Los Angeles Times | Le Guin on Rules for Writing

In his terse and cogent essay “When Rules Are Made to Be Broken” (Book Review, Oct. 6), John Rechy attacks three “rules of writing” that, as he says, go virtually unchallenged in most fiction workshops and writing classes: Show, don’t tell; write about what you know; always have a sympathetic character for the reader to relate to. I read the piece cheering and arguing all the way….

Where I wanted to argue a bit with Rechy was over the sympathetic character rule. It’s silly only if you define sympathetic as warm-and-fuzzy. And is it true that we “love hateful, selfish, manipulative characters,” that we love Iago, as Rechy says?

Madame Le Guin, ladies and gentlemen. She writes a bit, mostly fantasy which, for some odd reason, keeps popping up as a topic of discussion.

A few months back I was invited to talk with a group of students about writing. Coward that I am (a shrewd coward, but nevertheless…) I brought along a few friends to share in the slings and arrows of something or other.

At the end of our closing Q&A session, one student chimed in with some comments about how important it was to write what you know and, supernaturalist and fantasist that I am, I found it hard to respond. Fortunately, one of the other writers saved me.

And now I’ve forgotten why I mentioned it.

Oh . . . yes. Le Guin’s essay is a response to the three primary rules for writers . . . all of which I happen to disagree with, one way or another.

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