Not in reference to anything just – gestures around
I mostly love the title. Weiland’s answer should (hopefully) be a familiar one: you need to know the rules to break them.
My stance on grammar, punctuation and any other “English” rules in in agreement with Guin (in Books On Writing: Steering the Craft by Ursula Le Guin) that its more than just needing to be aware of the rules in order to break them, but to understand that grammar rules exist to help transfer ideas into the readers head, so you need to really have these ‘rules’ completely down, as even seemingly innocent issues, like random commas (or em-dashes) can corrupt your writing. Ignore them at your peril
Whoospy the comments got locked on this one! I don’t 100% agree with the posters thesis, or rather, absolutely writers overthink things but (the thesis is if you don’t want to click the link that reading will answer all your questions) while I definitely think reading is vital to learning to write (and it’s really mindboggling how many people want to write who don’t read) there is a lot more to be learnt that just from reading.
After all directors can’t just watch movies, musicians can’t just listen to music. There are many skills, and ways of writing that don’t just come naturally after absorbing examples of the craft.
Egads – this is a bit embarrassing but I haven’t actually finished this article yet. It’s a really good on developing character, in an area that I need to work on myself. I might have to post about this again when I’ve finished!
That’s it for this week!
Lonely Power Poles 