Reader Beware: The Meaning of Trigger Warnings

 Q: Your thoughts on authors asked to write Content/Trigger Warnings for their novels?

from Susan

I don’t know what to say about this. I write – and read – crime fiction. I expect there to be crimes, murders, scary moments, bad behavior, evil people. To that end, I try to read enough about the story to know if I will definitely avoid it or not. I try to skip books where a child is murdered, but recently read a really good story where that happens because I know the author and her work, and I was confident she would handle the necessary plot points with care. I definitely skip novels where torture is likely going to play a role, which means most stories featuring Nazis at work get a pass from me. But the massive hit All the Light We Cannot See, while scary and, yes, replete with despicable Nazis, was worth it to me – skipped over a few pages here and there – because of the luminous portrait of the young girl and her protector. Sadism is an absolute no for me, but if I stumble upon it in a book, I just close the book and throw it in the trash (don’t want to pass the poison on, thank you!). 

 

What exactly is a trigger, anyway? Does it mean the reader has an immediate and serious psychological response based on their own or a loved one’s experience that may cause them pain and suffering? And if someone understands the damage coming across something that causes this may happen, does he or she take special care to learn about the story before opening the book? I do believe and have great sympathy for people whose experiences have hurt them this badly. So, I can’t object to trigger warnings.

 

What I wonder is how to present them so they don’t scare away readers? I also wonder if warnings can cover all real causes of fright and pain? If every crime fiction story has, in addition to its cover teaser prose, has to say something like “Be warned, the material in this work of fiction includes references to and descriptions of strangulation, gun violence, beatings, disappearance of a child, attempted rape, corrupt police personnel, attacks on senior citizens, and house invasion” will anyone choose to read that book? Will it sound over the top grim? Will libraries refuse to purchase it? My point is people have such varying, honest, emotional triggers based on terrible experiences that publishers may in future feel trigger warnings must be included on every work of crime fiction to avoid litigation, that great American tradition.

 

Tricky, thorny, sad, even tinged with politics these days. So, as I say, I’m not sure what I believe in answer to this question and will just have to wait until someone decides it for me.

Beware: guns are fired, a drowning occurs, a kidnapping happens

Alert: a senior citizen is attacked, a dog is kidnapped

Conferences, fact and fiction - from Harini Nagendra

Bouchercon and Killer Nashville 2024 have ended recently. Your thoughts on your conference experience. Do you get post conference blues, or does it energize you? 

Before I begin, let me confess - I haven't been to a single writer's conference in the US so far! Sadly, the expense of taking two long flights to attend one short conference creates barriers. I felt this most keenly in 2022, when my debut fiction book, The Bangalore Detectives Club, was nominated for a Lefty, Agatha and Anthony best debut award in the US, and for the CRA Historical dagger in the UK - and I couldn't make it for a single one of these, especially missing the panels where all the other debut authors were in conversation about their books. 

That was definitely a bittersweet moment - or set of moments. In balance though, the sweet far out-weighed the bitter, given that I had never expected the book to receive all these wonderful nominations.

But then, in 2023, I was invited to Motive, the Toronto International Literature Festival's crime and mystery edition, as a speaker - and what a blast I had. Here I am, on the Toronto harbor front, posing in front of a ginormous sign that announced my name to the city - in the company of a stellar set of authors. I hung out with other authors like Vaseem Khan, met a bunch of wonderful readers, went out to dinner with a lovely group of South Asian writers, including Ausma Zehanat Khan and her friends - with whom I am now friends-for-life. Vaseem and I had to rush from our rooms in the conference hotel in the middle of the night, and stand on the street with others for a long while because a fire alarm misfired - that was certainly an unforgettable experience. More grist for the writer's mill! 

I've been to many academic conferences in the US and other parts of the world for the past 30 years of course, but I was struck by the marked difference between academic conferences and writers' conferences - fiction is clearly more fun than fact! I hope to make it to Bouchercon, Left Coast Crime, Killer Nashville or one of the other big mystery writer conferences in the US sometime soon. 

Meanwhile - in news to come - it seems I may be able to make it to a writer's conference in the US later this year! I just got an email today, and hope to be able to share the news soon. I'm looking forward to meeting many authors I know via email, and to meeting readers too - fingers crossed!  

