Ten Rules for Writing Fiction

The Guardian asked twenty nine writers to give their 10 Rules for Writing Fiction. Those given by Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections) were arguably the pithiest, and we list them below. The full lineup of writers (including Elmore Leonard, Margaret Atwood, and Richard Ford) can be found here. (The New Yorker has since followed up with some commentary on the Guardian list.)

• The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.
• Fiction that isn’t an author’s personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn’t worth writing for anything but money.
• Never use the word “then” as a conjunction – we have “and” for this purpose. Substituting “then” is the lazy or tone-deaf writer’s non-solution to the problem of too many “ands” on the page.
• Write in the third person unless a really distinctive first-person voice ­offers itself irresistibly.
• When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.
• The most purely autobiographical fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more auto biographical story than “The Meta­morphosis”.
• You see more sitting still than chasing after.
• It’s doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.
• Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.
• You have to love before you can be relentless.

via @kirstinbutler