“But Shakespeare Didn’t Do That!” Why Writing Rules Exist (and What They’re For)

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It’s an argument I hear almost every time I post writing advice:

“Dickens would have disagreed.”

“Ray Bradbury didn’t write like that!”

“This is the exact opposite of every Cormac McCarthy novel.”

The comments are thrown out like a gotcha. And in a way, I understand.

After all, if some of the greatest writers in the English language go completely against what I’m saying, then I must be talking rubbish, right? At best, I’m stifling creativity. At worst, I’m a charlatan—imposing my fake “rules” on other people’s writing.

And if someone wants to believe that, I’m not going to stop them. Gods know I couldn’t, even if I tried.

But believing in “timelessly great” writing (and dismissing all writing advice out of hand) is dangerous for any author hoping to attract a serious audience. And it’s far more nuanced than any pithy comeback on social media.

So, for our last post of 2025, let’s take a deep dive into what’s actually going on here, and what we can learn from it.

Why “Timeless” Writing is a Myth

Here’s why modern writing advice doesn’t apply to authors from the past: readers’ tastes and expectations change.

Until 60 or 70 years ago, novels were one of the primary sources of entertainment. People lived completely different lives. On a quiet rainy day in November, a good book had very little competition. People had a higher tolerance for boredom, and so they’d happily devour pages and pages of telling and exposition.

In the modern world, for better or worse, our audience’s time is precious. Most people are busier than they’ve ever been, and have a huge number of things they can do with any small scraps of free time they have.

On that same rainy day in November, your book is competing with the entire back catalogue on Kindle Unlimited, but also with Netflix, video games, and doomscrolling.

Novels are also increasingly influenced by decades of screenwriting. Most readers consume far more stories through TV and film, and this affects their expectations around what a story should look like.

As a result, modern readers are much more likely to expect clarity, momentum, and emotional immediacy. And if a book doesn’t pull them in fast, they’ll abandon it quickly and move on to something else.

Because the choice is almost endless.

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Brahms isn’t Taylor Swift

I’ve heard a lot of people argue that “good writing is good writing,” but here’s why that’s wrong:

All storytelling is a conversation with a specific audience, during a particular period in time, using shared language, expectations, and a shared understanding of the world.

As times change, so do the “rules” for effective writing, and the same is true across the arts. An hour-long Brahms symphony is not a three-minute pop song. That doesn’t mean Brahms is “bad music,” he’s just not topping the charts on Spotify like he used to.

Of course, people still read the classics, the same way that people still listen to Brahms. But importantly, when we pick up a copy of Frankenstein, The Iliad, or The Lord of the Rings, we adjust our expectations. Consciously or unconsciously, we understand it was written for a different audience, and so we cut it a little more slack than we’d give the latest release from Harper Collins.

This is provably true. If it wasn’t, the New York Times bestseller list would be full of books with 27 pages of elvish songs (or endless chunks of exposition about a side character’s third toenail), and we’d all still be reading books in Middle English.

But we’re not. In fact, it’s almost impossible to find a successful novel from the last 5-10 years with the ponderous pacing of D.H. Lawrence, the lengthy infodumps of Dune, or a truly passive protagonist like Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

There are some classical novels that still work brilliantly for modern readers. However, it’s almost always because these stories use techniques that just so happen to work perfectly for modern audiences, as well as the ones they were written for.

It’s a happy accident of convergence: some expectations change, others don’t, and sometimes tastes loop back around.

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The Problem With “There Are No Writing Rules”

And what’s true for time is also true for distance, and even genre.

Readers of literary fiction have an entirely different set of expectations when they pick up a book, and storytelling from non-Western traditions (like the Japanese Kishōtenketsu) follows an entirely different rulebook.

Ultimately, the only writing rule is this: give the audience enough to keep reading.

Different cultures and genres solve that problem in different ways, and often for different people. Even just within speculative fiction, a fast-paced grimdark novel is not a cosy fantasy. When a reader picks up any book, they bring with them a heart filled with different expectations about the type of story they’ll find inside.

Our job is simply to set those expectations, and fulfil our promises accordingly.

Rule Breaking is Rules Mastery

This is exactly how the best authors do things that most writing advice would consider “forbidden.” As Rose Rivers said in a recent conversation:

Master storytellers can break all the rules precisely because they know them so well. Because they understand what their audience expects, and how to overcome common writing problems in new and unusual ways.