     

A Tree Falling in the Forest from James W. Ziskin

Bouchercon and Killer Nashville 2024 have ended recently. Your thoughts on your conference experience. Do you get post conference blues, or does it energize you?

I missed Bouchercon and Killer Nashville this year. Since 2013, I’ve attended many conferences. Bouchercon, Left Coast, Malice Domestic, ThrillerFest, California Crime Writers, New England Crime Bake, and Maine Crime Wave. In addition to offering opportunities to meet and revisit friends and learn everything there is to know about crime writing, these conferences took me to far-off places. Strung together, they sound like a new version of “I’ve Been Everywhere”: Albany, Long Beach, Raleigh, New Orleans, Toronto, St. Petersburg, Dallas, San Diego, Monterey, Portland (OR), Phoenix, Honolulu, Reno, Vancouver, Bethesda, New York, Boston, L.A., Portland (ME)… 

My favorite might have been Bouchercon Toronto (2017), since I won an Anthony and Macavity award there for HEART OF STONE. I have one minor gripe, however. That was the year they decided to announce the Anthony Awards on Sunday at noon. It was an effort to encourage attendees to stick around for the Sunday morning panels but, alas, everyone left early as they always do, and there wasn’t a huge crowd to hoist me on their shoulders and sing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

Bouchercon 2021–held remotely in my least favorite city, Pandemica—was special, too. I won the Barry and Macavity for TURN TO STONE that year. But 2021 had its bitter side. Besides Covid, I mean. It may sound petty, but I felt luck turned its back on me that day. There I was, sitting at my desk, tuned in to the awards ceremony, excited because I was going to win two prestigious awards. (Yes, I knew in advance I’d won.) I’d told my friends and family to watch as well, from as far away as India. I was proud and looking forward to basking in some hard-to-achieve and hard-earned recognition. But when the moment for the Barry and Macavity award presentations arrived, nothing happened. A blank screen. There was some kind of technical glitch—for both award announcements!—during the virtual presentation, and the program swiftly moved on to other business. The Barry and Macavity winners’ names were never announced during the ceremonies that day. Poof. The moment passed. Yes, the videos were eventually posted, but by then few people were watching. My friends and relatives were kind. Said it didn’t matter. The important thing was that my book had won the honors. But I was embarrassed all the same.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m incredibly honored, grateful, and lucky to have won those awards, but I felt like the tree falling in the forest. Nobody got to witness—or hear—my magnificent fall.

If it seems I only remember those two conferences, I’ve done a disservice to this week’s question. Over the past ten years, I’ve had the privilege of meeting so many wonderful people/writers, thanks to these conferences. All of my Criminal Minds colleagues, past and present, in fact. (Well, I haven’t yet met Harini in person, but I hope to rectify that someday soon.) Among my earliest writerly acquaintances were my fellow Seventh Street Books authors. (In no particular order) Folks such as Terry Shames, Lori Rader-Day, Robert Rotstein, Jennifer Kincheloe, Kim Hays, Susan Spann, Allen Eskens, Susan Froetschel, Steve Gobel, John Florio, Robin Yocum, Larry Sweazy, Steven Cooper, Daisy Bateman, Shaun Harris, Stephanie Gayle, Bradley Harper, Gordon McAlpine, and Leslie Budewitz, who I knew before she published with Seventh Street.

Albany 2013 — Lynne Raimondo, Mark Pryor, me, Terry Shames 

Oh, yeah. Mark Pryor, too. I suppose I have to mention him, but only in a very small font.

Lynne Raimondo

And that brings me to my dear, dear friend and fellow Seventh Street author Lynne Raimondo, whom we lost far too soon four years ago. She was the first person I met at my first conference (Albany) in 2013, and she remained a close confidant and partner in crime. We got together whenever we could, spending time together with our families in Boston and Maine, and we even traded insults in our books, naming idiotic characters after each other. See below the passages from Lynne’s DANTE’S DILEMMA and my HEART OF STONE.

I miss Lynne so very much. I think everyone who knew her misses her as well.

