"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are"
About this Quote
Maugham’s line lands like a well-timed curtain drop: it promises craft wisdom, then yanks it away. The joke isn’t just that rules are elusive; it’s that the literary world loves pretending they exist. By framing novel-writing as a tidy, teachable enterprise with “three rules,” he mimics the reassuring certainty of manuals, workshops, and gatekeepers. The punchline punctures that certainty and, with it, the vanity of anyone selling a formula.
As a playwright, Maugham knew the market’s hunger for repeatable technique. Theatre is built on structure and audience response you can measure night by night; the novel is messier, more private, harder to diagnose when it fails. His wit operates as professional skepticism: if rules were truly known, the shelves would be full of masterpieces engineered to spec, and failure would be an anomaly rather than the baseline.
The subtext is both liberating and slightly cruel. It tells beginners: stop searching for the cheat code. It tells critics and professors: your post-hoc principles are often just flattering narratives laid over accidents of talent, timing, and taste. Yet it also flatters art itself by insisting it won’t be reduced to a recipe.
Context matters: Maugham wrote in a period when modernism was detonating old certainties about plot, character, and “proper” style. Declaring the rules unknowable is his way of keeping one foot in professionalism and the other in mystery, honoring craft while refusing to mythologize it into certainty.
As a playwright, Maugham knew the market’s hunger for repeatable technique. Theatre is built on structure and audience response you can measure night by night; the novel is messier, more private, harder to diagnose when it fails. His wit operates as professional skepticism: if rules were truly known, the shelves would be full of masterpieces engineered to spec, and failure would be an anomaly rather than the baseline.
The subtext is both liberating and slightly cruel. It tells beginners: stop searching for the cheat code. It tells critics and professors: your post-hoc principles are often just flattering narratives laid over accidents of talent, timing, and taste. Yet it also flatters art itself by insisting it won’t be reduced to a recipe.
Context matters: Maugham wrote in a period when modernism was detonating old certainties about plot, character, and “proper” style. Declaring the rules unknowable is his way of keeping one foot in professionalism and the other in mystery, honoring craft while refusing to mythologize it into certainty.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|
More Quotes by Somerset Maugham
Add to List
