We all have a logged master list of writing rules we’ve been told to follow literally hundreds of times. But how often do you pick up a bestseller only to find that it totally broke one of the cardinal rules of writing? Basically, every time, right?

Much like the pirate code, writing rules are largely meant to be guidelines. Following them to the letter doesn’t automatically make you a great writer, and often the consideration isn’t if you’ve broken the rules but how it’s done. Breaking the rules unintentionally and without good reason leads to broken narratives that readers have a hard time engaging with. First you must learn the rules and write following them in order to succeed at writing beyond them. But when there’s a purpose for breaking them, it can often work. Here’s a list of how a few fundamental principles of writing can be broken to greater effect.

Tell, Don’t Show Transitions

Each scene you write in your novel is a structural unit of change in your story, which basically means that each scene should have a moment where the situation at hand shifts after new information comes to light. You’ve heard show, don’t tell so many times that you can’t possibly count, but there are so many things that happen to your character between the moments of change that don’t grow your story.

How many times have you seen a character pee? Not many. Unless a moment of change happens inside a bathroom, it’s uncommon for you to even have it mentioned. That’s okay. Summarize transitions. It will give your readers and characters time to reflect on the change that just happened and what that means for the narrative moving forward.

Carefully Select Crutch Words for Characterization

Crutch words are generally seen as an absolute no and that you should work to remove them from your novel as much as possible. But crutch words are a part of human norms. Everyone has them, and which you choose to lean on can say a lot about who you are. So the careful cultivation of crutch words to put in your characters’ mouths can actually build more realistic dialogue.

It’s a way to differentiate character voices, too. Which words would they have in common with others in their lives and with whom? Which words are uniquely theirs? Which words do the adopt over the course of the narrative? If done with intentionality, crutch words can tell us more about the relationships in your books with subtlety.

Use Clichés to Hide Your Climax

Hating clichés is so old that it’s become a cliché, which means their use in literature is becoming more acceptable again. In fact, we’ve renamed many of them into genre conventions. But that doesn’t mean you want to fill your book with tropes everyone can see a mile away. What it has created, though, is an opportunity where you can use a cliché that will make readers believe the scene shift has come and use it as a lookie-loo before you then sneakily jab them in the ribs with the actual climax.

Hint: This doesn’t just have to apply to your narrative climax. Every scene has a mini climax in itself that is fair game for misdirection as well.

Engage Passive Voice to Give Symbols Life

Writing in the passive voice for long periods of time or periodically throughout your narrative is going to disengage your readers. It inhibits their ability to connect with your characters. But choosing to use the passive voice in a particular passage can take an ordinary object and turn it into a character of its own by making it the star subject. It’s a great way to draw attention to something that will come back around without being too heavy handed in your foreshadowing if done with intentionality.

Discuss Taboo Poorly to Create Teachable Moments

There’s a lot of advice for writing taboo subjects in a way that doesn’t exploit and is informed by the community it represents. But in reality people speak on taboo subjects with poor information all the time. Writing using those same ignorant points of view can help you meet readers where they are early in the text. By having your characters learn how to speak on these topics either directly through your narrative or through exposure and then adopting the appropriate language for themselves, you have the ability to change the minds and hearts of readers who otherwise wouldn’t get that exposure. And it doesn’t have to be a primary plot to pull it off. Characters can be complex and change in multiple directions at once.

Disengage Sensory Language to Emphasize a Tonal Shift

Writing with sensory language is a natural way to help readers feel fully immersed in your world and engage emotionally with it. So, it’s something we suggest you take the extra time to consider throughout your novel during important scenes. But in creating a habit of it in most scenes, you can actually help readers lean in a little further by strategically choosing to omit it from certain scenes as well.

High-action sequences that require a lot of focus share common ground with the human experience of desensitization. In these moments, sensory language can slow down your narrative pace and pull readers out of the adrenaline. Scenes filled with emotional reflections can be hindered by sensory language as well as it detracts from the mind-body experience where emotions can be felt physically. Though sensory language isn’t immediately problematic in these scenes, omitting it can create a new opportunity to allow readers to focus on what is different about them.

These are just six examples of how classic writing rules can be broken with good intentions. The chances of you coming upon agents, acquisitions editors, and readers who don’t like this about your books is still relatively likely when you break such rules. But so long as your list of exceptions for your book is short, it's still possible keep them on board. And who writes a book without taking any risks? It may just be genius.