement" than a rule, so I am afraid it can't be broken. One exercise that is really interesting is taking something that looks "new", or "rule breaking" in pop culture and formula fiction, and then see if anyone did that before, chances are that someone did. One example is starting a story in the middle of it, and finishing before the logical ending, like major characters presented in the middle of an uprising, and then the story finishing up without a wrap up before the uprising being done. Sounds innovative, until you read the Iliad.
Imo all rules can be broken... As long as it's done *well* and with purpose. Can't be breaking rules left and right just for the sake of it. Rules are there for a reason, especially in writing. Nobody's gonna come after u for breaking any of them they're just basically the summary of collected knowledge from generations of writing
And what rules would that be? There are only two rules:
- Be interesting
- Be understandable
If you can achieve that you can do anything. You can easily make head hopping work, have characters that don't change, make static protagonists if other things are interesting and moving, etc.
I believe Terry Patchett breaks a few of these rules too and his stories are fantastic!
He's the master of word and his knowledge is so vast you discover new things with each reread. And oh, that humour!
I would say any rule can be broken, but it's best to understand why they’re rules and why you're breaking it. Just to be different isn't good enough. Hell, I've even seen stories without plots, which is probably one of the more universal rules of story telling, but it can still work. If you want an example of what I mean, Disney's Fantasia (at least most of the shorts in it) is a piece of work without a plot that still works for what it's trying to do. Many poems are writings without plots, etc...
prince myshkin made the same mistake the King of Kings made...
"I was ashamed of myself when I realised life was a costume party and I attended with my real face."
all the world is a stage...to be ones self...or not to be...that is the question...
Here is how my book measures up.
1. Characters must change - Mostly follows. My protagonist changes, one major supporting character (the villain) changes, and one major supporting character is static.
2. Main character should solve the problem - Breaks. My protagonist fights to the bitter end to solve the problem but ultimately fails.
3. The Protagonist Should Be Active - Follows. My protagonist is very active.
4. The Protagonist Should Be Likable - Follows. My protagonist is a rural homeschooler who means absolutely no harm to anyone.
5. Your Character Should Have Flaws - Somewhat. He's morally straight and narrow, but he's a young guy who's pushed into an extreme situation. The villain starts out good but his flaws cause him to become evil as the story progresses.
6. Don't Head Hop - Conditionally Follows. I change perspective frequently, but it's always got a chapter break to make it clear.
7. Show Don't Tell - Mostly Follows. I describe most events that occur in the story, but there are times when I have long periods of time go by very fast.
8. Don't Switch Point of Views - Follows. It's always third-person limited.
9. Don't Have Too Many Characters - Follows. There's like four or five characters that have more than a couple of pages of spotlight in the novel, with a larger group of small characters. like the villain's henchmen, random people the main character has short-term interactions with, etc.
I agree with everything you said and have broken all 9 rules, especially the head-hop one. I write lit fic and I like writing in third-person omniscient because I like writing ensemble characters. Omniscient gives me a lot of freedom to juggle my 5-7 characters. I organise my head-hops into different paragraphs (my rule is to NEVER head-hop in one paragraph), and always begin the paragraph with the character's name. Richard Powers does this too for The Overstory.
Great approach, I subconsciously was doing the same :D
The problem is that many writer do not understand why we have these rules so when they break them it is very often done very poorly. Also many writers do not know how to break these rules so the story work. I think there so little books that break these rules and still it work because it can be hard to do
on the too many character rule- you forgot having too many characters can cause the reader not connect to characters bc they are not given time to breath andso they become so flat
overall good video
The trick is to learn the rules inside and out so an author knows when and how to break them properly, because there is a proper way to break the rules. In some cases, an author may only need to bend the rules to make their story work.
