A Writer's Notebook, Day Four-Hundred-And-Forty-Eight

One of the issues which arises for me in thinking about the kind of writing I am interested in pursuing is about questioning limitations.  Many rules exist that writers are taught over and over again, presented as the one way, the only way, that works.  There is often truth in such ideas, but the real truth is far more complicated and less exact or obvious.

To offer an example, writers learn not to use adverbs.  Now, this is good advice, generally, but it is simplified into an exact rule.  Better would be to explain that verbs are the engines of a sentence and using an adverb won't make a bad verb stronger, and can weaken one that would be strong standing alone.  That does not mean never, but it requires a nuanced understanding.

The thing is, many such rules become ingrained to a degree that writers do not question them or explore what else can be done, if we go in a different direction.  When these are rules about the nature of story, for example, I wonder at what might exist that we are not aware of.  What are the rules I have taken on that I do not even know are just limitations?  For me, I want to go towards work that expands these possibilities, taking the risk of pushing against boundaries to discover where they really lie.

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