*Pout* How come HE gets to break the rules?

I recently got comments back from a beta reader who didn’t much like some of my writing style. I’m also reading Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. I imagine my beta reader wouldn’t like much of his style either, as he does many of the same things I do.

Mr. Gaiman’s literary offenses?

1. Telling with an –ly adverb in a dialog tag when it’s clear from the context what the speaker intends.

“You know,” she said, helpfully, “that doesn’t sound good.”

This class of adverbs has a rough enough go of it as it is. I suppose it might be helpful (he wrote, consideringly) to differentiate from other intents, such as if she was scolding him. But from the rest of the conversation, she’s clearly not angry.

2. Interrupting a conversation with incidental actions. This happens several times in the book, and is a common outrage committed by Douglas Coupland as well. People are often stopping their conversations to let other people pass, usually with the narrator making some sort of observation on the interloper’s hair, makeup, clothing, odor, etc.

3. Filtering. Lots and lots of filtering in American Gods.

He could feel her lips on his, and they were warm and wet and living, not cold and dead, so he knew that this was another hallucination.

Time after time, the rules say that filtering, especially when done too much, distances the reader from the action. Wouldn’t it be better to say her lips were warm and wet and living, not cold and dead? And telling us that he knew it was a hallucination; how does that help us to know that he knew, and therefore we knew, when we could be told directly it was a hallucination? Would we assume he wouldn’t know without being told?

The list can go on. It does actually, to include observations by the characters of incidental details that don’t add to the story, to head hopping and telling us what a non-POV character is thinking, and lists of adjectives where people’s lips are warm and wet and living.

So how come Neil Gaiman gets to break the rules?

Well, first off because he’s Neil freaking Gaiman. But once upon a time Neil Gaiman wasn’t Neil Gaiman; or at least he wasn’t Neil Gaiman as we now know Neil Gaiman. Once upon a time he was a hopeful writer, putting the products of his imagination onto paper and hoping someone, somewhere, would publish them and people would want to read them.

My list above only includes items and the micro-level of writing. Why Neil Gaiman can get away with breaking the rules is that he works at the macro level in ways other writers (myself included) struggle to, and he does it in a way that keeps people reading.

What are the rules for the macro level? Only one that I can think of: Write a damn good book that connects all the pieces.

Would American Gods be a better book if the micro-level rules were followed? Wow, that’s a tough question. I can say, though, that my enjoyment of the book does not depend on how “well” it is written. Following all the microrules does not by itself produce a damn good book.