An example would be a villain origin story. To subvert expectations, have it start out as a hero's journey and get the reader to root for the villain. Have them be heroic and interesting and do some good things while planting the seeds for the character flaws that will magnified when they fall and become the villain. Have it when they go through their whole arc and arrive back at to their normal world, nothing is better and everything is worse. Have them go through the whole hero's cycle only to be kicked back down the steps and fall further than where they started. Let them spiral. And when they reach the bottom, let them be so angry and embittered that they rage against the world they tried to help and thrive in and instead try to make it burn. Then parallel the new hero's flaws and story with the villain's to show how similar the two are without having to say anything. Maybe show how close the hero could be to falling down the same path the villain did or give the hero traits that contrast against key points in the villain's personality that caused his fall and show why the hero is different and special. Perhaps you want to keep the villain as the protagonist. Have him go through his fall arc in reverse, overcome the same challenges that kicked him down the first time. Have him overcome the flaws and trials that defeated him before. Then have him go through the hero's journey again to become the hero once more even though they know they could be kicked down again or it might not work out. They do this not because it benefits them, but because it's the right thing to do. There are ways you can play around with story structure to tie into the larger themes of your work while creating something that feels subversive while still adhering to traditional story structures.
Basically, the best advice for writers is to craft a story that works. If following the rules makes your story work better, do that. If you need to bend or break the rules to make your story work, do that. Just make your story work. Don't worry too much about it being subversive or innovative; those are passing trends and tacky marketing tricks anyway
The problem is we use the word “rules” which if taken literally means “this is what you are suppose to do” when a better word might be “guidelines or suggestions”
I noticed Stephen King did head hoping in IT, The Tommyknockers, The Stand...And switches POVs in Christine. But, its Stephen King so.....
Also, Brett Easton Ellis does the best POV switch of all time IMO in his novel American Psycho near the end for one chapter it goes from first person to third person. It is unexpected and an insane ride.
King does a lot of things which detract from the quality of his work. His success has never been dependent on him being a great writer, he's first and foremost an entertainer and a guy who comes up with creepy concepts.
Sorry to bother... can you elaborate on the American Psycho POV shift at the end?
Only brilliant King book is Misery, rest is all mediocre to good enough.
LOTR does it to some extent, too.
Head hoping. My rule for my latest novel is to establish a RIGID PECKING ORDER. When two characters are “on camera” the one always gets the Head perspective. So my main always gets the spotlight. Then if she is off camera the pecking order kicks in. During ensemble scenarios i pick one character. If it’s truly important that the reader knows a characters feelings i either create a scene for that character to own, or i have a “human” dialogue where feelings are expressed in an interesting manner.
I also use what one character knows to leak world building to the reader without other characters needing to know the same.
My character changed but they did so "off-screen" and the story was set in the dreamscape where people come to feel safe and cozy. You see them feel freed up and more comfortable at the end but you don't really know why because - like everything else in the dream world, nothing matters.
It also breaks the "don't 'it was all a dream' the audience" rule. It's episodic though.
I discovered your channel through this video. Happy Reading! 😎📚👍
About switching from third person to first, check out Immortal Techniques ‘Dance with the Devil’. While it’s a rap, the principles relevant. After pulling off arguably the greatist sick twist in the history of writing- publish or print, he switches to first person for a coda twist. I’m getting teary eyed just thinking about it. You won’t be disappointed.
The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud is another amazing example of 1st/3rd person writing.
@@tattoodude8946 A sci- fi fantasy I see? Seeing it involves fallen Angels , a good Segway into a counter apologist, ‘Genetically Modified Sceptic’, position that sci fi is a theology of sorts. The meta theme if you will. I have trouble following sci fi plots, so I’m writing- trying to write, one of my own, that even I can understand.😊
A great book is WE APPY FEW, the story of a hundred year old man telling young Henry 8th his account of the battle of Agincourt. It questions the nature of history, truth, language, and politics. Definitely worth a read.
Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo, a Mexican author, is a good example of a story that switches from first to third person narration. It's one of the most astonishing novels I've ever read.
A great example of an unlikeable main character is Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. One of the greatest books ever written! Notes from Underground, by the same author, is another.
As for H G Well's War of the Worlds... Wells had a scientific cast of mind, and he recognised that if we were invaded in the manner described in his story, in all likelihood it would be the bacteria and viruses present on our planet which would finish them off. It's probably what would happen, and that makes it a satisfying conclusion.
I was actually thinking about a story in both first and third person - had the plot idea and characters ready, but was unsure when I picked up and read King's Christine for the first time. Great use of it and I was like, "OK - yeah! I can make that work." The funny part was that after I finished Christine, I followed it up with The Amulet of Samarkand by sheer coincidence! I guess the writing gods really want me to write this book in a 1st/3rd person style!
