Roddy Doyle’s 10 Essential Rules For Writing

Discover 10 essential writing rules from Irish novelist Roddy Doyle, known for his sharp wit and compelling storytelling.

Roddy Doyle is an Irish novelist, dramatist, and screenwriter, born on 8 May 1958. His work has shaped contemporary Irish fiction. Several of his books have been successfully adapted for film, most notably The Commitments, which helped bring his sharp dialogue and working-class characters to a wider audience.

Doyle is associated with the emergence of Ireland as a modern European nation. He captures the social and cultural shifts of late 20th-century Dublin with honesty and humour. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, he is ‘known for his unvarnished depiction of the working class in Ireland’.

He won the Booker Prize in 1993 for Paddy Clarke ha ha ha, a coming-of-age novel praised for its innovative narrative style. He also writes for younger readers. His children’s book A Greyhound of a Girl was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal in 2013. Doyle’s writing is celebrated for its compassion and observation of everyday life across all genres.

Roddy Doyle’s 10 Rules For Writing

1. Do not place a photograph of your ­favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.
2. Do be kind to yourself. Fill pages as quickly as possible; double space, or write on every second line. Regard every new page as a small triumph –
3. Until you get to Page 50. Then calm down, and start worrying about the quality. Do feel anxiety – it’s the job.
4. Do give the work a name as quickly as possible. Own it, and see it. Dickens knew Bleak House was going to be called Bleak House before he started writing it. The rest must have been easy.
5. Do restrict your browsing to a few websites a day. Don’t go near the online bookies – unless it’s research.
6. Do keep a thesaurus, but in the shed at the back of the garden or behind the fridge, somewhere that demands travel or effort. Chances are the words that come into your head will do fine, eg ‘horse’, ‘ran’, ‘said’.
7. Do, occasionally, give in to temptation. Wash the kitchen floor, hang out the washing. It’s research.
8. Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones. I was working on a novel about a band called The Partitions. Then I decided to call them The Commitments.
9. Do not search amazon.co.uk for the book you haven’t written yet.
10. Do spend a few minutes a day working on the cover biog – ‘He divides his time between Kabul and Tierra del Fuego.’ But then get back to work.

Source for Rules: The Guardian
Source for image: Penguin Random House, credit Anthony Woods

by Amanda Patterson

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