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I’ve learned many things about writing over the years. You can read every book about writing on the earth, but you really won’t learn anything unless you do it. Even though most writing books contain the same core principals, you will never figure out what works for you until you actually do some writing.

The funny thing is that the authors of these books will tell you one thing, then break the rules in their own books. I’ve caught several known authors giving advice in their own writing books, and then doing exactly what they said not to do in their novels. My classic example of this is Orson Scott Card. In his excellent book How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, tells the young writer not to start a novel off with a prologue. The next book that I picked from Card started off with a prologue, of course.

Over time, you learn that breaking the rules is part of writing. It’s kind of liberating sometimes to use one of those dirty adverbs or to use some type of formatting that you were told to never use, but somehow just works. Sometimes breaking the rules will set you apart from the rest of those law-abiding writers out there.

I’m not saying to overdo it. I’m just saying that sometimes a well placed crime in your writing may do you some good.