Writing Excuses 20.45:  Now Go Write - Break All the Rules (Part 1)

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-45-now-go-write-break-all-the-rules-part-1

Key points: Break all the rules. Use passive voice! Does your protagonist have to have agency or do anything at all?

[Season 20, Episode  45]

[Erin] Hey, everybody. This is Erin, and I've got a question for you. What have you learned from Writing Excuses that you use for your own writing? Now, we talk a lot about tools, not rules. Which means there are things that we're going to say that you're going to be like, yes, that is for me. That's the tool I'm going to use in my next project. And there are others that you're going to be like, uh,  I'm going to leave that to the side. And what we want to know is which of the things that we're saying have really worked for you? What's the acronym you're always repeating? What's the plot structure you keep coming back to? What's a piece of advice that has carried you forward, when you've been stuck in your work? Or that you've been able to pass on to another writer who's needed advice or help? However you've used something that you've learned from us, we want to know about it, and we want to share it with the broader community. Every month, we're going to put one of your tips or tricks or tools in the newsletter, so that the rest of the community can hear how you have actually taken something that we've talked about and made it work for you. And I'm personally just really excited to learn about those, because a lot of times, y'all take the things that we say and use them in such ingenious and interesting ways to do such amazing writing that I'm just like chomping at the bit to get in these tools and tips and share them with everybody else. So if you're interested, please go to our show notes, and fill out the form there, and be part of this project and just share with us what you're doing, what you've learned, and how are you using it so that we can share with everybody else. Really excited, again, to get all this in because, honestly, what we say is made real and important and meaningful by what y'all do with it. With that, you're out of excuses. Now go tell us what works for you.

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[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

[Season 20, Episode 45]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses. Now go write - break all the rules (part 1).

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] And I'm Erin.

[Erin] And I am excited to be talking about one of the sections that I am writing in the Now Go Write craft book, which is Break All the Rules. So I am very excited about writing rules and not following them. Because I like to destroy things, I guess...

[laughter]

[Erin] [garbled] I don't know.

[DongWon] Oppositional, even to yourself.

[Erin] Yeah. Exactly. Like, why? And so what I started doing when I was writing this section is I kept coming up with, like, different rules and how to break them. And they each, like, kind of spun off into their own little mini-essay. And so what I thought I would do for this episode is I have four of them that I want to talk about, and I wanted to sort of throw them out and say like, what do y'all think about this particular rule, when it should be broken, and I'm going to have Mary Robinette roll a virtual die to decide which one we talk about first.

[Mary Robinette] We're starting with number four.

[Erin] We're starting with number four, which is passive voice. So the rule here is do not use passive voice. Can one of you explain what this is, in case somebody missed it in all their writing classes?

[Mary Robinette] So, um, if you can say... It's basically she will be chased by zombies is different than zombies chased her. And zombies chased her is active, she will be... Or she is chased by zombies is passive, and it's supposed to be a distancing thing. That you can pick a more active verb, that you can make it more immediate.

[Erin] Yeah. I often see this as like, don't ever use is. Like, if is exists in your story, beat it to death with the adverbs that you also should be taking out of the story, which we will not be talking about today. But I really think that passive voice can be very, very useful. and a couple of ways that I think of that you can use passive voice to good intent, I'll tell you, tell me what you think, and if you have other ones. So one is by depersonalizing actions on purpose. So, like, she is chased by zombies is a couple things. Like, maybe the point is not who's doing the chasing, but that she is being chased. In the way that police actions are often reported...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] In the news, where it's like, the person, like, was killed by the cops, versus, the cops killed this person.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Shows the attitude of what is important in this case.

[DongWon] The suspect was struck by 17 bullets. Like...

[Erin] Exactly. Which is...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Yeah, where it's like who even shot the bullets?

[DongWon] Yep.

[Erin] Who knows? They were just struck by those bullets. The important thing is that they were stopped and here's how, not who did the stopping.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] It shows where the focus of the story is, and if you're trying to show, hey, in this particular story, the focus is on the 17 bullets and the person being ended, not, like, who is doing it, then that's a way to use passive voice. I would say another one is if the who is doing it is a surprise. So I was bitten... By a zombie, is different...

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Than a zombie bit me, if you don't know a zombie exists in the story.

[Mary Robinette] Right.

[DongWon] Right.