Great video! You should check out Simon Jimenez’s The Spear Cuts Through Water. He brilliantly interweaves first, third AND second person POVs. The frame story is in second person. The main narrative is in third person, but it is interspersed with Greek chorus-like interjections from side characters giving commentary on things or events in the main story. One of the most imaginative and best written books I’ve ever read.
There are no rules in writing, just guidelines and conventions.
Here's the rule that comes from that: the greater your skill as a writer, the more you can get away with diverging from convention.
Hence, probably the greatest writer of the last two generations, Cormac McCarthy, c could do whatever he wanted. And diverge he did.
Show most of the time but use telling when a character is telling other characters some the reader already witnessed. Transitions are also "telling" but are essential to cover time gaps. You don't need to show a character driving across town unless something important happens on the trip. As for the characters who don't change, they are guides for characters who do change or they change their world in a meaningful way.
7:22 telling a story in first person to next chapter in third person is called interlude.
I just found your page. You've got the best advice I've seen yet! I agree 100% with the head-hopping. I take great pains to ensure I adhere to one POV, even in a multi-POV book.
Just to be clear, these writers have mastered their craft before they broke the rules. They knew how to make up for their rule breaking so that their stories would still work. If you don’t know how to compensate, your story will fall apart.
Reacher works because he changes the lives and opinions of people around him.
YES! Otherwise known as 'the flat arc.' Most main characters in a novel series have them, and they are especially common in the the detective, crime and action/thriller genres, for precisely the reason you state.
And you're also right on the first point too. I can't remember who said it first, but there's a great quote that goes something like: "Learn the writing rules to know when, how and why to break them. Break the writing rules to know when, how and why they matter."
You just described the state of literature in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Every one of these rules were broken by the Modernists, such as Conrad, Faulkner, Joyce, and Wolf just over one hundred years ago. These contemporary authors aren't breaking new ground; they are selectively following suit.
Rules are good. Rules give you a ground to stand on. Break the rules only if you really understand them.
If you break it and fail, all you'll get to hear is 'We told you so'. Be very sure of what you are doing.
And just because you managed to break a rule successfully once, it doesn't mean you can break it all the time.
Many British mystery writers that I enjoy reading "head hop," but it's clear whose head the reader is in.
Great video. Sharing with my students in Film and Literature!
A way to break the 1st/3rd person rule is to have an in-world narrator. That character is telling you about another character doing stuff, but can interject with their own perspective and opinions.
One of my favorite works is one where the author pretty deliberately breaks probably most of the classic storytelling rules in some of the craziest ways; Homestuck. I know it has a... reputation... (and the fandom even more so), but I definitely recommend it to almost any writer, even if just on the basis that there's nothing else quite like it and it shows how outside-the-box ambitious you can get if you're willing to break the rules. Some people hate it (and honestly, that's a perfectly understandable reaction), but some people (myself included) love it; and you can never really predict which people will be which until they actually read it.
6:15 I really like the way Alexa Donne talks about this rule (show don’t tell). She refers to it as “dramatizing” (showing) vs. “narrating” (telling). And there are times for both. No books truly follow the show don’t tell rule to a T
Thanks for telling me exactly how to not do what people tell me to do lol.
Personally I head hop between more than two characters in a scene all the time but I guess that’s because I’m confident I can do it in a way that makes sense for the reader.
"The main character should be active" - Oblomov (Ivan Goncharov) and Bartleby (Melville) would be the iconic counter examples to this.
Characters galore? Cloud Cuckoo Land and I am loving it.
Oh, I've broken most of them over the course of my series. The one I break most continuously...and gleefully...is the head hopping commandment. I like Omniscient for the greater opportunity to introduce situational irony. When I delve into another character's mind, I always broadcast which character's mind we're about to delve into by grounding the scene with an action tag beforehand. And I don't do it indiscriminately. Most often it's to show the character's internal turmoil being at odds with what's visible from their composure.
I really don't think "show don't tell" should be taught, ever. Teach them how to properly pace scenes, how to transition over moments that don't serve the story's progression. That trite expression serves only to confuse, not clarify; all because some of us were too lazy to be bothered explaining the concept properly.