Here are some happier memories from conferences past:

Raleigh 2015 — Larry Sweazy, Lori Rader-Day, me

Reno 2018 — with Catriona McPherson

2016 Phoenix — Chris Holm, me, Susanna Calkins, Josh Stallings, Lou Berney

With Louise Penny and Art Taylor Toronto 2017

Eryk Pruitt, Greg Herren, Thomas Pluck, me, 
Nadine Nettmann, Lori Rader-Day — St. Pete

Me with Cathy Ace, Monterey 2014

Robert Rotstein, Jennifer Kincheloe, Terry Shames, me, Lynne Raimondo
San Diego

Alison Gaylin, Gabriel Valjan, Kellye Garrett, me, Lori Rader-Day
St. Pete 2018?

Lesa Holsteine, Wendall Thomas, me in Vancouver???

Camille Minichino and me, San Diego 2023

Criminal Mnds c. 2018

Honolulu 2017

I admit that I’ve been down about conferences for a while now. No fault of the organizers or the attendees, of course, but I just haven’t been feeling it since about 2019. I’ve only attended one Bouchercon since then. Maybe I burned out. Lost interest in participating in panels and hobnobbing. Being “on” all the time. My face got tired of smiling. The booze at the bar became more of a prop than an enjoyment. I began to look forward to the moment when I could shut myself behind the hotel room door and draw a deep breath—a sigh, perhaps—happy to be my sorry self by myself again. I’ve grown to appreciate and love the peace of solitude one can find alone in the middle of big events like a writers’ conference.

That’s not to say I don’t love my writer and reader friends. I do. But I’d be lying if I said I enjoy everyone I meet at conferences. Let’s face it, you come across jerks in every endeavor you undertake. The racists, the misogynists, the predators, the reactionaries, the snobs... These make up a small portion of our community, but one does run into them.

Anyway, I’ll say that I’ve loved my conference experiences and will surely attend again. Not sure when, but I’ll feel better about the prospect someday, and I look forward to seeing all my friends again. And, who knows? Maybe even some of the jerks.

Y thr

Guest post by Dana King

I've asked my friend Dana King to drop by and tackle this week's question: Your thoughts on your conference experience. Do you get post conference blues, or does it energize you? Dana's the author of the amazing Penns River and Nick Forte series, and he's a frequent attendee at major conferences. If you haven't read both of his series, do yourself a favor and get over to his website and check them out. Meantime, here's Dana.

Let me begin by thanking Dietrich Kalteis for inviting me to write this post. I’ve been a fan of this blog for quite a while, and it’s a privilege to contribute.

Since my first Bouchercon in 2008, I’ve attended at least twenty-five such events, including ten Bouchercons, a Left Coast Crime, a Sleuthfest, three Malice Domestics, ten Creatures, Crimes, and Creativity cross-genre conference and other random get-togethers. My takeaways have evolved over the years as I gained experience as a writer and made friends, but the core hasn’t changed.

Like most writers, I am an introvert. Writing is an occupation that appeals to introverts due to all the time spent alone wrestling with the voices in our heads. This means conferences — especially something as large as Bouchercon — can be daunting at first. Frankly, I still feel a little anxious when arriving at a conference. Spending days at a time with that many strangers is not on my bucket list.

What has changed over the years is how quickly that feeling disappears. It’s hard for me to approach people I don’t know, so when I knew no one, and was myself unknown, an event the size of Bouchercon was intimidating. Many thanks to Peter Rozovsky, John McFetridge, Declan Burke, Zoe Sharp, and especially Scott Phillips for helping me over that hurdle. (The Peter Rozovsky/Scott Phillips story is too long to fit here. Hit me up at a conference and I’ll tell you all about it.)

I used to hit as many panels as I could squeeze in and took copious notes in every session. I viewed cons as educational experiences from which I intended to improve my craft, as well as my understanding of the industry. I still have the original notebooks and their transcriptions on my hard drive.

Much has changed in sixteen years. Conferences are now primarily social events for me. I still take notes, but I go to panels as much to be entertained, or show support to friends, as to be educated. I also don’t make such a fetish about going to every panel I can get to. Sometimes it’s nice to rest for an hour, or catch up with someone I haven’t seen in a long time.

Back to the core question: Do I get post-conference blues, or am I energized?

The best answer is that I am both energized and exhausted. I can’t wait to get home and start writing again. After a long nap. Or three. That much time in a compressed space with hundreds of other people empties my tank. That doesn’t mean I didn’t have a good time — I’ve never not had a ball at a conference — but it takes a lot out of me. I’m sure many of us saw athletes, especially in track, collapse immediately after their gold medal-winning races in the Olympics. I’m sure they had a good time, too. That doesn’t mean they aren’t exhausted.

