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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12617
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

When to break the rules? **When you know what you're doing.**

Breaking the rules "the good way" always serves some purpose. It's never done "just because". Writing is all about eliciting certain moods and feelings in the reader, and the rules prevent jarring, unpleasant surprises, breaking of immersion, and countless other errors that simply take away from the experience.

But sometimes you want to shake the reader out of the comfort zone. Sometimes you want to convey some message on subliminal level without ever alliterating it in the text. Sometimes you want to surprise the reader. If a rule stands in your way to do so, break it.

For example, there's the rule about giving good, detailed descriptions of locations when they are new scenes of the story. You're writing in first person perspective. Your protagonist steps out onto balcony overlooking the street, to take the city in. You should follow the rule to the dot. Dynamics, sounds, colors, people and their clothes, smell, lighting, little scenes of slice of life playing out down in the streets. The scene serves presenting the city and the protagonist takes time to observe it. Your description is equivalent of a detailed oil painting of the scene.

Now, your protagonist is wounded, exhausted, possibly concussed, and on the run, escaping onto a balcony. It would be entirely silly to describe it in such deep detail. Yes, there's assault of color, people milling many floors below, maybe downpour - but the protagonist is definitely in no condition to pay attention to details. Your description will be skeletal, a stick figure sketch. It would be completely unacceptable in general storytelling contexts, but here you break the rule to emphasize the urgency, the bad condition of the protagonist, and how the scene below simply doesn't matter right now.

Now a beginner will likely present such a stick figure sketch regardless of context; they want to go on with the story and just lack patience to write out what is so vivid and obvious in their imagination they deem it doesn't require detailed description. As result, the world lacks depth, the reader grasps for detail trying to imagine the scene, often misguided into believing it to be something entirely different. It's a beginner's error resulting from negligent violation of the rule resulting from laziness or ignorance. As opposed to the above - purposeful violation of the rule for specific effect.

Original score: 6