Breaking the rules of novel-writing at every turn...

What are, in your view, some of the predetermined 'rules' of writing a novel, and which of them have you broken, or even utterly shattered?

My rules:
1. The main character never dies. BROKEN
2. Do not reincarnate characters. BROKEN

1. Evil never wins. Will be broken as the villain WILL get away almost completely unharmed.
2. An important character (not the main, but still vital) survies. Will be broken as the important character will kill himself.
3. Two characters meet and fall desperately in love on first sight. Broken. Twice over because I'm mean.
4. Cyborgs lack emotion (not sure if this is actually a rule or not). Broken.

I can't think of anything else. Last year I broke the "Main character never dies" five times over with five different MCs. It was awesome. I will eventually break that rule and the "do not reincarnate characters" a bunch more times in another trilogy I'm writing. I can't even remember how many times but it works with the plot.

1) "I will not base my characters of people i know." Broken all over.
2) MC does not fall in love with creeper guy. Broken during their first time meeting -__-

I killed my MC in the first sentence and brought here back by the end of the first chapter, more or less. Oops.

I think someone needs to let George R.R. Martin know about this "Main Character never dies" rule.


It would save all of us a lot of trouble, really.

Oh and to answer the question.

1.) Never use a character as a self-insertion. BROKEN. and this is a biggie.

I figure if I am aware of it, and do my best to avoid all the reasons why they tell you NOT to self insert, I can pull it off with creative writing kung fu and mad skills. Or I might be writing a giant train wreck and I'm just in total denial.

But here's the thing, I want people to be able to relate to and imagine themselves as my narrator. I don't know to make her anymore real and relatable than by drawing upon my own experiences and making the choices that I would make in her situations. I mean, seriously, look at all the successful stories out there that are obviously self-insertion type of characters. Jane Eyre, Luke Skywalker, Captain Kirk, etc.

I know that she'll probably get bashed as a Mary Sue, but hey, there you go. I'm doing my best to write in a well written, well rounded character, with flaws and emotions, and consequences for her (sometimes questionable) actions. If that's not good enough, than I give up. So what if she's experiencing a world and a life that I would give almost anything to experience (yes, even the bad stuff that happens to her)? Isn't that the whole reason that we write books in the first place? Especially historical fiction...isn't the idea to dramatize history in a way that the reader can feel like they are experiencing it first hand, from the character's perspective? To give it a human aspect that it just doesn't have when you read it in the history books?

Anyways, I'm babbling.

1. Do not kill the main character. *Broken~*
2. If you do kill the main character do it at the very end of the novel. *Broken~*
3. Things should happen in chronological order. *Broken broken broken.*
4. The narrator must be human or at least similar to a human. *Broken.*
5. Deaths must have meaning. *broken broken broken*

1. characters should have names biased on where they live *broken*

Yes I am in fact one of those people who name my american characters with Japanese names so sue me >< I didn't feel like setting this story in Japan but I love Japanese names and anyways the whole book is about the Japanese Grim Reapers known as Shinigami. *shrugs*

1. Good always wins. ~Broken~

Considering that fact that my MC is the bad guy, it'd be odd for him to lose... though technically, neither good nor evil wins.

2. Main character always lives. ~Broken~

I's sorry, Leify.... but you have to die.

3. Main character and main girl fall in love. ~Broken~

There is zero chemistry between them and Rowan just doesn't seem like the type to fall in love with him....

4. Do not base characters off people in real life. ~Broken~

Rowan and Alya are both based off two of my friends.

5. Do not base a character off yourself. ~Broken~

Silva is my appearance in the story. But she only pops up once to get introduced and again to get killed.

Another one I thought of:

The main character always does the right thing in the end. BROKEN. Spoiler alert, but he ends up destroying all of America. :3

In response to some of yours:

Good always wins: BROKEN
Main guy and girl fall in love: What am I, a romance novelist? Eew, no, BROKEN.
Base characters off yourself: I did that to all of them save one, BROKEN.
Characters should have names based on where they live: I use character names like 'Wolf' and 'Blizzard', so BROKEN

1. Never start a scene/chapter with characters waking up. BROKEN
2. Never end a scene/chapter with characters going to sleep. BROKEN - Oh, so many times broken!
3. No cliffhangers. BROKEN
4. No basing characters on real people. BROKEN (though it's usually people I really don't like... and no, they don't usually survive for more than a few chapters)
5. The heroes always get saved in the nick of time. BROKEN - they get saved maybe five or ten minutes after, so they're just mangled and injured enough to provide for more angsty and juicy scenes later

and on previous novels...

