Everyone says you’re writing your novel wrong: They’re not all right.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a writer in possession of a novel manuscript in progress must be in want of writing advice. If you’ve ever gone looking for advice about how to write a novel, you’ve probably discovered one of the great truths of writing: for every person who confidently tells you there is a right way to do something, there is another person who will confidently tell you they’re completely wrong—especially if you ask the question of social media.

Plotters will tell you to outline. Pantsers will tell you that outlining kills the magic. One writing teacher will tell you that you should never use adverbs, while another will remind you that adverbs are perfectly legitimate words. Someone will insist that you must start your novel with action, while someone else will tell you that the reader needs time to settle into the world and meet the characters. And then there’s the Oxford comma.

Some people use it. Some people don’t. I was brought up on the Oxford comma, so obviously I consider its absence a personal affront. But unless you’re working under a style guide or other authority that specifically dictates whether you should use it, neither choice is inherently wrong.

And that distinction—between what is objectively wrong, what is a matter of convention, and what is simply a matter of preference—is something writers would do well to remember.

Welcome to the various schools of thought

Writing is full of schools of thought. Some of them concern the mechanics of writing, some concern craft, some are specific to particular genres, and some are about what we should actually be looking for when we read and evaluate literature.

The problem is that writers often go looking for “the right way” to write a novel and find themselves drowning in contradictory advice. Sometimes that contradiction exists because one person is simply wrong. But often, both sides of the argument have legitimate reasons for doing things differently.

Sometimes the disagreement comes down to genre. What works beautifully in one kind of novel may be completely wrong for another. A sprawling, atmospheric sentence that works in literary fiction might bring the pace of a thriller to a screeching halt. A romance reader may expect certain conventions that would feel strange in a literary novel. A fantasy novel may require extensive world-building that would be completely unnecessary in a domestic drama.

Context matters. Audience matters. Purpose matters. And so does personal preference. Once you understand that, a lot of the conflicting advice becomes easier to sort through. Instead of asking, “Who is right?” you can start asking, “Right for what?”

Sometimes the rules really are rules

Some arguments about writing are treated as though they are matters of objective correctness when they’re really matters of style or convention. Take punctuation. The Oxford comma is a perfect example. There are perfectly competent writers and editors on both sides of that particular battlefield. There are style guides that require it and style guides that don’t. If you’re writing for a publication, academic institution, publisher, or employer that requires a particular style guide, then follow that style guide. In that context, there is a correct answer.

The same is true in a classroom. Individual teachers and professors sometimes have their own rules about formatting, punctuation, citation, or other matters of writing style. If your professor tells you that you’re supposed to do something a particular way for their class, then that’s how you should do it. You can argue about whether their preference is the best one in the abstract, but that isn’t going to help you pass the class. Follow the professor’s instructions.

When it comes to novel writing, the situation is a little different because most beginning novelists don’t have a publisher or editor telling them which style guide to follow yet. The Chicago Manual of Style is commonly used for novels, although it isn’t the only possible style guide and publishers may have their own preferences. If you’re writing a novel and aren’t sure what to do with a particular mechanical issue, the Chicago Manual of Style is a reasonable place to look for guidance until you have a publisher or editor who tells you to do something different.

As an independent author, I will, naturally, continue to use the Oxford comma — because I have standards.

The larger point is that writers sometimes waste enormous amounts of energy worrying about rules that aren’t actually universal rules. They’re conventions, and conventions can vary depending on the context. That doesn’t mean mechanics don’t matter. They absolutely do. A writer should understand grammar, punctuation, syntax, spelling, and usage. But understanding the rules is different from believing that every stylistic choice has one universally correct answer.

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Literary criticism has schools of thought, too

The same thing happens when we start talking about what makes a novel “good” or “literary.” There are entire schools of literary criticism devoted to different ways of understanding and evaluating literature. Some critics are primarily interested in the text itself—its language, structure, symbolism, imagery, and form. Others are more interested in historical context, culture, psychology, politics, gender, class, the author, the reader, or the relationship between all of those things.

And some schools of thought place enormous value on the writing itself: the beauty of the sentences, the complexity of the language, the cleverness of the structure, or the ways in which a writer plays with form. For readers who approach literature from that perspective, the words on the page may be as important—or even more important—than the story being told. That’s a perfectly legitimate way to approach literature. It just isn’t the way I approach it.

This matters to writers because eventually someone is going to read our work and interpret it according to their own framework. That interpretation might not be the one we intended. In fact, it probably won’t be. A writer can control the words they put on the page, but they can’t control the experiences, expectations, critical frameworks, and preferences that readers bring to those words.

As writers, we therefore have to make choices about what kind of experience we want to create for our readers. And if we care about how our work is received, we need to understand that different readers are looking for different things.

What do you actually want from a novel?

Do you want to write commercial fiction that flies off the shelves? Do you want to write a book that someone will read in two days because they absolutely have to know what happens next? Or do you want to write something that readers will spend weeks unpacking, returning to passages over and over again to figure out what you meant?

Do you want to write clear, concise prose that communicates complicated ideas with as few words as possible? Or do you love dense, complicated sentences that are beautiful enough to make a reader stop and read them twice? Neither approach is inherently wrong. There is an audience for both. But certain writing styles have larger audiences than others, and that matters when it comes to getting paid to share your stories.

The same is true of structure. Do you want the structure of your novel to disappear into the story, or do you want readers to notice the architecture of the book and admire the ways you’ve constructed it? Some readers want to be swept along by a story. Others want to admire the craftsmanship of the prose. And some want both.

There are readers who want a book to make them cry, readers who want it to make them think, readers who want it to frighten them, readers who want it to teach them something, and readers who simply want to spend a few hours somewhere else. There are also readers who want all of those things at once. The trick is figuring out what you want.