The rules surrounding the main character, about them having to be rounded, likable, and flawed, can be broken if they're being studied by the story. How would a character with this specific personality deal with this situation, and how would they affect the world and people around them? If the protagonist has to be static, then have them be a catalyst for the setting, plot, and side characters, almost like a plot device rather than a character. For example, characters like the paragon or the antihero are usually stubborn and unchanging, so what happens when they meet each other?
On the other hand, the rules about the main character needing to be active or to solve a problem can be broken by exploring the character's inner thoughts or giving them a smaller conflict separate from the overarching narrative. For example, perhaps, while the whole world is going insane, the main character's only goal is to stay sane.
Hope this video mentions David Mitchell who has made a career out of first person narratives and Cloud Atlas with its anthology like nested structure
POV changes often annoy me, but i ended up loving it in N.K. Jemisin's The Broken Earth trilogy. It pays off at the end.
hey i have a question, can you explain how to make a good love story in your original story
With the many characters one is… you can have as many as you want… if you’ll use them. If you’re just throwing names for characters that will never show up again… then yeah that’s annoying
All of these are more like guidelines than actual rules. However, writers need to understand why they work and why they're so successful before deciding to break them purposefully.
I broke the first, second and the third rules, and my novella is in third person.
I recently wrote a scene where I head hopped between several people in a single scene. It was for a very chaotic battle. In a way, it was really more like several mini scenes, each having it's own pov. However I combined them all, and it is rapid fire switching from one to the next, to the next. I think it worked very well.
I think I've broken each and every single one of them. You do what the story that you want to tell needs.
For people that would like to try the 'Switching POVS': read The BoneShard Daughter by Andrea Stewart! Very interesting technically. She incorporates 2 first persons and 3 third persons. However, it still works because the characters start off in different places so it's not confusing.
About "show don't tell" - it is not a rule, it's a big sorry mess. People cannot even agree on what it means.... As for the variation mentioned here, though (scenes, not summaries) - well, if a rule is being broken *all the time* , what does it say about it....? Here comes my mantra: there are no rules, just tools. Scenes are for the important moments; all the rest may be summarized. And often should be. I've seen a video recently where an editor was sharing practical tips, and she said: do not describe "passages"! As it happens, I know very well what she meant, from my own experience with my first novel. You have something important happening at point A, then another important event at point B, but you need to get the protagonist from A to B first. And you find yourself describing the journey, step by step, turning out boring twaddle, because the journey needs to be there, but it is NOT important, so you don't really have any interesting ideas about it. THAT's when you summarize, summarize, summarize. Summaries are not "worse" than scenes; they just serve a different purpose and create a different impression.
As a reader, I hate head hopping so much! But admittedly, the first story I ever wrote when I was 17, head hopped all the time. I rewrote it into an omniscient POV but didn't love it.
But with my incoming time travel romance. I broke POV again this time writing it with 1st and 3rd POV.
Great advice. LOL, hits all the buttons for my novel.
At 5:43, head hopping, the Ur example of this might be the Illuminatus Trilogy. POV shifts often within the same paragraph multiple times. And yet, it works.
Illuminatus also has a bajillion characters. Wilson does it again in the Schroedinger’s Cat trilogy, and in there he also jumps parallel universes, where the same character can be radically different people with different backstories and personalities.
@@charleholst3881 And let's not talk about the mounted stuffed teleporting penis (Epicene Wildblood's, IIRC) which is the one element tying all the universes together.
I thought Vonnegut or Pynchon were gone to be mentioned on this one. They're really rule breakers hahaha
Love 'em both but will use them for a different videos!
Another, earlier book that alternates between 3rd and 1st person is Bleak House by Charles Dickens.
Dune has some of the best head hopping I've ever read. It's teleportation quick. You blink and your in a new character's POV. It can even happen multiple times in a short paragraph.
And. It. Is WONDERFUL.
I wish I could give you three 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽for this message
I would argue that Kafka's The Trial breaks the characters must change rule. Joseph K starts confused and ends confused (I guess he does change right at the end when he ends up dead)
I don't understand why people hate head hopping. I suspect this rule will age poorly. I don't see any objective reason why it would be a bad thing (unless we don't know what head we're in).
I think that's precisely it -- it's difficult to tell, on a line by line basis, which head we are in.
Awesome videos bro!
Just discovered your channel.... subscribed!
Thank you! Appreciate it.