6. All the 'beautiful people' are good. BROKEN
7. Evil never wins. BROKEN
8. Evil characters can never experience real and honest love. BROKEN

Let's see...

1. The protagonists are always the good guys. Broke that with 4 characters.
2. The MMC always winds up with a girl. Broken. He winds up with 2 girls.
3. Magic and monsters can only go with swords in a medieval setting. Broken by a sharpshooter in a modern day city.
4. Romeo and Juliet must always be in love with each other. Broken. The feuding families decided to put Romeo and Juliet together.
5. Unless the lyrics are written into the story, music has no place in a novel. Broken several times in one novel (Booyah!).
6. Demons are never chaotic good (civilians). Broken. Hassan would rather be a regular citizen that volunteers time at the local Salvation Army than the cold-hearted beast that everyone sees demons as.
7. The best warriors are never clumsy. Broken by Hassan (I think he had lessons from Himura Kenshin).
8. The protagonist always knows what sort of weapon and how many rounds the bad guy has. Broken. Simon might have told you what it was if it was a weapon from Halo. Other wise, all he knew was that he had a gun pointed at him.
9. The protagonist either comes out of a dire situation without a scratch, or not at all. Broken. Si was definitely grazed by a bullet. He wouldn't shut up about it.
10. Only the warriors get in on a fight. Broken. Desiree is a healer, but she's not afraid to step up and slap the sh*t out of a person.

Nothing like breaking all the rules.

1. Characters should not be based on people you know, and definitely not based on yourself

Broken, and spectacularly so. Almost every single major character I have is a character from the old GURPS campaign my friends and I had going. Each of the characters in that campaign were essentially stylised avatars of the person playing them.

2. Never start a scene with someone waking up

Broken. Give him a break, the day before he'd been involved in a deliberate car crash to break him out of police custody, a mission involving breaking into an important businessman's home to steal some documents, and a massive police pursuit! The poor boy needed the rest.

3. Cyborgs lack emotion

Broken. One of my main characters is an obscenely sarcastic robot who becomes flamboyant during a fight and changes to a sing-song voice when enjoying himself. He's probably more emotional than the MMC he's supposed to be the sidekick of.

4. The protagonist either comes out of a dire situation without a scratch, or not at all.

Broken. That police chase I mentioned earlier? Huge gash to the head and unconsciousness for the FMC. Two cracked ribs and whiplash for the MMC. Although... this was admittedly caused by driving at high speed through a crash barrier, off a raised highway and landing directly into a garden shed. Anybody in reality would surely have been killed. But hey, creative liberties, right?

5. MMC and FMC fall in love

Broken, or at least planned to be broken. Perhaps they'll surprise me. They do (grudgingly for my FMC) care about each other, and my MMC does have a slight crush on my FMC, but he has crushes on a lot of women and rarely acts upon them anyway. The only other MMCs I have are a friend of the FMC who is firmly in the friend zone, and a robot. The only other FMC is asexual. Romance? Not happening in this novel if I have anything to say about it.

6. Evil never wins

Depends how you define "evil". The MCs view the main antagonist as a corrupt faceless businessman who is willing to murder anybody in the way of greater profits. The main antagonist views the MCs as a gang of criminals who pose a threat to the stability of the planet, which is doing just fine, murderous CEOs aside. I'm still not really sure which side is supposed to be the "evil" one.

7. Characters should have names based on where they live

Broken, then beaten with a baseball bat until it stops quivering. The novel is set in a fictional universe, on a fictional planet with fictional countries and cities. Why does my FMC obviously hail from Japan? Why does my MMC use a pseudonym that is half German, half Swedish? Why does everybody use British slang?


I could probably go on, but this post is getting long enough as it is. I'm a bit of a rebel when it comes to fiction, apparently.