I’ll also get jazzed. Will be for weeks. Ready to jump right back into whatever is in progress, and searching for time to address projects that came to mind because of what I heard at the conference. Or was myself involved in such a discussion. Or just picked it up from the energy in the atmosphere. Excited as I’ll be to get back to work, I’ll still have so much I want to do I’ll need to start a schedule.

(True story: Driving home from last year’s Sleuthfest, The Beloved Spouse™ and I listened to revered country artist George Jones sing “Bartender Blues” in the car. I had a story sketched out in my head before we got home. “Bartender Blues” appeared in Dark Yonder magazine last spring.)

As I write this, TBS and I are in the early stages of preparing for what will be a busy September. We’ll attend the Creatures, Crimes, and Creativity conference on the 13th through 15^th, then come home for a day to do laundry and repack before leaving on a road trip to Florida to visit our daughter’s family in Tampa, including our five-month-old granddaughter. Then it’s across the bay to St. Petersburg and Sleuthfest, then the drive home after. 

I know already that when I get home I’ll be exhausted. My back and legs will be stiff, my feet will hurt, and I’ll want nothing more than to sleep in my own bed.  

I can’t wait.

Terry here: Our question this week is about conferences. We’re writing our thoughts on conference experience. And also, if we get post conference blues, or does it energize us? 

I’m a conference junky. That’s where my people are. That’s where my brain gets refreshed, where I get sparked with new ideas, find out the state of the publishing industry, see old friends and new authors, find out the latest gossip. It’s life blood. It’s hard to believe my first Bouchercon was the year of the first meeting to introduce the idea of Sisters in Crime. I was a wannabe crime writer and was urged to go by published friends who said I could learn a lot. And I probably did, although I can’t remember much about it—that was 37 years ago, folks! Since then, I’ve rarely missed Bouchercon. 

                                                        

 This year I missed it, though, because I decided to go to Thrillerfest instead. Both conferences require spending some funds and some time, and I couldn’t do both. I had not been to Thrillerfest in several years, so I decide it was time to check in on it again. Let’s just say that I’ll be going back to Bouchercon next year. Why? Several reasons, which have to do with me rather than the conference. I went because I had begun publishing a new thriller series, The Jessie Madison series. But it’s more of an adventure/thriller series, and I rediscovered the idea that many Thrillerfest attendees write “hard core” thrillers. Thrillers about tough men (and sometimes tough women). And they are written by men. As one fellow-participant said, “There was a lot of testosterone in the room.” 

 I’ve rarely had “bad” experiences at conferences. The worst thing that happens at every, single one is that I run out of time and energy. There are too many panels to choose from, too many people to catch up with, and too many ideas to kick around. I’ve finally learned to plan in advance, booking a lunch or dinner with people I absolutely have to see. But then I also run into people I didn’t know would be there or decide I really want to hear more about something I heard at a panel, which means stuffing one more event into the panoply of events. 

 The one conference I absolutely will not miss is Left Coast Crime. It’s smaller (if you can call 800 people small), and more intimate. And it’s usually on the west coast, so easier for me to get to. The team that puts together LCC does a sterling job and every year I come away delighted that I went. 

 One of the things I love about conferences in general is the surprises. There’s the panel that rises above the usual chatter and becomes a real learning experience. Or the encounter with an author that suddenly turns into a serious conversation about some aspect of writing. The new person you meet who is your “person.” (I’m thinking of Janet Oakley here, whom I met at Left Coast Crime this year. If we lived close to each other, we’d have coffee at least once a week.) This year a wonderful surprise was the author who features perfumes in her mysteries, and she remembered that I had lost my favorite perfume in my move to LA, only to find that it was no longer being made—and she found an almost-full bottle and brought it to me. There’s always unexpected laughter, too. And finding new authors (love the new author breakfasts). As for post-conference blahs, not really. 

By the time the weekend is over, I’m usually exhausted, physically and mentally, and I almost always need a day to catch my breath when I get home, but then I a day or so later I’m brimming with energy and want to get started on whatever hits my brain.

The Book Conference Experience

Bouchercon and Killer Nashville 2024 have ended recently. Your thoughts on your conference experience. Do you get post conference blues, or does it energize you?

