Saturday, January 31: Mississippi Mud
DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME
by John M. Floyd
Rules — and warning signs — are a part of our lives. SLOW TO 45 MPH. NO PERSONAL CHECKS. THE RED ZONE IS FOR LOADING AND UNLOADING OF PASSENGERS ONLY. I especially like the note I saw on TV awhile back, before a documentary about daredevil stunts. THESE ARE TRAINED PROFESSIONALS, it said — DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME.
From early childhood we’re taught to be careful, mind your parents, follow the guidelines. I can hear my mother now: Rules are there for a reason, Johnny, you can’t just do anything you want to.
Well, when it comes to writing, breaking some of the rules is not only safe, it can work to your advantage.
A couple of months ago, in a comment on one of my columns, Dick Stodghill quoted Cornell Woolrich: “Never let grammar stand in the way of a good sentence.” That’s excellent advice. Elmore Leonard once made a similar observation: “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. If proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English Composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.”
I liked Woolrich and Leonard already, but even if I hadn’t, I would have liked them after I heard that. There will indeed always be rules for writing, but there will also always be times when writers — especially writers of fiction — should feel free to ignore them.
Don’t get me wrong: most rules you darn well better follow, if you want to get published. Here, though, are a few that you can occasionally break, with no guilt feelings whatsoever:
Don’t use comma splices.
Author Lynne Truss says: “When done knowingly, the comma splice is effective, poetic, dashing.” I never thought of it that way, but I know it’s especially useful when writing dialogue. The comma splice (two complete sentences separated only by a comma) can sometimes capture the exact rhythms of normal speech.
Hurry up, let’s go eat.
Of course I recognize her, I’ve known her all my life.
Mama says he is, he says he isn’t. (Eudora Welty)Here’s a hint that usually works: If you don’t pause when you say it aloud, you should probably use a comma rather than a semicolon or a period.
Don’t use sentence fragments.
I happily violate this rule all the time. I’ve heard that the correct response to “That’s a fragment” is “So what?” Sometimes sentence fragments sound exactly right.
Because I said so.
Which turned out for the best.
As if I care.Don’t write rambling sentences.
I usually agree with this one, but long unpunctuated sentences can be effective in high-tension scenes, where things need to clip along without any hesitation.
Bill untied his ankles and grabbed his gun and sprinted down the hall and into the den and threw open the window — and saw the thief’s taillights rounding the corner at the end of the street.
Don’t write one-sentence paragraphs.
Despite the opinion of some writers, one-sentence paragraphs work just fine. They provide emphasis, often at the end of a scene or a story, and their very isolation adds even more impact.
Never use made-up words.
That rule should be changed to read as follows: If it sounds right, do it.
The helicopter whopwhopwhopped into the blue distance.
Vicksburg is a scenic town partially because it’s so bluffy.
The boomerang whickered through the sky.Never write stories in present tense.
Forget it. Many short stories are written in present tense, and novels as well. Those who do this say it lends a sense of immediacy, a sense that whatever is happening is happening now. (The first time I remember seeing this technique was in Presumed Innocent, twenty years ago.)
Write what you know.
That’s not bad advice, but it’s a little misleading. You should write what you like to read, and what you feel comfortable writing.
To quote Marie Anderson (The Writer, November 2004): “I used to write what I know. I used to write about infertility, motherhood, suburban middle-class life, blue-collar Catholic childhood, law school from a dropout’s perspective. I’d send out those stories and never see them again, not even the SASE’s. Then, somewhere, I came across a better rule: Know what you write.”
Don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
Beginning a sentence with “and” or “but” creates a natural transition that smooths things out for the reader. Just don’t overuse it. (Twice in the same paragraph is probably too often.)
Never end a sentence with a preposition.
Winston Churchill demonstrated the foolishness of that rule: “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.”
Is that the boy you came here with?
I wonder what those initials stand for.
What have you gotten me into? (Can you imagine any character, except Yoda, blurting: “Into what have you gotten me?”)I’m reminded of a joke I heard years ago:
Polite country girl: “Where are you from?”
Uppity sorority girl (sneering): “I’m from a place where they don’t end sentences with prepositions.”
Country girl: “My mistake. Let me rephrase that. Where are you from, bitch?”Don’t split infinitives.
Split away. Sometimes it’s better to put a word between “to” and a verb.
We plan to formally announce our engagement.
I cannot bring myself to really like the fellow. (Strunk & White)
To boldly go where no man has gone before.
There are other rules that I also hold in low regard, but this is probably enough for now.
One more quote, this one from Loren Estleman: “Some rules have a way of becoming holy commandments through constant repetition, never questioned. Whenever one of them gets in the way of the crystal flow of a good clear sentence, run right over it.”
Vrrrrrrroom.
John, with great resistance, Deborah and I restrained ourselves from posting about «emergency road signs».
Thanks for Marie Anderson’s observation, "Know what you write."
Tony Harris recently touched upon making words up. I fabricate words when I don’t have a needed verb at hand. For example, ‘slurge’ is the sound-enhanced action of viscous, semi-clogging matter moving down a drain. In a competition, I was criticized by a judge for not using a real word. "Well, looge you!" I muttered, getting in the last snarp.
