1. A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. This goes back to our discussions on conflict. Without conflict you don’t have a story. A story must drive forward to resolve the conflict or come to terms with it in some way.
2. The episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. This means that if a scene in your story is not essential and does not help tell the story in some way, then it needs to be deleted from the story.
3. The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. This is one of my favorites: don’t make your characters stick figures – make them as real and true to life as you can.
4. The personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. If there is not a reason for a character to be in the story, then they don’t need to be there. Much like the scene of the story, if the character is not essential and does not help to develop the story in some way, then it should be eliminated.
5. When the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. The main point here is realistic dialogue. Do not force your characters to say things that are uncharacteristic. Keep the conversation to the point of the story and don’t meander. Remember, if your reader gets bored with the dialogue, they will stop reading.
6. When the author describes the character of a personage in the tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description. If you describe a character as being well-educated and slightly stiff with formality, then you can not have the character picking booger’s out of his nose during a formal dinner and saying things like “I don’t got none.” However you describe your character, their words and their actions must support your description.
7. When a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship’s Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. Be consistent with how your characters talk. Dialogue is one of the ways to distinguish your character, and it should be evident from the phrasing used as well as the words which character is speaking. Unless the character in question is trying to learn to speak in a different way, such as improving their grammar, or deliberately trying to sound like they belong on the street, then they shouldn’t change they way in which they speak throughout the course of the story.
8. Crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as “the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest,” by either the author or the people in the tale. Don’t allow your character to have more knowledge or ability than is humanly possible. For example, it is not possible, even for the expert woodsman, to be able to see a fly on the trunk of a tree at 300 yards.
9. The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable. Whatever happens in your story, even if you are writing in the realm of fantasy, must be realistic based on the rules of the environment. For example, you may have invented a world where it is reasonable that pigs can fly, pigs being the intelligent ruling class, but where donkey’s are earthbound creatures. A donkey can not suddenly take flight because it happened upon some pixie dust.
10. The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. Make your characters interesting. A reader should feel emotion when bad things happen to the good people as well a being upset when it appears that the bad people will triumph. Make your characters become real for the reader.
11. The characters in a tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency. Your characters should be so real to the reader, that they can imagine how the character would act outside the confines of the story.

In addition to these large rules, there are some little ones. These require that the author shall:

1. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it. Be clear about the story you are trying to tell.
2. Use the right word, not its second cousin. There is always the right word for what you are trying to say to give the right flavor to the story. Find that word.
3. Eschew (to abstain or keep away from; shun; avoid) surplusage (an excess of words). Don’t use ten words, when one will do.
4. Not omit necessary details. Don’t leave out things that are necessary to the story.
5. Avoid slovenliness of form. Keep your writing clean and tight.
6. Use good grammar.
7. Employ a simple and straightforward style.

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Copyright 2008 © LK Gardner-Griffie
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