Show, don’t tell. Write what you know. Always create a sympathetic character readers can relate to. Every time I encounter these maxims, I find myself nodding along—except when I don’t.

The first two rules emerged in response to genuine problems plaguing inexperienced writers: abstract exposition lacking concrete imagery, windy vagueness unsupported by lived experience. As beginner guidance, they have their place, but elevated into Universal commandments–they collapse into utter nonsense.

There’s always an exception to every rule, of course. Yet some writers take these cautions too literally, believing exposition itself is villainous. This fear paralyzes them, keeping them from describing the worlds they’ve invented.

That dread of anything less than gut-wrenching action compels fiction writers to lean too heavily on dialogue, to confine voice to limited third person, to use only present tense. They assume the narrator’s voice—described as omniscient, creates distance in the story. In truth, it’s often the most intimate voice, the one that tells what lives in characters’ hearts.

The same fear of distancing leads writers to abandon the narrative past tense, which includes past, present, and future—in favor of the tight-focused, inflexible present tense. But sometimes, distance is precisely what lends enchantment.

The second rule: “Write what you know,” is as ridiculous as it sounds. If every writer only wrote what they know there wouldn’t be any fantasy books. How would writers write about imaginary places, life on other planets, dragons and fairy’s, wizards and magick systems?

Imagination is dependent on observation. All this rule needs is a good definition of “know.”

A marvelous example of fictional knowledge, because it clearly shows the relative importance of imagination and experience. At the age of eighteen, English author Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein while at Villa Diodati in Lake Geneva, It all started with a game, Mary Shelley and her friends gathered on a cold, stormy night, and challenged one another to write ghost stories. There’s a lot of gossip surrounding this circle of friends—Percy Bysshe Shelley, their four-month-old baby, and her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, who at the time was pregnant with Lord Byron’s child, and John Polidori, his doctor. They read poetry, argued, and talked late into the night.

The terrible weather kept them inside more often than not. Thunder and lightning echoed through the villa and they coped by reading horror stories and morbid poems. One night, as they sat in the candlelit darkness, Byron gave them all a challenge: write a ghost story that was better than the ones they had just read.

Inspired by a tale of Byron’s, Polidori immediately complied. His novella “The Vampyre,” published in 1819, is the first work of fiction to include a blood-sucking hero—which many think was modeled on Byron himself.

Mary wanted to write a story too, but she couldn’t come up with a subject. “I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative,” she later wrote. However, one sleepless night, as thunder and lightning echoed off the lake, she had a vision. “I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out,” she wrote, “and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life.”

The next morning, she said yes when she was asked if she had a ghost story in mind. Her book, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, incorporated the eerie setting of the villa, and the morbid conversations of the poets. The story she later called her “hideous progeny” asks what happens when men pretend they are gods—inspired, perhaps, by the hubris of the company she kept in Switzerland. Her book was published in 1818, went on to revolutionize literature and popular culture.

The final rule of the sympathetic character is only ridiculous if you define sympathetic as warm-and-fuzzy. Do readers actually like “hateful, selfish, gray, manipulative characters?” Of course we recognize the power of the villain, but we also despise and fear the person portrayed, recognizing the ruthless psychopath is common in positions of power.

Remember you can use all senses when writing descriptions, and keep them short. No one wants to read an entire page about the changing autumn leaves, or maybe someone will, but they won’t be the majority.

Think of a place or something you know really well, and describe it. What stands out to you, what smells remind you of this something, what about the sounds, taste, and touch; use those to describe the scene.

A vivid scene engaging all five senses, will transform a simple paragraph into a fully realized experience, where the reader can hear the rustle of leaves, smell the rain, taste the air, and feel the texture of the world around them. The most powerful descriptions do not just show; they invite the reader to live inside the story.

Character development is very important and must occur simultaneously with plot, and should be like real people and not automatons. Plot of course, is very important and cannot be left to chance. Your character should be defined by the choices they make, the actions they choose, and how they respond to situations.

Most of the time when you tell rather than show, you inform your reader of information rather than allowing him or her to deduce anything. You’re basically supplying information by simply stating it. You might write that a character is “tall,” or “angry,” or “cold,” or “tired,” which is telling.