My own school of thought

I know where I fall on this particular spectrum. My tastes lean toward clear and concise writing. I love novels that are profound, evocative, and layered, but I don’t particularly care about a writer’s profound ability to write pretty sentences. I don’t need to be dazzled by the prose on every page. I want the writing to serve the story rather than become the primary reason I’m reading the book.

I enjoy the occasional mindless thriller because sometimes that kind of book is exactly what I need when I don’t want to think too hard. But generally, I’m bored by stories that don’t have layers. I need depth as well as breadth. I want characters who feel like people. I want ideas that stick with me after I’ve closed the book. I want a story that gives me something to think about without requiring me to spend twenty minutes figuring out what a particular sentence means. While some thriller novels are mindless, there are other thriller novels that provide the deeper experience that I prefer.

At the same time, I don’t particularly enjoy clever word games inside my stories. I’ve never liked crossword puzzles, which often surprises people who know how much time I spend with words in my daily life. But it’s not the words themselves that I’m in love with. It’s the storytelling.

Tell me a good story that I can connect with. Give me characters I care about. Give me something meaningful to take away from the experience. That’s what I want. And maybe that means I’m not as “literary” as the people who love their Booker Award winners. I’m okay with that.

Literary doesn’t have to mean difficult

One of the things that bothers me about conversations surrounding literary fiction is the assumption that difficulty is somehow evidence of quality.

Sometimes difficult writing is exactly what a story needs. A complicated idea may require complicated language. An unusual structure may be the best way to tell a particular story. A writer may deliberately make a reader work because that work is part of the experience. If the reader enjoys that experience, great. That’s legitimate literary art. But difficulty isn’t inherently superior to accessibility.

A beautifully constructed sentence isn’t automatically better because it requires three readings to understand. A novel isn’t automatically more meaningful because it takes longer to read. And a straightforward story isn’t automatically shallow because the author chose to communicate its ideas clearly.

There is a difference between writing that is simple and writing that is simplistic. There is also a difference between writing that is complicated because the ideas are complicated and writing that is complicated because the author wants you to notice how clever they are. Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.

For me, the purpose of writing stories is to examine the human experience—not to examine the words the writer is putting on the page. Some people are more interested in the words themselves and how those words interact with one another. Some readers delight in discovering patterns, dissecting metaphors, unpacking unusual structures, and figuring out exactly what a writer is doing on the sentence level. That’s okay, too. That’s their school of thought.

The reader gets to choose, too

This isn’t just a question for writers. Readers belong to schools of thought, whether they call them that or not. Some people read primarily for entertainment. Some read for intellectual stimulation. Some read for emotional catharsis. Some read to escape. Some read to understand themselves or other people. Some read because they want to analyze every metaphor and symbol they can find. Some want to be challenged by a book, while others want a book to provide a break from the challenges of their everyday lives.

Sometimes you want to read something profound. Sometimes you want to read something stupid. Sometimes you want to spend three weeks reading a 600-page literary novel and discussing its themes with your book club. Sometimes you want to read a 200-page thriller in one sitting and then immediately go to bed. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of that.

In fact, I think it’s useful for readers to figure out what they actually want from books instead of allowing someone else to convince them that there is a hierarchy of legitimate reading. Not every book needs to be intellectually demanding. Not every book needs to change your life. Sometimes you just want to be entertained, and entertainment is a perfectly valid reason to read.

There is value in every type of writing, even writing that goes no further than the author’s private journal. Not every story needs to win an award. Not every novel needs to be dissected in a graduate seminar. Not every reader needs to appreciate the brilliance of your sentence construction.

Find your school of thought

This is where identifying your own school of thought can save you a tremendous amount of time. As a writer, you don’t have to listen to every piece of writing advice you encounter, adopt every popular method, or structure your novel according to the latest book on craft. You don’t have to write in the style that currently gets the most attention, either. And you certainly don’t have to accept someone else’s definition of what makes a novel “literary.”

Instead, figure out what you’re trying to accomplish. Who are you writing for? What kind of reading experience do you want to create? Then find writers, editors, critics, teachers, and other readers who share that general philosophy. Listen to them. Learn from them. And feel free to ignore the people who are playing an entirely different game.

There is no single correct way to write a novel. There are choices, and the choices that work best depend on the story you’re telling, the audience you’re trying to reach, and what you believe a story is supposed to do.

So stop worrying so much about whether your romantasy is “literary.” It isn’t always, but it can be. Your thriller can be literary. Your horror novel can be literary. Your romance can be literary. Your science fiction can be literary. And your book can also simply be fun. That’s allowed, too.

The next time someone on social media tells you that you’re writing your novel wrong, don’t automatically assume they’re right—or that they’re wrong. Ask yourself what school of thought their advice comes from. What kind of writing are they talking about? Who is their intended audience? What are they trying to accomplish? Then compare those answers to your own goals.

The goal isn’t to follow every rule or reject every rule. It’s to understand the philosophy behind the advice you’re receiving and decide whether it helps you write the kind of novel you want to write.

Find the people whose approach to storytelling makes sense to you, learn everything you can from them, and leave the rest behind.

I’d love to know where you fall on this particular spectrum. When you read a novel, what matters most to you: the story, the language, the structure, the ideas—or some combination of all of them?

Join the conversation!

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Now that Jack has been forced to reflect on everything he has to lose, he resolves to do better. He’s determined to spend more time at home with his family and repair the relationships that have suffered over the years while he’s been so focused on work. But as Callie’s behavior becomes increasingly bizarre, Jack realizes he has a lot more room to improve than he realized – and it might be too late to save his daughter after all.

For fans of We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Push, and Baby Teeth.