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.
