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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12640
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12640
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I don't think this is in any way specific to writing. For example in physics, there are many wannabe-Einsteins who think that if you just claim the previous physicists were wrong and dream up your own theory, you can revolutionize physics. The result are crackpot theories, because unlike Einstein, those people didn't really know the physical theories which they tried to replace, nor did they have a clear idea of where those theories have their shortcomings, and where the new theory has to reproduce the old theories instead of completely replacing them.

Similarly, modern music has violated many principles which have been considered essential before. Yet you'll make no good music by just putting one note after the other while completely ignoring all the rules.

Maybe a good metaphor is a swamp, where some safe ways have been marked. If you just go astray in the swamp, you're likely to sink in and die. Slavishly following the known safe ways will make you survive, but restricts yourself to the same ways lots of others have gone before. But initially, it is certainly a good idea to keep on the same ways, but at the same time observe the swamp, figuring out why those ways are safe, observing others who leave the way and yet cross the swamp without problems, and learn also from those who left the way and didn't succeed. Over time, you'll learn to understand the swamp, to recognize how to determine safe ways even if they are not marked, and how to pass less safe ways without sinking in the swamp. Eventually you'll be experienced enough that you don't care any more about the marked ways, because you know quite well how to survive in the swamp without them. But if you had not cared about those marked ways in the very beginning, you'd at least have had a much harder time learning how to safely cross the swamp on your own, if you ever managed it at all.

Original score: 1