Politicizing What Doesn't Need Politicizing

I once advocated for more politics in the arts--to create conversations, not to advocate one political party over another. But in the last decade or so, the arts barbed with politics have sown the field, choking out anything else.

Janice Pariat penned "Decolonising creative writing: It’s about not conforming to techniques of the western canon[.] The universal rules of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ writing are turning out to be colonial relics." 

The article proves nothing that the title and subtitle claim simply because they cannot. Experienced writers help writers by creating rules to guide one's writing--rules that seem to help most stories. The Iowa Writer's Workshop came up with rules that seemed to work. They produced a number of writers who attained some success, which drew more writers to their workshop. They have their pick, so they get to keep the cream. If their rules failed, they wouldn't have attained their success and notoriety.

They aren't the only ones to come up with rules. SF has had a number of rules come out of workshops, perhaps most famously the Turkey City Lexicon. There are rules that popular writers have come up with, by studying bestsellers.

What Janice is rebelling against is the very nature of rules, especially in writing. She's hardly the first. W. Somerset Maugham wrote:

"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." 

As far as Turkey City goes, no doubt a few novels that use "plot coupons" turned out excellent specimens. Perhaps they'd have been better if they had not.

Kate Wilhelm advised against "their eyes fell to the floor" literalizing it, but really it's a standard narrative convention and would only be misunderstood if we were in story where such a thing could happen. 

Theodore Sturgeon critiqued the literary quality of his most famous short story, "Microcosmic God." Was he wrong? No, he'd have probably been eviscerated in certain workshops, but the story remains one of his most enduring. To have been literary, it would have needed to have been written differently, and he'd have wound up elsewhere, not writing the same story. Could it have been written better? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

The rules aren't rules but guidelines to refer to if something's not working. That is a legitimate criticism leveled against workshops. They pound out anything that doesn't look like what they've been told to recognize, so they use the rules to smash. "This is a plot coupon!" "This character is cardboard!" This is a failure of critics and workshoppers. 

First, read the story. If it fails, then apply the rules where it's broken. Don't plaster up limbs that aren't broken. The Hippocratic Oath advises us to do no harm.

Then again, maybe they have a point. You have to evaluate what you've been told with what you've done. Some writers and poets have to persist in what they're doing before they're recognized. Kay Ryan, for instance.

Rules stultify experiment and sometimes writers' unique voices, but they are good guidelines. Do you have to write 3D characters? No, but it's a good idea. Do you have to write interesting, escalating plots? No, but it's a good idea. Do you have to write strong, evocative sentences? No, but it's a good idea.  

Also, different genres have different protocols--some emphasizing one element over another. Rules that help in one field may not work in another, and you might be trapped in a workshop where you aren't writing what other writers are reading and writing. If you don't want to do what they're doing, get out. It's no conspiracy. They may feel assured that they are helping you. Exit with grace. Look for your people elsewhere.