The Rule Exists for a Reason

Before you can break a rule well, you have to know what it’s there for. Not the rule itself—the problem it was designed to solve. Because the problem is the thing you’re actually deciding to risk when you break it.

“Omit needless words” exists because needless words dilute impact and slow pace. If you’re adding words that aren’t needless—words that are doing character work or tonal work or rhythmic work—you’re not breaking the rule. You’re doing something the rule never needed to cover.

  • Why it worksRules in craft function the way traffic laws function. They exist because most of the time, most drivers need them to prevent chaos. The experienced driver who knows exactly why the rule exists and what happens when it’s violated can make an informed decision about when the situation calls for something the rule doesn’t allow. In The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, the authors themselves break their own rules throughout the book—not by accident, but because they understand which rules apply to which situations and which don’t.
  • How to do itFor any rule you’re considering breaking, write down the problem it solves. Then ask whether that problem applies to this specific moment in your manuscript. If breaking the rule would produce the problem the rule exists to prevent—confusion, distance, dilution—don’t break it. If breaking it would produce something the rule was never designed to prevent, the break might be the right choice.

Do

Break rules at the sentence level first, where the consequences are smallest and most reversible. A sentence fragment that creates impact. An adverb that is doing something no verb could do. A run-on that mirrors the character’s state of mind. These are low-stakes experiments that tell you whether the break is earning its place.

Avoid

Breaking rules because they feel restrictive. The restriction is the point. The rule is protecting something. Make sure you know what you’re giving up before you give it up.

From My Work

Katie Bunny breaks the economy rule constantly. She says too much, goes on tangents that have nothing to do with the scene at hand, mentions Trevor who liked trains at the worst possible moment. Every one of those breaks violates the principle of staying focused and using only what the scene needs.

And every one of them is the most alive thing on the page. Because the rule exists to prevent aimlessness, and Katie’s tangents aren’t aimless—they’re the specific shape of how her brain moves under pressure. The break earns its place because it’s doing something the rule was never designed to prevent: revealing character through the specific texture of distraction.

Fragment Sentences as Rhythm

One of the most common and most effective rule breaks in fiction is the sentence fragment. Grammar says a sentence needs a subject and a verb. Rhythm sometimes disagrees.

A fragment surrounded by complete sentences carries disproportionate weight. The eye stops. The brain registers impact. Done correctly, a fragment does in three words what a complete sentence might do in twelve.

  • Why it worksThe fragment works because of contrast. A long, complete, grammatically correct sentence builds momentum. The fragment stops it. The reader’s eye lands on the fragment before it knows what happened, and the effect is felt before it’s processed. In The Road by Cormac McCarthy, fragments are structural—they mirror the stripped-down survival logic of the world the characters inhabit. The prose does what the world does: cuts to what’s necessary and stops.

    In Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, fragments in Melinda’s narration carry her dissociation. The incomplete sentences are the incomplete thoughts of someone who can’t finish the things she’s trying to say. The grammar enacts the psychology.
  • How to do itPlace the fragment after a longer passage. Let the long sentence build and then cut. The fragment needs the density before it to land. A fragment at the start of a passage is just a short sentence. A fragment after three complex sentences is an impact.

Do

Use fragments at moments of revelation, shift, or emotional rupture. The moment something changes. The moment a character understands something they didn’t understand before. The moment the reader needs to stop.

Avoid

Fragments as a stylistic habit rather than a deliberate choice. A manuscript full of fragments loses the contrast that makes them work. They flatten into the rhythm of the prose and stop functioning as impact. The fragment needs complete sentences around it to earn its weight.

From My Work

In Salt & Bone: Ashes, Jack wakes up intubated and alone:

Breathing tube.

What the fuck?

The room was empty. No Brendon, no Lisa, no Mina. Just me, sitting there with a goddamn tube down my throat.

Air. Just need air.

Two words. Three words. A longer orienting sentence. Three more words. The fragments aren’t mistakes—they’re the specific rhythm of Jack’s panic arriving before his brain has caught up. The complete sentence in the middle is the one moment of orientation, surrounded by fragments that are the actual experience of waking up in crisis.

Run-Ons as Character Voice

The run-on sentence is one of the most reliable character voice tools in fiction, and one of the most consistently flagged as an error by writers who don’t know why the rule exists.

Run-ons are wrong when they confuse. They’re right when the confusion is the point—when the character’s breathlessness or anxiety or circular thinking is best expressed by a sentence that won’t stop.