Showing paints a picture the reader can see in his or her mind’s eye.

Remember to use description lightly, as in show and don’t tell. For example: “The man is tall.” Better: “Others look up when talking to him,” or he has to duck to get through a door; when posing for a photo, he has to bend his knees to keep his head in proximity with others.

Rather than telling that your character is angry, show it by describing their face flushing, throat tightening, voice rising, slamming a fist on the table. When you show, you don’t have to tell.

Cold: Your character pulls his or her collar up, tightens their scarf, shoves their hands deep into their pockets, turns their face away from the biting wind.

Tired: They can yawn, groan, stretch. The eyes can look puffy. Their shoulders slump. Another character might say, “Didn’t you sleep last night? Your eyes are bloodshot.”

When you catch yourself writing for the umpteenth time the character “said” you can replace this word with replied, uttered, retorted, yelled, hissed, remarked, discussed, stated, shared, announced, mentioned, commented, noted, suggested, affirmed, alleged, answered, agreed, articulated, blurted, declared, denoted, expressed, interjected, recited, voiced, responded, and many more. Or if the character has a well-developed voice, these aren’t always necessary.

Active voice is better than passive.

“The clock was wound.” “The food was eaten.” “The shark was killed by the sailor.”

These sentences are all far less compelling than in active tense.

He wound the clock. They ate food with gusto. The angry sailor killed the shark out of revenge.

You can be more direct and show more action by using action verbs.

“The clock was wound every Sunday precisely at midnight come rain or shine.” “The children wondered why they ate dinner late every night.”

“The sailor suffered from nervous tension, and preferred to observe rather than act, but seeing his uncle savaged by the shark was too much to bear.”

Telling a Story Instead of Describing a Procedure
If you want to create imagery and add information into your readers head, don’t tell them what to do, show them how it’s done through storytelling.

Avoid Parentheses
I see them all the time, and wonder why there are so many! If it’s important enough to be in your writing, it’s important enough to stand on its own.

Orwell’s writing Rule: Never use a long word when a short word will do.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use the passive word where you can use the active word. It’s the movement of the sentence and the image you paint that’s important. Sometimes a long word creates the perfect picture, but mostly are pedantic, and annoys reader.

Write for yourself first; worry about the reader later. Chasing the needs of an unpredictable, imaginary audience creates an impossible standard to try to fit into, and forces you to measure every word against a shifting, impossible criterion. Instead, trust that you know what you want to say, and let that be your guide.

Think like a gardener: In the beginning, just let things grow. Your job is to cultivate the lush overgrowth first, then shape it into form. The discipline comes afterwards, when you plow it back. However, save the shears for the editing phase when pruning happens that encourages more growth and improves writing. Until then, you’re letting the garden grow wild, building up the foliage you’re still shaping into something worthy of reading. Then even when you think you’ve trimmed everything possible, there is often more extra-weight to remove.

Every writer needs a reader
No writer can see their own writing clearly. This is why a good reader is worth their weight in platinum. One solid piece of feedback can be the difference between a pretty good piece of writing, and one that’s extraordinary.

Get Paid for your Writing
Typing countless words and hours of hard work have value, and you deserve to be paid for them. Writing is an art and art is not free.

Take Care of Yourself
That old “tortured writer” trope—ditch it now! If you’re not well-rested, well-fed and level-headed, you will not write at your best. The tortured writer doesn’t exist. Fanciful tales of the writer who chain smokes, and sits at a shabby little table with wadded up paper surrounding them waiting for inspiration to strike, so that the readers can be entertained. The trope would have you believe that an artist must suffer—to create.

Structure Is Crucial
The organization of a piece of writing is the skeleton. Without bones, everything else falls apart. You can have excellent characters, perfect dialogue, and descriptions that will break reader’s hearts, but if your reader doesn’t have a path to follow, they’ll get lost.

Do Whatever You want As Long As You Can Make It Work.
Every rule for writing can be broken. Some we follow because these rules help our readers, like tropes, but they help us write, too.

Break as many rules as you wish. As long as you can make it work, go for it.