Heinlein’s Rules – #2

For reasons that I noted in yesterday’s post, I’ve found myself writing a mini-series about Heinlein’s rules. The original premise that got me going had to do with the idea that the controversy surrounding these rules is often placed (or always placed) in the wrong area. By that I mean writers gnash their teeth over the rule that says they should not edit their work, when in reality the other 3 rules are more often problematic.

Today is rule #2: you must finish what you write.

Rule 2: You Must Finish What You Write

As obvious as rule 1 might be, rule 2 might be even more obvious. If a story is not finished, there’s not a lot of point, right? And herein—I think—lies the real rub. What does it mean to finish a piece?

Seriously.

This is a deadly weird question to answer. There’s nuance in this one. What, after all, is a story? Because that’s implies here. If we adjust the wording of Heinlein’s rule #2 to say you must finish telling a story we can see the problem. You cannot finish something if you don’t know what it is, right? It isn’t good enough to simply type “The End” someplace, and call it a story.

In this light, many, many new writers (myself included) often fail to actually finish anything—not because they are piddling around with it just to get it “perfect,” but because they don’t actually know what a story entails. Of course, there’s the age-old problem that if you don’t know what you’re making you never know when to stop. It’s a conundrum inside a mystery, right? When you’re new to any creative process—and sometimes even when you aren’t that new to it—you have to take a leap of faith that what you’re doing is good enough.

This is really the root of the complaints that folks have with Heinlein’s rules. They are applying his comments in Rule 3 (refrain from revising) too early.

Of course writers adjust their stories as they work.

Even Dean Wesley Smith, the guy who takes all the heat for his adherence to the rules, says that he “cycles” as he’s writing—meaning that each day he’ll go back over the bits he’s done before and make adjustments (which I envision as mostly adding depth and other various tweaks). Dean is a honed pro, after all. He already knows story. When you know story you feel it in your bones, and when you know story your creative voice (rather than your critical voice) will help you adjust in mid-stream if you just let it.

The critical skill set of Rule 2, though, is that of understanding story.

Story is character, character is reaction, reaction is depth.

Blah, blah, blah.

If, after typing “The End,” you realize you’re missing something—or you’ve got stuff out of order—or you need a lot more depth—or, well, whatever the obvious issue, then go back and fill it in. Or perhaps you realize you were mostly just exploring the concept with that one (Lisa Silverthorne, for example, writes herself a letter that “outlines” her goals for the story before she really gets down to writing…arguably you can say she’s internally drafting her story at that point). Everyone has times when they do an exploratory draft.

So, sure, have at it.

But if the story is done, it’s done, and if you get to that point don’t screw with it no more.

Of course, Rule 2 brings up a different issue for “established” writers, and that issue is that there are times when we finish something, and we know the story is complete, but when we look at the manuscript, we know in our bones it’s not what we had in mind, but we’re not sure what the problem is. All we can say is that it doesn’t feel right. Or at least we’re uncertain of it. And we have this overwhelming urge to go back and “fix” something. We think we know story, and we think we understand our vision, but we’re just unhappy with the result.

Rule 2, though, says that all we care about is the story.

As I said before, if the story is done, it’s done—otherwise, sure, go back and tweak.

For established writers who know story, though, those feelings of angst are really Rule 3 bleeding though.

And I’ll talk about Rule 3 tomorrow.