Brenda starting off the week.

I used to go to book conferences quite often but have not been to any since the pandemic. I attended every Bloody Words in Canada since I was first published, although these conferences have since ended. They took place mainly in Toronto but once in Victoria and twice in my home city, Ottawa. I was on the planning committee for the second Ottawa conference and saw the event from a completely different angle. They are a ton of work to put on, and my hat goes off to everyone involved - it took a full year of planning to organize ours, never mind the actually three or four actual days when it took place.

What I love about these conferences is visiting new cities, meeting so many great people, (authors and fans alike), and being inspired by panels and other authors. I've attended Bouchercon in Baltimore, Cleveland and Toronto, and Left Coast Crime in Vancouver, Phoenix and Monterey, and a memorable Murder in Muncie in Muncie, Indiana ... every conference was unique and so much fun. During a conference, you have nothing to do but mingle, attend panels and events, eat and drink, schmooze-- daily life, routine and chores are put on hold.

One of my favourite panels - Corey Fayman, me, Barbara Nickless & Catherine Maiorisi -Vancouver

 

Another favourite panel! Ann Cleeves, Deborah Crombie, Louise Penny, me & Kathy Bennett - Monterey

With Ann Cleeves at Left Coast Crime in Phoenix

The Canadian contingent at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland

Initially, I was nervous to attend the conferences but the Canadian authors always met up for meals and attended each other's panels. They've been generous in networking, making introductions that might result in new friendships and book-industry connections. The vibe at these conferences is friendly and supportive. I can't say that I've ever had a bad experience. 

As for post-conference blues, I've not experienced them except it is hard to get back to the pressures of daily life. I've always come home eager to write and revitalized after listening to so many authors talk about the craft and their writing lives. 

It might just be time I signed up for another conference!

Most of the 7 Criminal Minds a few years back -  Vancouver

Website: www.brendachapman.ca

Twitter: brendaAchapman

Facebook, Instagram & Threads: BrendaChapmanAuthor

Lost Comrade by Josh Stallings

 Q: What’s your position on ending a sentence with a preposition, grammar others might be afraid of? What non-grammatical writing styles do you firmly support?

A: To prove myself a serious writer I started to google “preposition” but I stopped myself, I guess I’d rather be seen as under educated than be a liar. When I was coming up several writers and a few reviewers asked me how I learned to break grammatical rules so cleanly. It made me embarrassed so I’d go flippant, “breaking grammatical rules is easier than breaking actual laws, no one ever did time for dangling a participle.” I don’t know what it means, but it sounds like I might. Truth is not knowing the rules, but having read a ton of good writing, I know what reads good, and what don’t. Notice I slipped into a rural tone, it disarms people when you sound folksy.

I have two rules, or more like guidelines. If it reads or feels clunky I fix it. And I listen to my editors. If they firmly believe a period would be better than a ellipsis, and I can’t see any harm, then I follow their advice. Making a piece better is way more important than me being right.  

Me and Pearce reading at Noir Bar Seattle

Several weeks a go we lost a giant in Pearce Hansen. I need to speak from the heart who he was to me. If you haven't read Street Raised, The Storm Giants, or Stagger Bay read them now. He wrote about pain and violence, fucking things up and trying to set them right. He wrote with brutal honesty. His words gutted me. His death has left a literary hole we will not fill. 

In an interview in Crime Fiction Lover Pearce was asked what drew him to write about gritty, gutter-level crime?

“I didn’t choose crime – crime chose me. I wound up pretty feral as a kid, and opted to associate with other feral people – this inevitably led to drugs, crime and violence, all within the milieu of East Bay and Oakland, which any Google search will show is one of the most dangerously crime-ridden urban metroplexes in the country.”

https://crimefictionlover.com/2012/02/interview-pearce-hansen/

When I was putting out the Moses trilogy I connected with Pearce via email. He was a kindred spirit. Our early years had left youthful damage we each could understand in the other. Besides a cult following Pearce never got the “big break out book” we were told we should be writing. He also never compromised his vision. When I was told I was a street writer (a writer who does not have a college degree) it hurt. Then I heard Pearce Hansen was identified that way too, and I became proud of the moniker. 

