Young Writers Society

When you write, people will be saying to you 'Avoid alliteration' or 'prepositions should never be at the end of a sentence'.

To a limit, I would say:

Ignore them.

I think that these little changes, let your style be your style. For example, Tolkien goes past all of these issues and developed his own unique voice. Be adventurous! There is no right or wrong remember! Grammar is very important, but ignore the advanced rules that I believe pin you down.

Just a casual tip, don't take this too seriously! Just remember that what you are writing should be unique, and not what others claim to be 'uniform'.

~Mark

Well, I wouldn't say you should blindly ignore grammatical rules just because you feel like it. But if you do have a good reason, then by all means!


i.e., consciously know what you're breaking and why before you actually go ahead and do so.

Oh yes! That isn't what I meant, keep the basic grammar rules, but I mean, who are you if you just mimick grammar authors?!

I always think you can't break grammar rules until you have learnt them properly and learnt to stick to them.

Of course you can write dialogue however you like, but unless you have a good deal of proficiency in writing good narrative then you should probably still stick to most grammar rules. You have to learn to write well within the rules before you can learn to write it well without them.

Of course since the rules between different styles of English (i.e. British English, American English) can be so difficult, just knowing the rules is tricky enough!

I'm not sure I know what you mean by grammar authors?


In any case, you can have proper grammar and style! I do it all the time. The only place where I let my grammar freak out is in dialogue. Although I once used a screwed up passive sentence and refused to fix it, so. It's also good to know the rules before you ignore them entirely.

We should know how to use grammar properly before we can ignore them. When ignoring them, one creates a sentence that's can be difficult to read properly, so grammar in narration should definitely be handled, especially in third person.

If in first person, still watch your grammar. We don't want to confuse our readers, but we want it to be good enough to where we get the point across and it's effective. Grammar is essential to the language one writes in, even speaks in, just like spelling.

It's much easier to ignore grammar in dialogue, though I still say to use it wisely. If the character is a scholar, you may want to keep their speech in proper grammar, but if it's some gangster dude, you can bend the rules a bit to fit them.

Grammar should never be completely ignored.

My opinion, of course. ^_^

I agree. Don't take any of this too seriously, it's just that if you get worried that one of your sentences reads up 'fragment, considering revising' know that if it makes sense to you, it should to your author. I don't mean ignore grammar, of course not! Just be sure that you know that what you are writing does not have to be what I would call 'boring sentence structures'.

Repetition at its worst!

*coughs*

You're not talking about breaking grammar rules. You're talking about set stylistic processes.

But yeah. For that, bre adventurous!

But yeah. For that, bre adventurous!

Are we trying to kill me? XD

Snoink wrote:*coughs*

You're not talking about breaking grammar rules. You're talking about set stylistic processes.

But yeah. For that, bre adventurous!

You are picky hehe, but yes!

I'm a big believer in few exceptions to grammar breakage. Mainly when the audience is believed to be well educated in grammar a pre-planned screw up really makes something stand out. Using one word sentances can be quite fun when done extremely sparingly.

JabberHut wrote:

But yeah. For that, bre adventurous!

Are we trying to kill me? XD

Haha, poor Jabbs. *Hugs*

Anyways, I'm a strong believer in this. One word sentences, or paragraphs? So much fun.

And sentence fragments. And starting sentences with 'and.'

Destroy those English teachers who say that all paragraps must have 5-9 sentences!

~JFW1415

As my English teacher used to say, "It's like knowing how to ride a bike before you do a wheelie."

Or, a screenwriter puts it, "There are no rules, but you've got to know them before you can break them!"

I actually do not have good grasp on grammar terms at all. I know what a noun is and a verb, I have a hard time remembering what an adjective is, and I have no clue about all the rules. But I do know how to write with proper grammar. I just don't know a lot about it. My grammar has always been fine and I've always gotten high grades in English so it has not posed a problem for me. At least not yet. ^_^

I think it depends on what you are writing, but, as long as you get your point across to the reader, then you can forget grammar.



I am probably just saying this because I have no grammar/punctuation/spelling skills.