Or Not
I’m sure you know the expression, “know the rules before you break the rules.” It holds true for writing, absolutely. There is such a thing as a bad story; writing may be subjective, but yes, there are “rules” that can make a story better.
Consider, though, what rules make a story better and what rules are just convention. A convention is simply the way something is usually done. It is a convention of a murder mystery to have, well, a murder—otherwise we couldn’t call it a murder mystery. Conventions help us organize and understand.
But conventions are still artificial. People made them up, then others followed. That’s not to say you can have a murder mystery without a murder, but you can have a mystery without a murder. Your mystery simply gets filed by other people in a different genre.
Remembering this gives me freedom in my writing. It’s not just about conventions of genre, but any “rule” of writing. I’m not going to dismiss them all, but I am going to question each one. If it serves me and my ideas, then I’ll follow that rule. If it doesn’t, well, there are no story police set on arresting me. Given that many, many amazing stories break conventions (and start new ones) and many, many stories follow conventions and don’t get published, writing rules are not your holy grail.
Your own story is.