BY ELIZABETH GILLILAND
In the world of grammar, there seem to be a lot of rules floating around:
Avoid gerunds!
Don’t end a sentence with a prepositional phrase!
Delete all adverbs!
Death to passive voice!
And so forth, and so forth.
As if it isn’t frustrating enough trying to keep all those things straight, the rules change. Sometimes arbitrarily. Sometimes depending on usage. Sometimes only on Fridays after 2:00. Unlike physics or algebra, there is no constant, unchangeable, hard and fast law of the universe when it comes to the rubrics of writing (I’m hoping this is a correct comparison, since I avoid all forms of math and science like the plague).
So when do you actually have to pay attention to those rules and when can you play around a little bit?
. . . I’m asking sincerely here, not as a way to set up an answer I already know but am withholding for taunting purposes. Because the truth is, I don’t always know. Sometimes it’s more of a feeling than any rule I could point to in a book. Sometimes it all comes down to the rhythm of a piece. For example:
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
Ach!!! Passive voice! Adverbs! Danger alert!!!Only, if you try to edit those out, it reads:
“The universe at large acknowledges that a single man in possession of a good fortune must want a wife.”
Not nearly as charming, is it? And don’t even get me started on “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . .”
Sometimes as I’m reading a sentence, I can tell an author is jumping through hoops, Shamu-style, to try to avoid using was and is and are and were, but the resulting sentence is so awkward that it’s a chore just to get through it.
Or a writer is so gung-ho on not ending a sentence with a prepositional phrase that they’ll have teenagers saying dialogue like, “With whom are you going out?” when everyone knows using overinflated language like that would just get you pantsed in the locker room.
So what’s a grammar-law-abiding author to do?
I guess my best advice would be not to never break the rules of grammar, but to break them knowledgeably (see how I used an adverb there? AND a double negative?). Be aware of those ever-fickle laws, know them like the back of your hand, scour your manuscript and mark it up with red, then rinse, lather, and repeat until it’s nice and shiny and clean.
But on those rare occasions where there’s no way around it? Embrace the giddy thrill of knowing you’re getting away with murder—grammatically speaking, that is.
Write on, authors. And break responsibly.
Editor, ghost writer, and story coach Elizabeth Gilliland breaks the rules from her home in Utah. Her next project, Conjectrix, the sequel to Vivatera by Candace J. Thomas, will be released in the April 2014.
Elizabeth’s short story “Mouse and Cat” appeared in A Dash of Madness: a Thriller Anthology publishined in July 2013.
