Freedom to Write Your Way

By Annette Cole Mastron, Communications Director for Southern Writers Magazine

In my last blog post, Writing the Messy Protagonist, I promised to write about “writer rule breaking.” In that post on June 20, 2019 I wrote, “I recently flew through, The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian. The story was quite turbulent from the first page. I was attracted to Bohjalian’s writer rule breaking of telling the story without much dialogue. This “writer rule-breaking” I’ll save for another blog post.” Well today is the day. 

Chris Bohjalian tells his compelling story in sections. In the first section he tells the story without much dialogue. Twenty pages in, I said to myself, “wait doesn’t this author know the writer rules?” I rocket-read to “The End.” I closed the book and said to myself, “well that Chris Bohjalian knows how to tell a story and break some of the hard line writer rules.” The main one: show, don’t tell. He masterfully tells the first section of the book primarily through the thoughts of his messy protagonist as she wakes up.

Researching this blog post I ran across a post on titled, “6 Writing “Rules” that Even Bestselling Authors Break.” Here is the link to Better Novel Project blog post. All the rule breaking authors mentioned in this blog post I have enjoyed reading. Chris Bohjalian has 20 successful books under his belt. One of his books Midwives was an Oprah book club pick that has been made into a play. Actually, he has turned three of his books into plays. The point is Chris has turned “writer rule breaking” into a success. 

Today is America’s Birthday! Join with me and celebrate the “Freedom to Write Your Way,” it could be the key to YOUR success.