Being the philosophically free, independent, autonomous person that I am, with an anarcho-primitive mindset, and a DIY mentality—yet physically and financially chained in this backwater, dogshit capitalist and government intertwined society like everyone else—I already knew I could write whatever I want when it comes to fiction. Absolute freedom. It’s unbelievably liberating, and far more exciting, thrilling, and fun than how suffocatingly and limited it is creatively making YouTube videos, or even films. No other medium compares to writing, though they do have their merits. But I digress.
Having completed writing my first book, and now on the third draft (which is close to being finished in a matter of a day or two as of this post), I have been using AI to help catch grammatical and mechanical errors, aside from the writing software’s built-in correction tool. I may also use another professional writing tool as well. We’ll see. While I obviously have to correct improper homophones like your vs you’re, its vs it’s, what I didn’t realize was that you don’t have to necessarily fix certain grammatical errors such as dangling modifiers, or comma splices. You have stylistic leeway in fiction and creative writing.
If you are writing some sort of academic thesis, then yes, you apparently need to abide by every strict grammar rule imaginable. But with fiction, which is part creative writing, you don’t have to! So if you wrote a sentence that sounds good, but a grammar correction tool says you have a dangling modifier that needs a proper subject, or you used to many prepositions, or you should add or remove the comma, you don’t have to follow those rules!
I kind of thought this, but at the same time, I felt I still needed to make sure that even if my sentences were creative or 2nd person, weird, experimental, whatever, I still needed to follow certain grammar rules. That is not the case at all. That doesn’t mean you should ignore grammar rules altogether, or never use commas, or always let your modifiers dangle. Voice, cadence, intent, style, that takes precedence over rules. If the sentence or paragraph reads and looks exactly how you want it, and it’s not clumsy, then it’s fine! Obviously, if you are working with an editor (I’m not, I plan to and can do everything myself, just like my YouTube channel) there might be some back and forth between the two of you until they understand your vision. I’m only guessing, but from what I’ve read, that can happen.
So if you want to write a run-on sentence that’s ten lines long without commas? You can! You don’t have to use commas! You don’t have to put quotes around dialogue! I mean, really, take a look at this example: Get off my lawn or I’m calling the cops! yelled old man WIllerby. Or: The magician paused to contemplate which spell to cast. I can’t fucking decide between Magic Missile or Fireball! they exclaimed. See? I honestly don’t think we need quotes anymore. I think most people can figure out who’s talking, especially when dialogue tags are used. I don’t know of many authors that don’t use them, or at least I can’t recall who did or didn’t. The only one that comes to mind is Cormack McCarthy. I think I only read his one book The Road at some point after watching the movie. I can’t remember.
Obviously, you want some semblance of sanity so that people can read and enjoy what you wrote, but you can be experimental and avant-garde and ignore the rules in many instances. Apparently many authors have.
So fuck the rules! Go have fun writing whatever the fuck you want to write! And then self-publish that mother fucker!