I hope Pearce finds peace in what ever comes next in this deal. If there’s an East Bay version of Valhalla where he can rip it up all day long and type about it all night? That seems like it’d be a good place for him.

While typing I’m listening to Jason Isbell’s Only Children these lines stabbed me in the heart.

Walking around at night 

Fighting my appetite 

Every kid in cut-offs could be you 

Remember when we used to meet 

At the bottom of Mobile Street? 

And do what the broken people do.

Broken people can spot each other across a crowded street. We write our truth, put it in a bottle, a book, or a song and toss it into the Russian River. And that my dear readers is why it is so damn important that we tell our truth. You never know who will discover your truth just when they need it.

******

What I’m reading now:  “The Ministry of Time” By Kaliane Bradley

The very pineapple of politeness, by Catriona

What’s your position on ending a sentence with a preposition, grammar others might be afraid of? What non-grammatical writing styles do you firmly support?

These people would never!
And so I don't when I write them

Picture the scene: an overtired child hears her mummy (US "mommy"  - this isn't a scene from a horror film) coming upstairs. The child is hoping Mummy has brought the storybook she wants and not that other one the child can't stand. (Granny has terrible taste in books.) Mummy comes into the bedroom. Disaster! It's the boring granny book - no monsters, no magic, no miracles - so the child whines the following, perfectly fine English sentence:

        Mummy, what did you bring that book I didn't want to be read to out of up for?

If the child had tried to ask the same brattish but otherwise reasonable question, while following the invented rules of old-timey, self-appointed prescriptive grammarians who knew nothing - nothing - about how language works, she'd have said:

        Mummy why did you bring up that book out of which I didn't want to be read a story?

And, clearly, this would then be a horror film, because that isn't a child; that's either a badly programmed robot or the restless spirit of Lindley Murray who has pulled on a kid suit.

Ah, Lindley Murray. That fragile, controlling, miserable, would-be boss-man who could have looked at the wild and joyous flowering of English and revelled in it, but who couldn't cope and tried, instead, to impose baseless rules and shut the fun down. (He wasn't the only one but he's the one whose name I can remember as I sit typing this in the car dealership, away from my reference books on the history of English.)

I think he's also responsible for the nonsense about splitting infinitives, isn't he? And the "argument" supporting both these rules is the same. 

He started with a bit of honest linguistic observation - noting that Latin infinitive verbs were single words (e.g. legere "to read") and Latin used noun endings to mark case (e.g. liber, libri, libro "the book, of the book, to the book"). Okay. 

He added a completely unrelated bit of honest linguistic observation - that English infinitves are made up to two words, the first of which is "to" and English can mark case with two words, the first of which is a preposition, like "of" and "to". (See above). Okay.

Then he turned over two pages at once and did a very strange thing - he proclaimed that English couldn't have its usual party with word order and twiddly bits if it meant splitting the two words of an infinitive or separating a preposition from its noun. Ummmmm.

And finally, he slid a springbok under a petrie dish and called it Wednesday. That is, he "explained" that English couldn't do it because Latin couldn't do it. I mean . . . Mandarin does it with tone, Lindley old chum. But that doesn't mean English doesn't mean anything if you whisper.

Now, just like the bagless vacuum cleaner (that puffs all the dust back out when you empty it) and the sofa-bed (torture as both a sofa and a bed) this daft idea took off like a rocket. Lindley's ravings became the rules of codified standard English, the shibboleths by means of which speakers and writers of English the world over could be sorted into educated elites and the likes of me.

For teachers, this is thorny. While the power - to grant a university place, to offer a job, to go for community service instead of jail time - resides with people who care about that stuff, it's a good idea to have the snottiest, prissiest English up your sleeve and know when to wheel it out.

For writers, it's much more straightforward and much much more fun. We can write characters who either have or haven't had these arbitrary rules drummed into them, who either care about them or don't. Most fun of all are characters who care and strive and fail. We view them, like Mrs Malaprop trying to say "pinnacle" (see blog title), in all their pride and vulnerability, and can either ache for them or cackle as the story requires.

It was probably Stephen King who said that formal standard English is a useful tool to have in the writer's toolbox, but it's only one of many. I'm glad I've got it, but I'm glad I'm the boss of it and it's not the boss of me.

