3 Times I Told Writers to Break the Rules — and It Worked

Learn when and how to break writing “rules” intentionally to deepen emotion, defy expectations, and captivate your readers.

Breaking the Rules—On Purpose

I’ve told authors to break the rules—on purpose. And here are three times it actually worked.

You’ve heard me say the “rules” exist for a reason—they protect the reader’s experience. But sometimes the best way to serve readers is to bend those conventions.

The tricky part is knowing when that choice is helping the story… or just breaking reader expectations instead. Because breaking a rule just for novelty? That’s egotistical. Breaking a rule because it strengthens the reader’s experience? That’s strategic.

The “Gap of Light” — Why Story Coherence Keeps Readers Trusting You

When I was a kid, my dad raised hogs. And when we had to move them between barns or ship them off to sell, we’d have to hold these big wooden boards to funnel them onto the trailer.

But here’s something crucial he taught me early (and I wasn’t always good enough at learning): if the pigs saw even the tiniest sliver of light between panels, they’d take the chance and charge through. Three hundred pounds of determined hog barreling through with no care for the much smaller human on the other side of the board.

Writers do the same thing to their readers when they break rules without realizing what that “gap of light” really means.

The moment your story isn’t what was promised, or it stops feeling cohesive—when a scene breaks logic, tone, or reader expectation without payoff—the story spell you worked so hard to create shatters. Readers stop trusting you, and they bolt.

That’s because, from a brain science perspective, readers are wired to seek coherence and payoff. Their brains constantly predict what might happen next—filling in gaps, mapping cause and effect, emotionally simulating what your character is experiencing.

When something violates those patterns without meaning or payoff, the brain hits cognitive friction. It ejects readers from immersion. But when a broken pattern resolves into purpose—when that tension pays off—the brain rewards it with dopamine. It feels like discovery—a delightful surprise.

So, yes, there are times when breaking a rule actually works. But only when it does so intentionally—and when it still supports the underlying purpose of that rule in the first place: to keep readers immersed, engaged, and emotionally invested.

Case Study #1 — Breaking Age-Category Expectations

One time I told an author to break a rule was with a children’s writer I’d worked with many times before. She’s a seasoned professional—she knows craft, structure, all the “rules.” And her story checked every box. It was technically correct, appropriate for the age category, and completely fine.

And that was the problem. It was fine. Not exceptional.

Her protagonist’s flaw was simple enough: a kid who couldn’t finish what she started. By the end, she overcame that flaw, just as she should. The plot hit the beats, the dialogue was charming—but it didn’t sting. There was no emotional resonance.

So in coaching, we dug deeper. We asked why. What’s actually behind that surface-level flaw? What belief drives it? What pain is hiding underneath? And in that process, she realized something powerful—that this character’s inability to finish things wasn’t laziness or distraction. It was shame. It was fear of never being good enough to complete something worth showing anyone.

That realization shifted everything. This children’s book went from the surface-level kid who procrastinates to something deeper underneath: the emotional paralysis of perfectionism and the trauma of gaslighting—truths the author herself realized she had wrestled with.

Now, on paper, this risked breaking an age category rule. Some of the things uncovered were veering into a level of emotional complexity or trauma that could end up not being appropriate for this age category. That doesn’t mean children’s literature isn’t allowed to deal with the tough stuff—not even close. I mean, have you read any Kate DiCamillo as an adult? Oof!

But there’s an expectation that it will remain age appropriate and often handles the complexity in a way that allows kids to engage with it as much or as little as they need to based on their own development. An oversimplification of this age category “rule” would be that you always keep it light—you keep it “safe.” Obviously that’s not entirely true, but for the market, it is sort of the expectation for level appropriateness.

Research on moral and emotional development shows that even fairly young children engage more deeply when stories offer guided ambiguity—moral or emotional challenges that they can safely process within story boundaries. Anyway, we realized we could show just enough of that truth to give the story emotional honesty—without overwhelming the reader.

That’s what made the difference. She pushed the story deeper than the age category technically allowed, but she did it intentionally, with care. She broke the rule because she understood the developmental and emotional boundaries of her audience, not in ignorance of them.

She could give enough glimpses of the truth for emotional impact while still maintaining enough age-appropriate emotional boundaries.

Another Age-Category Example

In another example, I have YA authors often writing characters over the age of 18. I know the category “young adult” implies adult ages, but it’s really referring to the older teen years. So typically, if the story truly belongs in the YA category, we age the main character down a bit.