I don’t think of these stuff as “rules”, it’s just a starting point to grasp what storytelling actually is.
Wouldn't Nero Wolfe be considered a passive character?
Yes, he's a passive character in terms of not moving, but he is directing Archie Goodwin on what to do, which makes him active.
"Don't Head Hop"
_Dune_ author Frank Herbert: *"...and I took that personally."*
While I understand the anti head-hopping rule, I feel like it's more of a contemporary thing - reading books older than 80 years, let's say, shows that there was a way of going from one character to another in the same scene that's no longer common in today's fiction. Take one of the parties in Atlas Shrugged for instance - I don't remember the details - but the author takes us from Dagny Taggart to Hank Rearden to Francesco D'Anconia... and it's not all separated neatly by breaks like it would happen in a book written today. Or Pride and Prejudice - one younger friend of mine even told me they felt confused while reading it because of how the author changed the 'head' all the time.
By coincidence, i recently started a reread of Dick's DO ANDROIDS, which i read, once, long ago. I liked, and remember, MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE better.
But aren't the husband and wife androids themselves, or have computer chips in their heads that make the android-like?
I only ask because that would explain the head-jumping. Androids could be built and designed to read each others' "thoughs," and chips-in-the-brain could allow humans to read each others' minds.
“Heroes much change” is bullshit and utterly ignores the option of a flat character-arc. I break this “rule” regularly, mostly by making it so the hero is already a pretty good person and the only way for them to change would be for the worse.
In a few of my short stories the main charecters aren't active and don't change. That's easy to get away with in Lovecraftian fiction, like I normally write. Because a lot of times the story happens to them, not them making the story
Though I still normally have my main charecters change somehow and do things
4:22 a male Mary Sue is called a Gary Stu
Another example for breaking rule 8, God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert switches between first and third by being third person most of the time with inserts from Leto II's diary.
I'd say Diary excerpts really isn't rule breaking. That's really easy for the reader to understand the POV shift.
In all seriousness...I was never a great fan of rules when it comes to writing. And I am even shocked that there ARE rules and people who follow them. The most interesting books are unconventional trying new things. Im a pantser and its near impossible for me to follow certain writing rules, exept for a few: Continuity, chapters and keeping it understandable, yet interesting. Thats it. I never worry about character arcs and all of that. The story tells me what to do, when to do it and why. And its a nightmare for me to go and plot like crazy. My imagination just doesnt work like that and a create WHILE writing, not beforehand. Sometimes I even get to surprise myself with new ways, new things and even characters, I thought would be around for longer, died very suddenly 🤣 So, yeah, I can say that I write more or less rule-free.
There are some stories that can only be told by breaking lots of rules. We are in danger of making the same mistakes as the music industry. Rules are only guides, it's HOW you break the rules. Then you get Bohemian Rhapsody and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Give me a rule breaker any day.
The main character not solving the problem is what you call a tragic story to use Aristotle. It is quite a big genre... Great content though! Just me being big headed/ besserwisser
Spoiler alert: A good example of an exception to the main character solving the problem would be A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) when Arya kills the night king instead of John Snow. Also a great exception to the head hopping rule.
I'd say there are a ton of main characters in Game of Thrones, rather than just one. And I don't think head hopping applies because it's omniscient narrator, and chapters are devoted to the story of a single character.
Honestly it only comes down to the story and if it's to enough peoples liking. There will always be some who say it's good well others will say it's bad.
Head hopping is literally my through line
Life is story ,to box life into categories like the status que, is blocking the real deal 😮
At 8:38, Martin naming every character who is alive in that universe. That's OK, most of them apparently die at some point.
Ha ha, so true!
Rule 9 Does not Tolstoy even give his characters different names?
You don't have to have character change. You have to have an arc, and a flat arc is also an arc, but the world changes instead of the character
Fifth Season By Jemisin for perspective jumping as well as it breaks another rule you state but don’t enumerate lol
commenting for boost. good video :)
Thank you! Really appreciate it.
Spoiler alert: Not a book, but Martin and Charlie Sheen's movie "The Way" broke almost all the rules. Definitely no hero's journey, just a journey, which was the point of the it.
