On Monday, I'd written briefly about rules for writing and how, for me, the only ones any author really needs to follow are the ones for sentence structure, punctuation, and spelling. That got me to thinking about what I wanted to write for today and how there are exceptions even for these tried and true rules.
First and foremost, I want to explain this: Knowing how to properly spell words and write a sentence will go a very long way in crafting a compelling story for readers. I don't care if it's fanfiction or original fiction. Having these basics down will aid a writer far better than not. The likes of Stephen King, David Farland, J.K. Rowling, Anne Rice, and Anne McCaffrey are testaments to this. If they had not been able to craft a sentence or spell words correctly, we would not know who they are. (So keep that in mind if you want to publish a story that's riddled with bad grammar and spelling. Not only does it annoy the avid, always hungering reader, but just flat out makes you look bad. Even the casual reader can be turned off by that.)
I can hear the counters for this now. "Only 2% of the population really notices such things" or "But it's just for fun!" Really, I dare you people to come up with better arguments than excuses for laziness when it comes to the prose of your stories. And I did say that there are exceptions to some of these rules, and actually it's just ONE exception. Here it is:
Character Dialogue/Characters Writing Notes
How is character important here? Well, let's take a look.
Depending on the type of character you have created, these rules will become subjective. Is the character a five-year-old learning how to write for the first time? Does the character have a learning disability? Is the character from another country (or, for the sci-fi peeps, another planet)? How does the character talk in your head? Is it like a fluent English professor with perfect pronounciation and enunciation? Is there a dialect in the person's speech patterns? Is the character a talker who doesn't know how to take a breath while talking?
All of this will help you (the writer) to determine how to write for the character. A five-year-old doesn't instantly know how to spell something like Avalokitesvara or even a word as simple as good. A foreigner learning English will speak in broken sentences, and to write an accent or dialect, well, can't do that without a few intentionally misspelled words here and there.
These are things that will add flavor to a story.
Beyond that, the actual narrative needs those hard, tried and true rules in order to keep the story afloat.
First and foremost, I want to explain this: Knowing how to properly spell words and write a sentence will go a very long way in crafting a compelling story for readers. I don't care if it's fanfiction or original fiction. Having these basics down will aid a writer far better than not. The likes of Stephen King, David Farland, J.K. Rowling, Anne Rice, and Anne McCaffrey are testaments to this. If they had not been able to craft a sentence or spell words correctly, we would not know who they are. (So keep that in mind if you want to publish a story that's riddled with bad grammar and spelling. Not only does it annoy the avid, always hungering reader, but just flat out makes you look bad. Even the casual reader can be turned off by that.)
I can hear the counters for this now. "Only 2% of the population really notices such things" or "But it's just for fun!" Really, I dare you people to come up with better arguments than excuses for laziness when it comes to the prose of your stories. And I did say that there are exceptions to some of these rules, and actually it's just ONE exception. Here it is:
Character Dialogue/Characters Writing Notes
How is character important here? Well, let's take a look.
Depending on the type of character you have created, these rules will become subjective. Is the character a five-year-old learning how to write for the first time? Does the character have a learning disability? Is the character from another country (or, for the sci-fi peeps, another planet)? How does the character talk in your head? Is it like a fluent English professor with perfect pronounciation and enunciation? Is there a dialect in the person's speech patterns? Is the character a talker who doesn't know how to take a breath while talking?
All of this will help you (the writer) to determine how to write for the character. A five-year-old doesn't instantly know how to spell something like Avalokitesvara or even a word as simple as good. A foreigner learning English will speak in broken sentences, and to write an accent or dialect, well, can't do that without a few intentionally misspelled words here and there.
These are things that will add flavor to a story.
Beyond that, the actual narrative needs those hard, tried and true rules in order to keep the story afloat.