breaking grammer rules

[sweetnpetite]

Anyone ever break grammer rules on purpose? And what happened when you did? How do you get the "grammer police" to realize that you did it for a reason???

In my story "the stranger" when she was talking in sentence fragments instead of complete sentances, I used lower-case but no punctuation. later I "fixed" it, because I was sick of being "corrected" but I liked it better the other way.

sometimes one word *can* be a complete sentance, but to me there is a big difference between:

"Yes."

and

"yes"


and even still different

"yes..."

or

"Yes..."

Should I have made the changes? And should I change it back?

Anyone feel free to weigh in on this.

 

[DarlingNikki]

If the grammar police can't tell that you did it on purpose then you didn't succeed. It happened to me in one story with a run-on sentance that I wrote on purpose to try to convey the "flowiness" of the sex. I was corrected on it in feedback, which told me it didn't work. Oh well. Next time.

The other thing is that if your story has other errors in it, it will be less clear that you're making a certain "error" on purpose. In my case, a lot of my sentances were too long, although not technically run-ons. That made it harder to tell that I wrote the run-on intentionally.

With punctuation ("Yes." vs. "yes") it's even more strict. There really is only one (or in some cases two, British and American) ways to do it. If "Yes." to you sounds stronger or more assertive and means something different than "yes" and you want to convey meekness or something, you need to do it in another way. You don't want to show with punctuation, but with images you create through words.

Yes," she said, her head hanging down. (Or something more clever which I can't think of right now, unfortunately)

An adverb:

"Yes," she said meekly.

is NOT the best way, but it's correct grammar- and punctuation-wise.

Of course I don't know if meekness is what you were intending. I just chose that word to use in my example to try to get my point across. Hopefully that will translate to what you actually wanted to convey.

In answer to your last question, if you're more comfortable writing your way then just do it. And if you do change it, you don't have to change it to the "correct" way. You can try to experiment with your preferred way to make it more clear what you're trying to do so that no one tries to correct you.

But as a writer you might get more out of learning to do everything perfectly correctly before you experiment with style.

I know I need to take another look at the comma section of my style manual *sigh*.

I hope that made sense.

Nikki

 

[sweetnpetite]

If the grammar police can't tell that you did it on purpose then you didn't succeed. It happened to me in one story with a run-on sentance that I wrote on purpose to try to convey the "flowiness" of the sex. I was corrected on it in feedback, which told me it didn't work. Oh well. Next time.


Nikki

well certain very pedantic critics will NEVER see that you're doing it on perpose. But good point to make sure that you dont' have any unintentional errors

 

[TheEarl]

The only way you can successfully break the rules is if no-one corrects you, thinking you didn't mean it. It seems stupid to judge your writing by what the stupidest person thought of it, but if one person gets confused, then it hasn't worked.

I tried using lower case, phonetically spelt italics to symbolise someone hearing fragments as they wake up.

Sounds in the darkness. What were they? She felt like she was at the bottom of a deep pool, trying to struggle to the surface.

…igodtehr…

Somehow, she knew that she should recognise them.

…tehraomigod…

She knew those sounds. Concentrate.

…tehra…tehra…tehra…

Suddenly the sounds fused into words and her vision flared into life.

My editor didn't understand what the hell I was doing. Didn't help that she's a Kiwi and the phonetics were American, but it showed that this wouldn't work. Went ahead with it anyway, but I'm stubborn like that.

The Earl

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

SweetnPetite,

I agree with both TheEarl and DarlingNikki. IMHO, there is only one hard and fast, don't you dare ever break this sucker, rule when it comes to writing fiction. "Thou shalt not bore thy reader."

When it comes to grammar, spelling, and punctuation, it's a matter of what the reader has come to expect. It they get "thrown out of the story" because they've started noticing some "unique" writing technique, they're likely to get bored. That condition can lead to them become former readers and to the writer being in big trouble.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[Un-registered]

... It happened to me in one story with a run-on sentance that I wrote on purpose to try to convey the "flowiness" of the sex ...

I don't know if you have read any of MsLinnet's early writings, but she used "stream of consciousness" style which reminded several of us of James Joyce's Molly Bloom in Ulysses. The feedback and votes she got were horrendous.

The moral is "Never write anything too literary on Literotica" at least not if you want high votes.

 

[sweetnpetite]

The only way you can successfully break the rules is if no-one corrects you, thinking you didn't mean it. It seems stupid to judge your writing by what the stupidest person thought of it, but if one person gets confused, then it hasn't worked.

I tried using lower case, phonetically spelt italics to symbolise someone hearing fragments as they wake up.



My editor didn't understand what the hell I was doing. Didn't help that she's a Kiwi and the phonetics were American, but it showed that this wouldn't work. Went ahead with it anyway, but I'm stubborn like that.

The Earl

I think it makes perfect sence. You explain what your doing- and the reader should be confused for a second becuase that is the point. You can't show the actual words if the main character doesnt' understand them.