[Erin] I was bitten by, like, gives you a chance to ramp up into the reveal of the sentence...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Which is the noun. Like, it is like the, oh, you weren't bitten by your dog, you were bitten by a zombie. Holy crap. And so that's another reason to use passive voice.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] I mean, I think active voice, in general, or, like, the activity level of The Voice is a dial. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] And you could be Spinal Tap and say this always has to be at 11, or you can crank it down sometimes. And, like, you can deliberately slow things down and deliberately add a little padding in there. And sometimes those extra words will slow your reader's pace down when you want them to slow down a little bit and be a little bit more abstract and then ramp it up again later as things pick up for whatever reason. Right? And so I think being able to use the passive voice is just another tool in your kit. Right? Not to be too on the point, but tools, not rules. This is a tool that you can use. Do people overuse it when they're first learning to write? Probably.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] But...

[Mary Robinette] It's also a tool, like, you can also use it to do some really creepy...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Things. Like, if you want your character to be a prisoner in their own body. So... The door was opened by her own hand...

[Erin] Oooh!

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. But she has no control over that. That can be, like, ugh!

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Yeah. And I think also, to, like super agree about the dial, it's like if you ever go out, not to use karaoke for everything...

[Chuckles]

[Erin] And hear somebody who is like a great belter, they have a very strong voice...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] But if they just belt the entire song at the exact same level, at a certain point...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] You will tune it out. Like, you're just like, at first, you'll be like, oh, exciting that you can do that, and then you'll be like, oh my gosh, like, again? And so I think that sometimes you see people use so much activity that it just becomes like Jane ran up the hill, Jane grabbed the bucket, like, everything becomes kind of same-y. And I think another thing that passive voice can do is to provide, like, a frame or a bed for the activity that is happening. The thing around it that makes the more active voice sentence stand out. Because it is the one that is doing it differently. It is belting out of a slow, calmer verse that brings all of this attention to...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Why have you become loud at this moment?

[DongWon] It can give us what we think of in film as an establishing shot. You know what I mean? Like, a broader framework of the action, and then we zoom into the more active thing that's happening. She was chased by a horde of zombies. she reached for the gun. You know what I mean?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] And the difference between those two things lets us zoom out and zoom in in a way that I think is really, really useful. And it's just a great tool in your kit.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Exactly. The last thing I'll say about this one... Sorry, I didn't mean to... Ah, is to like I think things like weather, time...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Setting... I mean, yes, the sun can beat down upon you, and, like, the wind can beat you down or buffet you, but, like, sometimes, like, the setting is just existing.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] It's not actively opposing you. It is merely the thing that you are moving through. And it is nice to just kind of give it a bit more of a... It is passively there and doing things and you are doing things in the setting, as opposed to the setting is doing things to you.

[DongWon] Sometimes the wind was blowing through the trees is a better sentence than the wind blew through the trees.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Right? Sometimes you want that extra little bit of softness there.

[Erin] Yeah. And the feeling of ongoingness...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, the wind was blowing through the trees sounds like something that's happening over time, whereas the wind blew through the trees seems like it just started.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And it is a new action that you have to pay attention to right in this moment.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Okay, another number.

[Mary Robinette] Two.

[Erin] Two. This is very similar in some ways. The inactive protagonist.

[Mary Robinette] Ah!

[Erin] Does your protagonist have to have agency or do anything at all? Does your... Answer the question... Does your protagonist have to have agency or do anything at all?

[Mary Robinette] So I've been thinking about this a lot, and I don't think that your protagonist does have to have agency or do anything at all. But I do think that it's going to be a more interesting story if they have an interior life, and are to some degree aware of their lack of agency.

[Erin] Yeah. I think that they have to do something, but the something can be internal.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Not externally focused. So, a protagonist who survives... If you think about it, a lot of horror  movies are about survival. Sometimes that survival is active, like, I grabbed the knife and threw it at the zombie horde. But sometimes it's just like I waited, I listened, like... Which are actions, but they're very like... They're not actions of agency. They're actions of reaction. I'm trying to figure out what the threat is and how to deal with it.