I vowed to keep my mouth shut around here for a while but you forced it open. Visitors to the Akron area are lost when they see signs found nowhere else: DO NOT PARK ON DEVIL STRIP.
I once had a short series in present tense. Just after taking over as AHMM editor, Cathleen Jordan called and asked to change it to past. I said no, and soon came to regret it. Quit after a few more stories. Present tense is hard work.
As you pointed out, one-sentence paragraphs are great for emphasis. What I hate is newspaper stories and columns that are all one sentence paragraphs. It’s like crossing a stream on widely-spaced stepping stones.
I agree, writing in present tense is hard work. I like reading it, but when I’ve tried writing that way, it didn’t sound right to me. I’m probably too traditional — I have to write as if I’m telling someone about things that happened in the past.
Love the emergency road sign in your link, Leigh — I think a post on that subject would be fun. And Dick, you know I have to ask: What’s a devil strip?
(I’m afraid I used a comma splice, a sentence fragment, and a beginning conjunction, all within those two paragraphs. There’s no hope for me . . .)
Only in Akron is the grass between the sidewalk and curb “the devil strip.” Thirty miles away in Cleveland it’s “the tree lawn.” Pretty boring.
I find most fiction written in a literary present tense to be trendy and affected. The claim that present tense lends immediacy is utter hogwash. There are, of course, exceptions. One of them is to use it in an anecdotal sense, the same way one tells a joke: “So this guy holding a pig under his arm walks into a bar …” and mix it up with past tense. (That’s what I did with “Shanghaied”, for example, and a frequent technique used by George MacDonald Fraser in the Flashman Papers.)
Most of your examples of comma splices aren’t true comma splices, but complex sentences with implied prepositions:
Of course I recognize her, [since] I’ve known her all my life.
Mama says he is, [but] he says he isn’t.
Most of the time, comma splices are just irritating. They are much more tolerated in Britain than they are here, look at J. K. Rowling for examples. (Wink, wink.)
You’re right about the implied prepositions, but they’re still comma splices. And I think even true splices work well sometimes, in dialogue. To me, if misuse of a comma makes speech sound more natural, use it without a second thought. We’re not talking about college theses here, we’re talking about making fiction easier to read.
I like something else Ms. Truss says about comma splices: it’s easier to get away with it if you’re famous (Updike, Beckett, Maugham, etc.). In which case, I should probably avoid it entirely.
>like something else Ms. Truss says about comma splices: it’s easier to get away with it if you’re famous (Updike, Beckett, Maugham, etc.). In which case, I should probably avoid it entirely.
Nah, you’ve got something else going for you: You’re a damn good writer.
“Don’t write one-sentence paragraphs.”
I had never heard that one until last year, when one of my stories was up for critique, and someone pointed out “you can’t write one-sentence paragraphs!”
I stared at him, perplexed.
(And yes, the above is meant to be ironic.)
Mind you, this is the same group that firmly believes (I am not making this up) that the following phrase~
“The garage door needs painted”
~is a regionalism known ONLY in the city of Pittsburgh, PA, and that any editor outside of this city who sees that sentence will tear his hair out in confusion, unable to understand what it is supposed to mean.
Thus they have a rule here: “Don’t ever drop ‘to be’ from your sentences.”
It is quite a wonder finding so many “rules” that make so little sense. The one I personally hate is “Banish the exclamation point from your keyboard–it only weakens your prose.” Maybe some “experts” think so, but it makes it damned tough for your character to go running along the roof of a moving train, screaming to get someone’s attention, when you cannot use any exclamation points in his dialogue….
In “The Bear”, I believe, Faulkner used a sentence that was more than a page long. Extreme, of course. Could we get away with that today.? Probably not, and I wouldn’t want to anyway. Like you, John, I am a more traditional writer, (if I may use the word).
Erich Maria Remarque was a master at writing in present tense. All Quiet, the Black Oblisque, and so on. He was a master at everything, of course.
Joseph, I had a long term girlfriend from Pittsburgh with whom I had interesting conversations. Gumbands and red-up I grasped right away, but indefinite vowels led to many misunderstandings.
Was the tahr on the car tar or the tire?
Was tahl in the bathroom the towel or the tile?
Was puhl the verb pool or pull, or the noun pool or pole?
Only a Pittsburger knows for sure.
As a Southerner, I probably better stay out of discussions like saying “tahr” for “tire.”
As for whether we could get away with some of the writing techniques used long ago, I don’t think we could. I’m reminded of the opening chapter of Michener’s HAWAII, and some of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ work, and the overwhelming use of dialect in the first third of Faulkner’s THE SOUND AND THE FURY, etc. It’s all great writing, but I’m not sure publishers would be receptive to that, today.
Alice Walker used dialect throughout THE COLOR PURPLE, a novel of the 1980s, I think, unless memory fails me.
The comma splice is rampant in Britain, and, outside of dialogue, I think it should be banned. However, more use of the ablative absolute in English, which is legal, would be welcome.