Thinking a lot about the idea of writing advice and the place of popular shorthands (you know... like 'show don't tell,' 'adverbs are bad,' 'don't use epithets')—I see a lot of attempts to recontextualize those concepts along the lines of "telling is good if it's engaging"

And while I think that's super useful, esp. with disintegrating the notion that there is Only One Way To Write, I think the single most "rule" I always fall back on comes from this joke I used to make with my friend in high school, "Do things for reasons"

My friend used to grill me ENDLESSLY on why I'd made the prose choices I did, because we were those kind of annoying pedantic teenagers, and ultimately I'd be left flailing there like, "I don't know!!! I liked it??? WHY DIDN'T YOU LIKE IT???"

At the time, I thought it was soul-crushingly mean LOL but eventually I'd like take out all the pieces I couldn't justify to him, and magically my writing would get better, and then later on he used to just gently rib me with "remember, you gotta do things for reasons!!"

Which has! Really stayed with me! And it's what I use now to gauge not whether something is objectively good—because that would drive me insane—but whether or not something I wrote is congruous with my intent. I think that's what all good writing is, the flow of intent -> effect

When you write, all words are tools—each and every single word has a concrete definition and a looser connotation. Words stacked together in pieces can also be tools—certain set combinations mean something when put together. And as all tools are, there's a function to them.

Like, the epithet example! Why do a lot of them read clunkily in prose? Because you're using them when a name or pronoun will suffice. Why do you do that? because you think you're using the name too often. But what happens is that an epithet will stand out, when a name wouldn't—

—bc our eyes tend to glaze over them the same way we'd glaze over "said" or something in prose. When you say "the blond" or whatever, that pings in our brain like wait a sec, who's the blond?? And that pulls you out of the writing. Ergo: Don't use epithets

but if you're TRYING to create distance in that moment. If you're trying to idk call attention to the fact that someone has blond hair because it matters a lot in your scene—"the blond asshole" if your narrator is mad at his friend who always gets their way—

—and you want to emphasize the whole blond hair = golden child = your narrator is inherently kind of resentful of this vibe—then that's using the function of the thing for a specific effect, aka "good writing" lol

You have a reason, there's a justification behind WHY you're using the tools you are in that specific moment beyond "I thought it was the right thing to do." THAT'S the danger in prescriptive rules—making people think they have to do something bc"it's the rules"

When the reality is that all good writing is justified writing. When intent matches up with function, that's good writing. And if people don't agree, well, who cares. You did things for reasons! You already know why it's good.