I’m back to talk about National Novel Writing Month some more. This time, instead of complaining on the internet about how mean everyone is—because that’s productive—I figured I’d take a shot at giving advice. This, of course means, that I will get to be the target of enraged tweeting and, with any luck, at least one table-thumping LiveJournal post.

Anyhow, as with last week, this is all with the caveat that any advice I have is targeted towards Fantasy and Science Fiction writers, because that’s what I know and that’s what I love, and this is the Orbit blog, so, frankly, you’re probably a SFF fan anyways. Also, this is all from the perspective of someone who hasn’t written anything longer than an editorial letter since college. So, advice from an editor. Not even advice, let’s say it’s some things you may want to think about if you have a moment between pounding out thousands upon thousands of words a day.

Moving on.

1)  There really are rules.

There’s a lot of disagreement about what the rules are and how they should be interpreted. But, there’s things that, generally, one should and should not do. There are lots of lists of them and, if they’re any good, they tend to inspire lots of debate and I don’t really want to get into them. But, mostly, they’re things like this .

2) Rules are made to be broken.

For every rule, there’s usually an example of how someone broke that rule and it was awesome. Think 2^nd Person is off-limits? There’s Bright Lights, Big City. Think a 5 part dramatic arc is essential? Try George R.R. Martin*.  Think rape is the worst excuse of character development in fantasy? Try Robin McKinley’s Deerskin. And so on and so forth.

3)  … but not too much.

My personal rule of thumb is that you get to break two rules a book. If you’re going to be breaking a rule, whether it’s a plot thing, a narrative thing, or even a syntactical tic, you can only get away with a couple of them. And you have to know that you’re breaking a rule. So learn em, break em, but do it carefully.

Writing a really great novel—yes, in the Great American Novel sense, but also in the “stay up til four in the morning sense”—is, in the broadest possible terms, about balancing good storytelling with innovation. The rules are there because lots of people have been telling stories for a very long time and in the telling and the writing, certain things became evident. But good writing is as much about finding a personal angle, a way the story makes sense to the individual, and unless you learn to make it your own, no one’s going to want to hear it.

So, the nano tip of the week is: Break the rules, but just a little bit.

* Yes, the link is framed as a critique, but I actually think the way he’s broken down traditional plots is kind of brilliant.