Why I occasionally break my own writing rules

Every draft begins with a private compact: show the investigation, protect the chronology, keep the prose clear, and never let the machinery of the police procedural swamp the people inside it. I write those instructions at the top of a new file, then allow them to become stricter as the book takes shape. They are working tools, not commandments carved in stone.

Crime fiction makes this discipline especially sharp. A missing person, a false account or a carefully placed detail can carry more weight than an explicit explanation. The Thorkild Aske books rely heavily on procedure, place and delayed recognition, so an improvised passage can damage the chain of cause and effect if I treat it as a decorative flourish.

The trouble starts when a rule that helped me begin the manuscript begins working against the scene. Perhaps the clue arrives too neatly. Perhaps a chapter ends on an effect that feels engineered. Perhaps the straightforward sentence I promised myself is hiding the only emotionally honest version. That is why I occasionally break my own writing rules.

An exception should not be a permission slip for sloppy revision. It is a decision to serve the reader’s trust more closely than the plan on my desk. If the broken rule remains invisible, the story simply feels confused; if it sharpens character, tension or meaning, the departure becomes part of the method. I want exceptions that feel inevitable after they are made.

Rules are useful pressure

A rule earns its place by making a recurring choice easier and more consistent. Mine include entering a scene late, withholding one fact until it can be tested against another, and keeping narration cool while the pressure gathers beneath it. In a series, these habits also help me protect continuity between novels, where an old detail may return with a new meaning.

The rules are useful pressure, not rigid architecture. They keep me from filling every silence with explanation or solving a mystery before the reader has felt its cost. In the Aske books, that restraint allows geography, weather and institutional procedure to do narrative work rather than merely decorate an investigation.

A useful rule should also be limited. If a technique serves every page, it may be a habit. If it serves only one scene, forcing it there can flatten the work. Before abandoning a rule, I try to name its function: what does it protect, and what does the reader lose if it goes? That question turns impatience into judgement.

When a scene refuses the pattern

Some scenes resist the pattern from the first draft. The difficulty may be technical, but it is often moral: a decision fits the character, yet the structure gives the character no clean place to make it. In such cases, rewriting toward elegance can mean removing the very tension the scene exists to create.

I have described that struggle in my hardest scene, where the scene’s resistance became more useful than my original solution. The useful distinction is between a problem in the writing and a problem in the conception. A muddy paragraph needs attention; a misconceived scene may need a different shape altogether.

The aim is not to announce the exception. I test it against what came before and what follows: motive, timing, viewpoint, and the clues a careful reader has already gathered. If the change solves one local awkwardness while weakening the larger logic, it has not earned its place. If it deepens both the character and the mystery, the rule was simply too narrow.

The discipline of controlled departure

A controlled departure begins by identifying the rule precisely. “Show rather than explain” is too broad to defend in an argument. “Do not let the investigator narrate grief before the evidence gives her permission” is specific enough to test. This precision keeps artistic instinct from becoming an excuse for avoiding the hard work of revision.

A useful analogy comes from ordinary family life. The advice in keeping children engaged treats a photo shoot as a situation in which control and spontaneity must share the frame. The goal is not to manufacture a perfect reaction, but to create conditions in which a genuine one can occur. A scene can use the same balance.

In practice, I make the smallest change that releases the scene. I move a sentence, remove a summary, or let one silence stand a beat longer. Smallness matters because a rewrite should reveal the problem rather than conceal it behind a wholesale new structure. The scene should remain recognisably the same world, even if its internal rhythm changes.

Rules after publication

Once a book is published, an exception is judged by readers, editors, translators and reviewers rather than by my private intention. The Thorkild Aske series travels internationally, and that movement makes clarity essential: a clever distortion that works in one language or culture may need explanation elsewhere. The underlying rule—serve the story without hiding its cost—must survive the crossing.

For Australian readers, Norwegian procedure arrives through translated fiction, local bookshops, public libraries and literary festivals in cities such as Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Left-side traffic, a hotter climate and different references remind us that setting is more than a backdrop, while the familiar pleasure of a procedural puzzle provides a useful bridge.

Readers seeking publication details, international editions, translations, reviews, press coverage or rights enquiries can find them through Heine Bakkeid’s official website. Those materials matter because the life of a novel continues after the first edition. A transparent account of its travels helps readers understand not only the books, but the decisions surrounding them.

Keeping exceptions accountable

An exception becomes defensible when its gain is larger than its damage. I use a simple comparison before deciding whether to keep the departure: does the rule create clarity and momentum, or does the story need a different pressure at this precise point? The answer should be visible in the prose, not merely in my notes.

Keep the rule when	Break it when	The revision must achieve
It clarifies pace, viewpoint, cause and effect	It conceals a truthful beat or blocks the scene’s central tension	A sharper effect for the reader without damaging continuity
It establishes a pattern the series can sustain	One exceptional moment needs a different rhythm	Character, mystery and chronology remain legible

I then ask whether the change can be explained without naming it as a rule-breaking exercise. The best answer points to effect: the reader now feels more sharply what a character knows, suspects or refuses to say. If the explanation depends on authorial pride rather than readerly benefit, I return to the draft and test another option.

Before the next manuscript leaves my desk, I will make an exception log with four entries for every departure: the page, the original rule, the reason for changing it, and the effect on the reader.