However, I’ve worked with a few authors whose characters really needed to be older because of the leadership roles or other circumstances they were in—and even going a little younger was too unrealistic. Most of the time, we could strengthen the plot reasons enough to keep the character age in the right range, but depending on the flexibility of the publication route of the author, sometimes I told them to go ahead and leave it at 19 or something.

Or, we let the character start at a perfectly acceptable 17 and let them age up a couple years through the series. That way, we were still starting everything off in the right set of expectations, letting readers know they were in the right place. Then we could gradually shift those expectations along with the story.

This is the kind of rule-bending that makes a story powerful. It stretches just beyond the comfort zone but still fulfills expectations—or feels scaffolded enough for readers to experience with understanding.

That’s what the best rule-breaking does—it expands the boundaries in a way that takes readers with you instead of obliterating those boundaries and leaving readers behind in confusion. This is especially necessary in the opening of your story.

Case Study #2 — Breaking Opening Connection Expectations

Yet another time I told an author to break the rules—this time in the adult age category. This fantasy writer was struggling with her opening chapter. She’d absorbed all the advice: start in the middle of the action, make your reader care fast, give your character a clear goal. But her protagonist is a prisoner with no memory of who she was or how she’d gotten there—and that’s a setup that instantly breaks every “rule” for creating reader connection.

Normally, I’d advise against amnesia openings for exactly that reason. When readers don’t understand the character’s goal or fear, they can’t build much empathy. But in this story’s case, the loss of memory was essential to the character’s identity arc—it was at the story’s core. So instead of forcing her to rewrite a false hook just to follow the rules, we decided to lean into the amnesia itself for tension.

We used that uncertainty as the driving motivation, showing the psychological toll of not knowing whether she even deserved her imprisonment. That moral uncertainty gave her story an instant gut punch for empathy. And it still let her use the mystery as a hook—without leaving readers too in the dark.

Neuroscience shows that curiosity triggers a prediction loop: the brain anticipates answers, releases dopamine for every small discovery, and strengthens emotional engagement when those questions feel purposeful.

We gave readers a puzzle they could track and a person they could care about.

Instead of confusing them, even the detachment in the point of view helped to show just how much the lack of memory messed with the character’s sense of worth and self-preservation. The perspective remained uniquely grounded in how this character saw herself and her world, creating empathy through fear and anticipation—both powerful motivators for immersion.

So yes, she broke the rule about “immediate character clarity.” But it worked because it still honored the purpose of the rule: to create tension that drives connection.

Sometimes, the rule-breaking isn’t about what’s inside the opening scene at all—it’s about the structure around it.

Because few things raise red flags faster than the word prologue.

Case Study #3 — Breaking the “No Prologues” Rule

Prologues have generally fallen out of favor, and seeing one start a manuscript sets many editors and agents on guard—especially for debut authors. You already know all the reasons. So often, the prologue is used poorly to convey information to the reader without first making them care. They bait-and-switch readers on characters or time period, they relay a prophecy without context, or dump info of any sort.

But one author I worked with sent me a manuscript that began with a prologue I didn’t hate—which almost never happens. It broke several standard rules, but somehow… it worked.

The prologue was barely a paragraph. Not even enough for immersion. And it was all stage setting for the rest of the story, just like so many poorly done but well-intentioned prologues do. But it did it in a way that let the reader experience a shocking proclamation not unlike the characters populating the world. It was, in a way, an inciting incident for the world of the story.

So even with little context, it still drove curiosity rather than confusion. Plus, it was short enough that it could get away with not having an immersive effect or a character connection. With a little refinement, we made that prologue draft work without falling completely into the many prologue pitfalls. And while it didn’t give us a character or scene, it created a hook and a sense of inevitability.

From a cognitive standpoint, a short, high-impact opening might tap into how readers encode information in memory.

The brain privileges beginnings—that’s called the primacy effect. When a story opens with a line that acts as a thematic or emotional anchor, readers subconsciously hold onto it, letting it color their interpretation of everything that follows.

I think that’s what this prologue achieved. It wasn’t a backstory dump—it was a way to get readers intrigued through tone, promises, and maybe even a hint of theme to be inferred.

That’s the difference between a gimmick and a purposeful breaking of the rules. It strengthens coherence, deepens promises, and delightfully surprises readers’ expectations.

Bonus — Breaking Structural “Beat” Rules

With other authors, we’ve messed a bit with further aspects of structure—namely, structural beats and the percentages at which they fall in their stories. Normally, it’s best to stick pretty closely to beat benchmarks. But certain beats can be a little more wiggly than others. Nudging a major turning point a few thousand words earlier—or delaying it slightly—actually made the story land harder.

