Attend any writers conference and many of the guest speakers will be writers who reputedly have achieved some measure of success. Their presentations are touted as designed to help you become successful by being a better writer. Often, they begin their presentations with the advice that you “ignore the rules and just write great stories.” Then they pepper their presentations by enumerating the rules you must follow in order to be successful.
A confusing state of affairs, right? So, what is an aspiring writer to do? Ignore the rules? Scrupulously follow the rules? My first piece of advice is to stop looking for someone to reveal a successful “path of least resistance.” Ignoring the rules of writing, such as they are, certainly sounds easy. But I guarantee you very few, if any, writers achieved fame and fortune by turning out crap. The rules of writing provide a format or structure for producing good stories—setting the hook, pacing, conflict, escalating tension, fleshed out characters, realistic dialogue, etc. There probably are a few writers who dominate the top of the bestseller lists and can write what they want, rules or no rules. But they didn’t achieve their lofty status by doing that.
If you self-publish without benefit of professional editing, you will turn out crap, and in the process give all self-published works a black eye. If you desire to go the traditional route in publishing, you’ll need to be represented by a literary agent. These people make their living by selling authors and their manuscripts to a publishing house. They can’t and won’t take crap to a publisher, or they’ll soon need to find another line of work. This, in part, explains why finding an agent seems to be next to impossible. Good agents are pros. They recognize good stories that are well written, something they can take to a publisher without jeopardizing their relationship.
So, before you elect to cast aside good writing techniques in hopes of finding the fast track to literary fame and fortune, accept that there is a proven system and it still works.