For example, we don’t say “show, don’t tell” because telling is evil. We say it because most novice writers tell far too much, and it creates a huge amount of unnecessary distance—causing the reader to get frustrated, or stop reading entirely.

But an expert author, especially one with multiple successful books under their belt, can solve the same problem in inventive ways: fulfilling the purpose of the rule without having to follow it exactly. For example, they know that, if the opening concept of their novel is already rammed full of tension, they can get away with telling without bringing the whole story screaming to a halt.

They know how to give the reader enough to keep reading, even when writing in a way that would normally wreck things.

When we do find a successful novel from the last decade that seemingly flies in the face of most writing advice, it’s often exactly this sort of book: written by someone who already learned the “rules”, internalised them, and can now achieve the same effect in new and unusual ways.

So, in a way, it’s true: there are no writing rules. But there are things that generally work, and cautionary tales that exist to stop new writers from falling into the most common traps and pitfalls.

We can think of most writing advice like training wheels. It’s there to help us learn the basics and fulfil our readers’ expectations, while also developing the skills we need to transcend that. In almost every writer’s career, there comes a point like this: when they can finally take the training wheels off, create their own rules, and ride alone.

But that doesn’t make writing advice useless.

For beginners, it’s absolutely vital.

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Understand Your Audience (Or Don’t)

Here’s the context that so many people miss:

When I post a snippet of writing advice, it’s intended for a very specific audience: writers of contemporary Western speculative fiction, who are interested in finding the overlap between the stories they want to write, and the ones their readers crave.

All craft advice is like this—it only makes sense in the context of the audience it’s meant to serve. It’s about the hopes and expectations shared by readers of a particular genre, and helps us keep the promises we’ve made to them.

And you don’t even have to care about it.

If you want to write 2,000 pages of pure exposition, in a made-up language that you invented solely for this project, then fill your boots! That’s the beauty of writing. We can ignore the expectations of modern readers, or the whole publishing world, and write whatever our little hearts’ desire.

However, we aren’t free from the consequences of that choice, and the more we go against the grain, the harder it will be to build an audience. And that might be absolutely fine. Not everyone wants to make a living from writing, or pen the next bestseller. If we’re just writing for ourselves, to explore our creativity, or simply because it makes us feel alive, then that’s a valid choice.

Go wild, then. Break every so-called “rule” in the book!

But don’t fall into the trap of believing that’s how the masterworks of classical literature were written. Because (with one possible exception) the great writers of the past weren’t solitary geniuses, possessed by the spirit of creative ingenuity, and writing with no regard for what anyone thought.

Hemingway was a journalist before he was a fiction writer. He knew the expectations of the market down to his bones.

Shakespeare set the streaming records of his day.

Even notoriously impenetrable James Joyce only survived because of a small, dedicated audience that appreciated (and funded) his work.

To some extent, they all wrote with the expectations of their readers (and often the market) in mind, and there’s nothing mercenary or unclean about that.

It’s exactly why their works resonated so deeply that we’re still reading them now.

Using This in Your Own Work

All of this might seem a little abstract, but it’s actually something all writers must navigate.

Try answering questions like:

• Who am I writing for? Is it just for myself, or am I writing for an audience, too?

• What’s the most important thing about writing? Why am I doing this?

• Do I care about the wants and expectations of my readers?

• Is it more important that my stories get read, or that I write whatever I want?

• Am I searching for the point of overlap—between the stories I want to tell and the ones readers desire?

• And, if I am writing for an audience, is it the audience I actually want?

Once we know the answers, we can adjust course accordingly: learning our craft or discarding all writing advice in favour of pure creativity. We can accept that we’re writing for others (and will need to make compromises), or that we’re here purely for ourselves and don’t care if anyone listens.

As with all things in writing, there is no right or wrong answer—only the answer that works for you.

But please, don’t tell me how Shakespeare did it differently.

A play from five hundred years ago is not a 2026 speculative fiction novel.

And honestly, if I hear about it one more time, I might just throw Act 1 Scene 2 of The Tempest at the wall 😁

✒️ Big News! The Writers’ Room is Coming Soon

We recently hit our funding goal, and something wonderful is coming at the start of 2026.

The Writers’ Room is a supportive community of speculative fiction writers, built around a monthly workshop with dedicated developmental insight.

If you’d like to get in on the ground floor, you can still join by clicking the Pledge button below.

You won’t be charged until we launch, and you’ll get yourself a place in our very first workshop!

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