I find rulebreaker stories generally only work once then they become boring or unreadable when the author tries it again
Psst, it's pronounced "DostoYevsky". The English spelling is a transliteration from the Cyrillic; Russian е sounds like "yeh" except in some specific contexts where it gets kinda contracted.
I think Gabriel Garcia Marquez broke every single one of those rules in The Fall of the patriarch. He changes narrative perspective in the middle of a sentence and also the story is told chronologically backwards.
And William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury?
and As I Lay Dying, and Absalom, Absalom, etc.
This guy kinda reminds of that actor in hangover. Forget the actors name. Think the characters name was stu
Very engaging, thanks)
In my opinion H.G. Wells didn't want the Martians to win. He wanted to show the irony of a species that was powerful enough to take over 19th century London and decimate the human population being defeated by the lowliest lifeforms on Earth, but maybe I read it wrong.
If you want to write a story (not necessarily for publication), then just write it. There really are no rules if you just do it for yourself.
I agree. Wells wrote this book in reaction to the plight of the Tasmanian Aborigines who were being wiped out. He shows (to contemporary Western readers) what it is like to be at the other end of a superior force ... and then he turns the tables and shows that superiority can be easily overturned from unexpected quarters. In particular humans of all stripes can be brought down by a bug.
The Psychic Detective was all about head hopping
Awesome
War of the worlds was a terrible ending. The rule break didn’t pay off in my opinion.
Yeah, that’s the danger with an ending that breaks the rules - there will always be people that feel like it was unsatisfying.
For 1. in antique litterature, I believe character arcs wasn't that much of a thing. I read a collection of Icelandic sagas (=early Middle Age) and the editor commented on one of them that it was one of the earliest examples of character development in litterary history. Odysseus, Gilgamesh, Prince Rama ie don't change much in their stories. I don't know exactly when it became common, maybe in Shakespears time (in the West)?
.5 I was guessing you would bring up The Idiot, but I''m not sure I agree. Myshkin has no moral flaws, but he's not at the same time super-CAPABLE, which is part of the Mary Sue concept. He's not actually an idiot, but he's hardly a genius either, he's a bit naive iirr.
.7 about books not being movies is such a great point.
Love that insight about Icelandic sagas and how most books didn't have character arcs. You're absolutely right -- it was the birth of the novel when that become a more mandatory part of storytelling -- epics and sagas definitely had different storytelling rules.
True, he's not a Mary Sue, and you're right that Myshkin isn't super capable. But he is 100% good.
Got a like at the division of two Marys.
James Joyce can break the rules. If you're no James Joyce, follow the rules.
Yes, for beginning writers, it’s usually a good idea to follow the rules until you understand them well enough you could break them.
@@Bookfox No. 99% of writers should follow the rules.
Doesn't A Song of Ice and Fire head hop the entire story? Every chapter is written from another character's perspective. Every book in the series has many main characters.
Well, I believe he separates it by Chapter, so each chapter has a new character's POV.
For it to be head hopping, it has to be every other line, or in the same scene.
@ ah, I didn't understand. Thank you for clarifying
I don't believe in character change. Unless the change is from alive -> dead. 😈
Excellent
Great list. I suppose in a way humans are still defeating the aliens by giving them viruses. In a way, the story shows that Earth is made for Earthlings. But I doubt publishers would allow a new writer to publish War of the Worlds.
Jake reacher is a flat arc character
The secret history has loathsome characters. They're so horrible you keep trying to find someone to like and give up. It's a ton of fun
The main character doesn’t have to be the main character. In The Great Gatsby, Nick tells us what he sees, but Jay Gatsby is the only one worth watching.
Pretty soon, AI will be able to write novels better than people. I tried imputing popular novels into ChatGPT and it spat out a pretty good novice unique story incorporating elements of what made these popular. It was trash obviously but you can dynamically tweak it. Almost like your own ghost writer. Good for an outline for an idea at least. With the knowledge of all the worlds books out there in the future and the ability to make decisive alterations and have its own creative input, watch AI make a better book than humans in a couple of years with the amount of money going into AI research.
Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson.
John McClane from 'Die Hard' is an example of a character that doesn't change by the end of the film. He's the same arrogant a-hole at the end of the film that he is in the beginning. I've found that stories with fixed protagonists are generally resolved _due_ to the lead character's unwavering personality.
Sounds like Malazan.