When it comes to writing advice, I often feel like advice is a bit nonspecific. Not that people’s advice is bad. Vague advice is bad. Broad advice is fine. That’s because in writing, the answer is usually “it depends” or some drawn out version of that. I think the people giving the advice want to avoid restraining those who are listening.

So I figure I’d toss my hat in the ring and give you some arbitrary yet specific advice, and also since no one’s listening (not yet) and therefore I will not be held responsible. Otherwise, my advice is to “get good or quit.”

First one: avoid prefaces.

Now, I want to elaborate on this point by saying, and reiterating that to a certain degree blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. You see how boring that was about to be? Prefaces are lame. Stop dragging your feet and get to it. Drop people into your world. Trust that your reader will pick up the context as you go along. If you do, some people might not get it. Who cares. If you’re doing it right, they’re dead weight. The ones who do understand will feel trusted and instead of having their intelligence insulted, it will be rewarded.

Notice how I avoided the other side of the argument, about how context is important. That argument is valid, but I refuse to respond to it because I am ignorant. For one, the title of this post starts with “Arbitrary,” so you get what you didn’t pay for. Second, be unapologetic. If you want to pander to people, get into politics.

When it comes to characters, work in 2’s. When it comes to plot, work in 3’s.

A good conversation between characters is like a tennis match. Question, answer, question, answer, question, question, answer, answer, and back and forth until one side can’t reply. And tennis matches only have two players. Question. You might have been wondering why I picked Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, well this is why. Their quick exchanges, their differing perspectives, and

But it’s not so simple as just making two characters. What’s the secret? Easy. Just make them super different. Not just different, opposites. If the first guy is idealistic make the other guy pragmatic. If the first guy is tall and skinny make the other guy short and fat. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are the original example of this. They differ in almost every way and, because of it, their interactions carry the story. When I first started writing The Arbiter, I realized I needed a partner for Sylvan. So, to partner with the childish adult, I created an adultish child. Seriously, when you make them opposites, the conversations write themselves.

Characters make other characters better. Many times, authors will actually create the antagonists of their story before the protagonist. If you make the antagonist.

Plot. Or situations, either one. So I say work in 3’s. The first situation establishes the premise. The second situation establishes that this is a pattern. And by the third situation you say “HA! gotcha” and do something completely different. Three is enough time to lull your victim (the reader) into a false sense of security but not enough time for them to catch on to the trick. Three is enough to escalate tension but not enough time to become stale. Three is enough to… well now that I’ve explained the trick it’s not gonna work on you, is it?

That’s all the stuff I can think of now. Maybe I’ll make more of these, maybe I won’t. At the end of the day, it just comes down to execution. But one thing I’d say for certain is to know the rules. Learn grammar, learn narrative, learn conversations, learn phonetics, learn some other things. And the reason you want to learn the rules is so that you can learn how to break them. And how to break them with style, which, of course, is the only thing that matters in life.