Like Driving on I-95

“What’s it like to write fiction?” one of my East Coast friends once asked me.

“It’s kind of like driving on I-95,” I told him.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

And so I told him about the time my husband and I, who for ten years had been living on an island where the top speed limit was 40 miles per hour, flew on business to Miami. As our driver there charged up the ramp onto Interstate 95, Jim and I desperately clung to each other and anything else we could find to hold onto.

“I love I-95,” our driver told us with a grin.

“Why?” I managed to gasp as he wove in and out of traffic at 90 miles an hour.

“NO RULES!” he replied.

Now we all know that the English language has rules: Complete thoughts are supposed to be expressed in complete sentences, not in sentence fragments, and sentences should not run on and on. There are places, such as here, where commas belong and places where they don’t. You should not split an infinitive, dangle a participle, or use the word ain’t in formal writing. And of course, we all know that direct dialogue should be encased in quotation marks.

So have you ever read Hemingway? Faulkner? Cormac McCarthy? Didn’t they ever learn these rules? Maybe they did, or maybe they didn’t. I suspect the former, but it really doesn’t matter. When it comes to fiction, there are no rules.

However, if you want to be a good writer, it will serve you well to know and understand the rules of grammar and punctuation before you go about breaking them. Break them for good effect, and you may become a great writer; break them out of ignorance or hubris, and you shall surely fall by the wayside.

Fiction writing is a craft as well as an art. Rules have been established over the centuries to help writers learn their craft more quickly and thus sooner get on with the business of making art. Thus the rules have relevant meaning and should be ignored at your peril. But always keep in mind that when it comes to fiction, there really are no rules.

Evoking Emotion