The Me Rules of Writing

1: Children are immune to dying.
2: Protagonists can't die if they've been around for more than one paragraph. BROKEN. RIP, Samantha Blaine, one of my secondary characters from this year's NaNo.
3: No basing characters off of people you know. UNLESS they're actually competent, relevant, and snarky enough to actually have been written by me. Otherwise, you end up with crap characters.
4: No onscreen sex
5: No cursing. BROKEN. My characters for this year's NaNo were the biggest group of potty mouths I've ever written.

1. The MC doesn't die. BROKEN. Andru was shot with a poison dart then thrown off a building.
2. Children are immune to dying. BROKEN. My FMC is going to kill her eight year old stepdaughter. And yes folks, these are the good guys.
3. The MC always gets to kill at least one of the bad guys. Usually one they have the vendetta against. BROKEN. Actually, this one was broken, shot to shreds and thrown in a volcano. My FMC had three people she had vaguely personal reasons to kill. The guy who was orchestrating the whole thing, my (dead) MMC's girlfriend who betrayed them and the mercenary who tortured her. And that ninja who caused my other MMC to almost break his neck. They all got killed by someone else.
4. No basing characters off people you know. BROKEN. One of my minor characters was based on the person I have a crush on and one of my MMCs (who was supposed to be a minor character) was partly based on a boy I know. And then there's all the characters who are based on TV show characters.
5. MMC and FMC fall in love. BROKEN. And burned. One of my MMCs liked my FMC but she didn't return it at all and he had a girlfriend anyway. As for the other MMC, well he's my FMC's cousin. And gay.
6. FMC has a love interest. BROKEN. My FMC is asexual aromantic. No love interest at all.
7. The protagonist either comes out of a dire situation without a scratch, or not at all. BROKEN. They've all been shot, my FMC was tortured and one of my MMCs broke his nose and ended up covered in scratches. And possibly had a concussion.
8. The protagonists are always the good guys. BROKEN. Probably. Depends on what you mean by the good guy. My FMC is on the good guy's team but she is a nasty piece of work.
9. Only the warriors get in on a fight. BROKEN. Kind of. Technically Ben works for Intel but he knows how to fight and he gets into a lot of them.
10. Never base a character off yourself. BROKEN. Almost all of my character are something like me. Otherwise I find it hard to write them. Emilia is just more like me than anyone else.

1. Don't base characters on people from real life.
Destroyed that one with my MC alone.
2. Don't bring your family into your novel.
Broken! Relatives made their way into this novel quite easily.
3. No cliff-hangers.
Yeah, broke that one. Decided that the reader couldn't know everything.
4. Only one symbolic death is needed, any more and it'll come across as tacky.
Yeah, several people die symbolically but it's all for good reason, I swear.
5. There should be at least one stable relationship.
There isn't, there just isn't.
6. Do not make the enemy sympathetic.
Utterly broken with the inclusion of Hans.
7. Names of children should make sense and flow.
That theory got smashed a little when you get the list of the ordinary, American sounding names and then throw two strong German names.
8. Do not kill the MC.
Well, the reader was only given that impression for a few pages afterwards, and against the odds, he pulled through making it all okay.

Ah, their more of what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.

Sorry, had to do it. 'Cause it's true.

Romances always end in happily ever after. Broken.

The MC is the MC. Broken. At least in my 2010 NaNo, my MC was a decoy.

Do not kill the MC. Also broken in 2010, so the heroic mantle could be passed to the real MC.

Endings are conclusive. Broken. I love those ambiguous ends.

Characters should not be based on yourself. While I wouldn't call them 100% self-inserts, some of my characters are definitely reflections of my own problems. So, probably broken.

Never start a chapter or scene with descriptions of weather. I can't think of any specific examples, but I most likely broke this rule.

Evil never wins. My antagonists did not spend hundreds of years in power just to be toppled in one book. Broken.

MC is a good guy. Broken. Especially this year. With the exception of one, all my characters in a particular story were terrible people.

Know who your main character is.

Maybe I'll figure it out in the rewrite, but for now -- broken. I have at least three candidates for the position, only two of whom are viewpoint characters. (These are not to be confused with the candidates for the throne of my fantasy kingdom, who are also three, but only one of them is in the running for MC.)

- The lovers ends up together in the end, despite hardships they go through.
FALSE, Reva and Jake end up totally not speaking by the end of the novel. In fact, Reva ends her story much like she began it: alone.

Oh, it's slightly depressing. I dislike putting my poor RJ through such horrid things.