Some writers are like religious fundamentalists.
They read, or hear someone discuss a rule they’ve heard
about, and it becomes gospel. It doesn’t have to come from Strunk and White to
start them red penciling whole paragraphs of a novel. Just mention “rule” and
it immediately becomes scripture, part of a revised Talmud, and you couldn’t
pay them to violate it.
They forget rules are intended to be guides and not a new
version of the Quran. Rules are not absolute law. Generally there’s good
reasoning behind them and it pays to abide by them. There are also times when
they can and should be violated. And, if you should break one of these rules,
you won’t have the Taliban pursuing you (though some critic may lambast you).
Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing are observed with
ritual devotion by some of these scriveners. I love Leonard’s work. I think
he’s a great stylist and the rules are a sound selection. But, with little
effort, I’m sure you can find many admirable writers who’ve broken some of
these rules at one time or another. In fact, if you read a lot of Elmore’s
stories (as I have) you’ll see even he occasionally drifts from the canon. This
isn’t blasphemy. Leonard sometimes spoke with tongue in cheek and was aware of
Somerset Maugham’s dictum: “There are three rules for writing a novel.
Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
The Elements of Style, among other scriptures, urges us to
use the active voice. It does not say “always.” A passive sentence isn’t always
bad. Knowing how and when to use them makes the difference.
We are given lists of words to avoid in our writing and some
believe it means they should never be used. Wrong. There is no such thing as a
bad word. It all depends on how and when you use them.
One of those words you’ll find on many lists is “was,” a
perfectly good Old English verb. It’s on the list because it’s been deemed
passive. As mentioned above, that isn’t always a bad thing. Opening a novel by
Elmore Leonard to a random page I found he used the word “was” 10 times. Sometimes
there just isn’t another word to substitute.
Where words like “was” become bad is when we allow them to
become habits weakening our writing. When we get lazy and fail to revise
without using all our senses that’s the real deal-breaker. Don’t just blindly
follow rules because they exist. Use common sense and experimentation to see
why they’ve become standard. Your writing will improve and your readers will
thank you.