  • Why it worksA run-on that mirrors a character’s mental state is doing something grammar can’t do: it’s putting the reader inside the character’s experience rather than reporting on it. In A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, certain characters’ voices use run-on constructions specifically to render the quality of their thought patterns. In The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, Charlie’s run-on tendency is part of his voice—the way he connects things, the way one thought leads to another before the first one has fully closed.
  • How to do itThe run-on as voice tool works when it’s consistent to the character and purposeful in the moment. It shouldn’t appear randomly—it should appear when the character’s state of mind produces exactly this kind of sentence. The run-on that earns its place feels inevitable. The run-on that doesn’t feel invented.

Do

Let the run-on capture what the character can’t slow down enough to separate. The character who is scared, or excited, or processing something overwhelming, or talking themselves through something they don’t want to face—these are the moments when the run-on mirrors the internal experience.

Avoid

Run-ons that are actually just unclear. The test is whether the reader can follow the logic of the sentence even as it runs. A run-on that loses the reader isn’t a style choice—it’s a clarity problem wearing a costume.

From My Work

In The Death of My First Assignment, Serena’s voice uses run-on constructions when she’s scared or rambling past something she doesn’t want to name directly:

“Oh, yeah. So, Friday night, yeah? I’m on the out with Marcus because he’s bein’ a royal pain in my arse, so I decide I wanna have some fun. So, I go to that new club in downtown, yeah?”

The repeated “yeah” at sentence ends, the run-on construction, the way one clause leads immediately into the next without stopping—this is Serena’s voice, not an error. The run-on is character. Fixing it would fix something that wasn’t broken.

Head-Hopping With Control

Head-hopping—shifting POV between characters within a scene—is one of the most consistently condemned craft errors. It disorients readers, breaks immersion, and signals a writer who hasn’t decided whose story this moment belongs to.

It’s also, when done with complete control and clear intention, one of the most powerful moves available to a multi-POV narrative.

  • Why it worksThe rule against head-hopping exists because uncontrolled shifts leave readers without a stable perspective to inhabit. They don’t know whose eyes they’re seeing through, whose feelings they’re inside, whose version of events to trust. The controlled shift—the one where the reader knows exactly what’s happening and why—doesn’t produce any of those problems.

    In Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, the omniscient narrator moves between perspectives with complete authority. The reader is never confused about whose head they’re in because Tolstoy makes the transitions unmistakably clear. In Middlemarch by George Eliot, the same authority allows shifts that would be head-hopping in a less controlled narrative. The difference is intention and clarity.
  • How to do itIf you’re going to shift perspective within a scene, signal it. Not necessarily with a section break—sometimes a single sentence of transition is enough. The reader needs to know they’ve moved. The confusion that makes head-hopping an error is confusion about where you are. Eliminate the confusion and you’ve eliminated the problem.

Do

Use the controlled perspective shift at moments where the gap between two characters’ experience of the same event is the most important thing in the scene. The moment where one character sees something the other doesn’t. The moment where the same action means completely different things from two different vantage points.

Avoid

Shifting perspective because you need information from another character’s head to advance the plot. That’s the uncontrolled version—using head-hopping as a convenience rather than a choice. The shift should be because the reader needs to be in this other head right now, not because it’s easier than finding another way to deliver the information.

From My Work

The entire Salt & Bone series is built on controlled dual POV—Jack and Lisa alternating chapters, each inside a completely different consciousness, each seeing the same world and the same relationship through completely different eyes. The Day 500 argument exists in both their chapters and means something different in each one. Jack walked out. Lisa didn’t get to explain. The reader holds both versions simultaneously and feels the weight of the gap between them.

That’s head-hopping done with complete control. The reader always knows whose head they’re in. The transitions are clear. The shift is never a convenience—it’s the point. The entire argument of the series is that two people can love each other and still be working from completely different versions of the same reality. The dual POV isn’t a structural choice. It’s the thematic argument made visible.

Fixing it by collapsing to a single POV would fix something that wasn’t broken.

Final Thoughts

Rules in craft are solutions to problems. Breaking them well means knowing the problem, deciding the problem doesn’t apply here, and making the break serve the work rather than just departing from convention for its own sake.

Katie’s tangents. Jack’s fragments. The run-on that captures a character’s breathlessness. The perspective shift that shows two people experiencing the same moment completely differently. Every one of those is a rule broken on purpose, with full knowledge of what the rule was protecting and a decision that this moment was worth the risk.

Know the rule. Then break it on purpose. The best prose usually did.

Extras

Table Of Contents
  1. The Rule Exists for a Reason
  2. Fragment Sentences as Rhythm
  3. Run-Ons as Character Voice
  4. Head-Hopping With Control
  5. Final Thoughts
  6. Extras