A cook knows that cooking beef at a certain speed creates a certain taste, and a writer knows that giving a character a painful memory builds sympathy… but *what else* will they put with it? What other known effects do you mix up, in what order, and what will they do together? Even large-scale formulas like “Save the Cat” are just a framework for fitting other elements onto it (there’s more than one way to save a cat, or skin them). Rules are small tools, known effects — creativity is combining them.

Picasso said, “Learn the rules like a professional, so you can break them like an artist.” And even he didn’t break these kind of rules; he found entirely new combinations for them.