Cx

SVO and Tinsel

 

SVO and Tinsel

What’s your position on ending a sentence with a preposition, grammar others might be afraid of? What non-grammatical writing styles do you firmly support?

We’re talking about one of the “Rules” today and, like Groucho Marx as Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff in Horse Feathers, ‘Whatever it is, I’m against it.’

 

In my mind, Rules imply obedience, and conformity, and ‘I’m against it.’

 

When I think of rules applied to language, I think of grammar. When I think of rules applied to storytelling, I think of other writers. I analyze the writers I admire for what they did, how they did it, and maybe why they got away with it.

 

The funny thing about RULES is they tell you what not to do. Nobody tells you How to do X, Y, or Z, which is why I think self-help books are a uniquely American phenomenon. We obey all kinds of rules, but forget why they exist. In a word, most people don’t know how to think. I daresay writers do, or they try. Hence, my use of a Yoda meme.

Writers can talk shop and can make the act of writing sound amazing, like Prospero conjuring a spell, or monotonous as hell. It is and it isn’t. Writing is fun. Language is meant to communicate. Look, you really only need a few hundred words in any language to find food, the bathroom, medical help, and other basic necessities. It’s a functional existence, and understanding grammar is as haphazard as a child’s grasp; it’s the life of an immigrant explorer. Nobody cares if you got IT right or not, if you get your point across. It’s a different matter if you’re the face that meets the customer. There is the other extreme, of knowing all the words, but not knowing when to use the right one, or how to string them together.

 

You may call that elusive magic Talent, but I call it decades of reading other writers, observing Life around you, plus your own quirky relationship with language. The latter is what readers and writers call Voice, and the academics call Style. Grammar is learned in the past; it’s in the rear-view mirror. All these Rules is like learning how to drive: think about it all at once, and you’d never move yourself out of P for Park, or Paralysis.

 

The fundamentals of the English sentence filter down to Subject-Verb-Object, around which the author can hang a lot of tinsel. Adjectives, clauses, etc. Then there is the music that the grammar rules forget. English prose has rhythms, but iambic pentameter is the most natural one to the ear. If you don’t know it, then use this quote from Pete Hamill: ‘Lyonnaise potatoes and some pork chops, Lyonnaise potatoes and some pork chops.’

 

We cite DO and DON’Ts when we talk about writing when we aren’t writing. Unless they’re egregious and defeat comprehension, we forget grammar because we read for Effect. Nobody is hung in effigy because they ended a sentence with a preposition. We discuss how a sentence made us feel, or how it acted or didn’t in service of the story. For example, the grammarian might fidget at the lack of commas and grammatically incorrect sentences within “Tiger Bites” from Lucia Berlin, but to insert all the proper punctuation might decimate her vivid portrait of El Paso, Texas.

 

The rules of grammar act as guideposts because, like life, what shouldn’t work, often does. Dickens and Faulkner were masters of run-on sentences. Compare most sentences from Henry James with Hemingway, and you see a profound difference in style. Where James was baroque, Hemingway was spare. Go and compare sentences from Breslin with Ellroy and you’ll see they both use a staccato style. It’s all SVO and tinsel. Style and themes are a matter of personal preference or aesthetics. How it was said might thrill you, or leave you dismayed, offended, but you admire the insult and the delivery. Writers who break the rules make our reading interesting.

 

About ending a sentence with a preposition…Conversation is almost never grammatically correct. There are Um, and Ah in daily speech. Filler words fill the void until the next neuron fires. People talk in fragments. A person at a party who never uses contractions is grammatically correct, but comes across as stiff and pretentious. Writers who write great dialog exhibit Flow. The reader’s eyes work down the page, never losing the thread of what is said or the subtext (not said), and who is speaking. Prepositions communicate relationships, location and time. In dialogue, there is context for prepositions. In the simplest terms, to drop a preposition sounds more natural to the ear.

 

‘Where are you going to?’ sounds weird compared to ‘Where are you going?’

 

It’s also matter of register. Storytelling is intimate, between a writer and a reader. Proper grammar is for formal communication. We can use ain’t in a story but not in an email to the boss. Follow all the rules, and your work is competent, serviceable, but it probably isn’t memorable.

 

Readers enjoy writers who communicate well. They remember writers who tell a universal story in a superlative way, think within the lines or devastate them with the unexpected. Readers remember writers who alter their emotional experiences of a story.