The key was that every adjustment still honored what those beats do for the reader: progress the internal and external arcs through expected milestones, orient tension, escalate emotion, and deliver payoff.

Usually, it’s more likely okay if certain beats come earlier. For example, sometimes moving the midpoint earlier than the 50 percent mark has been justified because of everything that comes after in a hurtling pace toward the climax. So if a quicker rising action section sufficiently does all it needs to leading up to that midpoint, it can occur sooner and leave a little more space for the twisty second-act complication and epic climax.

Remember that readers track rising tension through prediction rhythms—they anticipate disruption and resolution cycles. As long as those emotional peaks and valleys still follow that cognitive rhythm, a few percentage points won’t matter. What matters is that readers feel the buildup and release at satisfying intervals.

The goal isn’t to hit perfect timing—it’s to create perfect rhythm.

If you’re curious about where your own story’s turning points fall—and when it might be worth breaking those timing “rules”—my Spellbook Outline: Story Turning-Points Template can show you. It’s built with those emotional pacing principles in mind, helping you map your story’s structure so you can spot where a deliberate deviation might make it even stronger.

How Do You Know When It’s Okay to Break a Rule?

You might be thinking, “Okay, but how do I know when it’s safe to break a rule—and when I’m just justifying a weak spot?”

If you’re asking that question, that’s actually a really good sign. It means you’ve matured in your craft. You’re not just chasing novelty or assuming every instinct you have is right—you’re thinking about your readers’ experience.

The truth is, most writers who struggle with this aren’t overthinking. They’re under-analyzing. The fact that you’re even pausing to evaluate what your story needs and how it affects your reader means you’re already on the right track.

From here, you’re no longer only testing if your choice feels bold or exciting. Rather, you’re figuring out if it still fulfills the purpose of the rule you’re breaking—clarity, coherence to story and expectations, and emotional payoff.

If it still delivers those, then you might be just fine. You’re pushing conventions in a good way.

Test Your Broken Rule Against the Three Keys

So here’s a quick way to check: run your rule-breaking choice through the Three Keys to Reader Enchantment—Expectations, Enlightenment, and Experience. These keys are my distillation of the brain science behind creating the best reader experience, and they’re how I guide my authors in everything we do.

Ask Yourself:

• Expectations: Does this still fulfill the story’s promises to the reader? Use your brief story premise to remind yourself of the type of story readers should be getting—its tone, genre, and main type of conflict.
• Enlightenment: Does it strengthen the meaning or theme at the heart of my story? To keep everything on track, use your story’s ley line truth and your character’s corrupted truth, which I explored more in a previous article.
• Experience: Does it keep readers emotionally immersed and invested? Consider your trio of tension between the truth your character needs to learn, their fear that stands in their way, and how their corrupted truth motivates them in the opposite direction. Pay attention to whether the external action, setting, or internal world feeds into those elements to fuel further tension or push your character toward transformation.

If your answer is yes to all three questions, you’re probably not breaking a rule to justify a weakness—you’re bending it to serve your story and your readers better.

That’s what a strategic decision looks like, and it’s a higher level of craft mastery.

When Rule-Breaking Reveals a Deeper Problem

But even when a rule break is strategic—or it seems to work with the story you have—sometimes that urge to break the rule comes from somewhere else entirely: a deeper problem.

Because your story isn’t actually working yet, and you’re trying to fix the symptom instead of the cause. This is what I find with most authors I’ve worked with who have both a firm grasp of craft and a powerful imagination. Puzzling through a solid way to break a rule to honor both is often the very thing that reveals what’s actually needed.

So how do you know if your decision to break a rule is coming from a genuine need for your story’s strongest version—or if it’s a signal your story isn’t quite working yet?

That’s what I’m covering in the very next article.

Selected Bibliography

• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S001002771730077X?via%3Dihub
• https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2025.1569170/full
• https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9365732/
• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0885201409000835?via%3Dihub
• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022096521001260
• https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3840169/

This field is quite theoretical. I'm extrapolating for authors what I can based on the findings we do have (and I'm certainly not a neuroscientist!). To explore a fuller background, you can see this article about a breadth of brain science sources (and their abstracts/descriptions) in my site's private resource library. Note: You'll need to register a free student account to access it: https://www.inkybookwyrm.com/blog/sources-on-the-science-of-story-craft-and-creativity

Categories: : creativity, editing, manuscript stages, novel drafting, prologues, revision, self-editing, writer mindset