[DongWon] I mean, ironically, we see this a lot in video games, actually, of a protagonist who's very passive. And very reactive to the situation around them, and then the active choices are being made by the side characters, the companion characters, NPCs, things like that, in part because they don't want to put too much on the perspective of the player. And so... It's sort of why we often see fan art or fan stories about side characters more than the main character. You think about like Mass Effect or Dragon Age fandoms. These are all obsessed with those side characters and less interested in the main characters. The main characters just reacting to whatever is going on. And we see this a lot in anything that has an audience surrogate kind of character. A lot of, weirdly, superhero movies fall into this model, too. Where a lot of times the main character is kind of inactive for a lot of it, and is responding to the things happening around them as the world acts crazier and crazier. But the big choices are being made by the villain, the big choices are being made by companions with them.

[Erin] Yeah. And that can create such an exciting feeling of tension, because often in our own lives, we don't have as much agency as...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] We wish we did over the broader events happening around us. And so we can really identify... I think that's why it works for an audience surrogate.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] If the character has really strong agency, we maybe don't feel as much like we identify with that character,  more as we enjoy them. But we don't feel like that could be me. Because if aliens were attacking my town, I also would be hiding  out in my closet.

[Mary Robinette] Oh, yeah.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And not necessarily, like, fighting them tooth and nail, scrapping right there.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. It is one of those things where... like, I just finished a short story where the main character was a literal inanimate object.

[Erin] Oooh!

[Mary Robinette] And so there is no action that the character can take. Because it does not have movement. But it has all of the tension, because it's... Because it can't react. So, like, aliens coming in and you need to hide... You're not going to go out and fight the aliens? Yeah. Yeah, that's going to be a really tense thing because at any moment, they could come, and you still have no agency there, because they're aliens from another world.

[DongWon] Yeah. I would argue that the picaresque is an entire genre based on having a very inactive protagonist.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] I mean, they're active in that they go from point A to point B, but they're not the ones who are inspiring the events when they arrive at that place. They're observing it and reacting to it. So, something like Confederacy of Dunces or something like that is... He's not actively making any real choices in his life. I mean, Ulysses, kind of the same... The Joyce's Ulysses kind of the same thing, of... I mean, kind of arguably, the original Ulysses, too. Anyways. But mostly that these characters are just wandering around and stuff is happening around them and they're observing it without really having a lot of influence on the outcome. And, I mean, these are some brilliant works of literature. They're very specific. They may not be for everyone. But there's absolutely space for a story in which your protagonist is kind of in the pocket.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. But I think what Erin said about the... That they are still doing something...

[DongWon] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] Even if it's only an interior...

[DongWon] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] And that's evaluating or reacting...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Or having an emotion.

[Erin] And often, like you said with video games, like, side characters will fill that role, like... Because something is changing, usually, in a story. So who is changing it? Either it is something that naturally changes, like the seasons. It is something that a character is changing, but it doesn't necessarily have to be your character. So I think I would say if you want to  have a more inactive protagonist, figure out where is the activity, where is the change coming from? Is it the world? Is it the other characters in the world? And then, how is your protagonist either a reflection, a survival of, a reaction to those active changes. And now it is time for us to take an action, and that is to go to break.

[DongWon] For more than a decade, we've hosted Writing Excuses at sea, an annual workshop and retreat in a cruise ship. You're invited to our final cruise in 2026. It's a chance to learn, connect, and grow, all while sailing along the stunning Alaskan and Canadian coast. Join us, the hosts of Writing Excuses, and spend dedicated time leveling up your writing craft. Attend classes, join small group breakout sessions, learn from instructors one on one at office hours, and meet with all the writers from around the world. During the week-long retreat, we'll also dock at 3 Alaskan ports, Juneau, Sitka, and Skagway, as well as Victoria, British Columbia. Use this time to write on the ship or choose excursions that allow you to get up close and personal with glaciers, go whale watching, and learn more about the rich history of the region and more. Next year will be our grand finale after over 10 years of successful retreats at sea. Whether you're a long time alumni or a newcomer, we would love to see you on board. Early bird pricing is currently available, and we also offer scholarships. You can learn more at writingexcuses.com/retreats.

[Mary Robinette] So when Erin says take a break, what we actually mean is, it's time for homework. When we originally recorded this, it was going to be one episode, but we've decided to split it into two. So your homework for this episode is to write down some of the rules you think you follow most rigidly in your own writing. Like, are you a big fan of show, don't tell? Do you think that you should cut all words that end with ly? But take one of these rules and begin to think about ways you can challenge the rule, you can break it, you can soften it in some way. What happens if you invert it? So, that's your homework.

[Mary Robinette] You're out of excuses. Now go write.