Collin's Reviews > Story Trumps Structure: How to Write Unforgettable Fiction by Breaking the Rules

“And since every story is different, you definitely don’t want to follow some prepackaged novel-writing template—complete with instructions on when to introduce subplots or resolve each act—or you’ll produce a cookie-cutter story that doesn’t impact anyone.” (89-90)

Not to sound like an arrogant ass but when I was 17, I wrote a book using a novel-writing curriculum outline template and a grown adult told me that she had read the last half of it (not the whole book, just the last 6-ish chapters) and it made her cry. So maybe being prescriptive about pantsing and saying “do it my way or you’ll never succeed at this craft” isn’t a very sound way to approach helping beginner writers who are struggling with overly prescriptive plotting advice.

I do think there’s a lot of room for more organic, seat-of-pants style writing advice books of this type but to say “idk man just write the book, don’t get weird about it” is a little short sighted? This is clearly aimed at very new/first time writers and to say outlines, plotting, and various standard structures aren’t useful at all is… hmm. I mean, you wouldn’t tell a person who wants to play piano, “Don’t bother with all that scales and octaves and sharps nonsense, just get in there and start playing!” unless it’s like, Mozart or something. Most people have to get a feel for the “rules before they can effectively break them. “Effectively” being the operative word — you can break rules all you want without knowing why they exist, that’s art too, but art without intentionality often loses something in the making, and I don’t know why you’d want to take tools away from newbies, rather than letting them play with everything at their disposal and choose which works best for them.