"Ten Commandments" of detective stories?

Wait, we should limit our imagination? Follow rules when writing a story? Why did Ronald Knox write the “Ten Commandment” of a Detective story? How crazy must he have been to try to restrict people’s minds and creativity? Who does he think he is making the law of writing? It may seem very silly to try and set rules for how to write, but after thinking about it and understanding them I understood why.

               These 10 little rules seem small and meaningless, but they help the writer and reader much more than we think. The “Ten Commandment” help the writer focus on what they are promoting. How weird would it be to read the blurb and buy what you think is a detective novel, but bring it home to find out that it is nothing like a detective novel. Nobody wants to read a book that makes no sense and is all over the place. Understanding of the reader and interest of reader are both improved when following the rules. It limits the writer from throwing in stuff that you had absolutely no clue in, so that you can try to follow the detective’s mind as closely as you can. It makes it so that most of the solving in the facts part and not in the machine and contraption.

                Books must be sold to make money. You sell books by writing interesting and original books. Ronald Knox wrote these as a guideline to help writers write a more interesting book. It is somewhat like a teacher showing and teaching little tricks that could help them achieve much more. I feel like Ronald Knox wrote these “Commandments” more as suggestions. He wrote down what he thought reader would be most interested and hooked on for the writers. I think he by no means was trying to make this the law and saying that everyone must follow these rules and exactly these rules. It just seems that the suggestions worked so well and were so effective that everyone started using it, and then somewhat made it into rules. Of course these suggestions are not flawless, people get bored if all detective stories have the exact same formatting. But then that is not Ronald Knox’s job, it is the writers job to add his or her own special style or taste to the story and make it perfect. Writers got to do what they got to do to make the story the best it can be. The writer’s job is to make the reader have an enjoyable time and his suggestions help the writer do exactly that. Ronald Knox was a genius to have wrote these suggestions down and must have done something right to have these suggestions turn into the “Ten Commandments” of detective stories.