Breaking the writing rules

Who wouldn't want a doorway that looked like this?

Last night I had a quaint dream. Don't stop reading - I know the rule is to never tell other people about your dreams because it's so BORING, but the whole point of this post is about when it makes sense to break the rules.

In the dream I was helping out a company whose sole product was doorways designed in the style of the old Foyles building in Charing Cross Road (don't ask). They were worried about their advertising, which consisted of half page magazine adverts that were totally full of text apart from a backdrop of a Caribbean beach.

Now, one rule of advertising is Don't use too many words. People switch off. Get your message across with images and a few snappy words. (You can have small, secondary text to give follow-on information, but the main message should be short and big.) If you look at adverts on Tube stations these days, for instance, that's generally the case. But when I regularly caught the Tube when I worked at Hatton Cross, one company thought differently.

The adverts were for a Russian restaurant, and they reasoned that people waiting for a tube have nothing else to do but read the adverts - so why not give them something more significant to read? So their adverts had loads of text. And it caused a storm. People loved it. (And briefly other advertisers did the same, though they seem to have forgotten how effective it was now.) Rules in writing are all very well, but sometimes the best result is had from breaking them. Every great writer does this. It doesn't mean you can write well without knowing what the rules are - but if you know what you are doing, you can consciously break those rules to superb effect.

We had a good example of this at the popular science book writing masterclass a couple of weeks ago. At the end of the event, a panel, including me, were giving feedback on book ideas. What we said several times was that the idea being presented to us was really just a collection of information. To make a good popular science book it needed an arc - an overarching development of a theme across the book. And then someone came up with an idea where each chapter in her book was effectively a separate story with no real connection, apart from the device that was used to link them together. The person with the idea was hesitant, because there was no arc - this was a separate set of individual stories. And the answer was - it's fine to break the rules. (I think I actually said 'There are no rules,' which isn't true, but I meant there are no unbreakable rules.) Here it worked because of the special nature of that linking device.

So the advice to writers (and I think this applies to both non-fiction and fiction) is simple. Learn the rules. Be aware how they apply to your book. Use them conscientiously. And then be prepared to ignore them if it works better that way.

Image "Soho foyles bookshop 1". Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense

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