The Craft Of Storytelling

This forum and topic seems strange to me in that I never expected people to be concerned about sentence structure and quotes in spanking stories. I guess I don't worry about those things if the story is readable. I look for the content of the story and it's arousal factor. If a story is interesting and I get aroused when I read it, I don't really care if the sentence is in the proper format or not. I've stopped writing stories because I just can't grasp the required structure this forum demands. I still enjoy this forum as a reader and I comment on the stories I enjoy reading and I don't make negative comments on stories that I don't like. I will never understand why some people will put proper sentence structure, grammar and quotes as more important than a stories content.

I try for good grammar (at least outside of dialogue) but I settle for readability.

One of the things library does that I strongly agree with is to use white space. That extra space between paragraph makes them so much more readable.

Goodgulf

I'm lucky in one respect, that though English is a 2nd language to me ( I'm a Geordie ) I write out a story, or at least part of a story, in what I think is good grammar.
Then I email it to Lori, and it, as if by magic, edits itself and becomes English.

The two are inseparable. A story's content is conveyed through its sentences and its sentences are shaped by punctuation. The only reason we understand these strings of words is because of agreed upon rules of grammar. Punctuation implies meaning. Separating a pair of ideas with a period separates those ideas, but conjoining them with a semicolon makes certain they're seen as being together. Setting off an idea with parenthesis deemphasizes it while doing so with dashes emphasizes it. They are our roadsigns and without them, a reader can easily become lost.

In a message board post, a casual correspondence, a few typos are understandable. In an attempt to tell a story, in a case where an author is trying to convey a specific meaning, the rules of grammar are important and rife with meaning.

-LK

Well put, LK. While I pay little attention to the grammar and punctuation in what others write, I try and be as precise as I can when I am writing myself. Every time I boot up a work in progress I reread it, always editing it somewhere, be it a misspelled word or too many commas (a bad habit of mine). After all, I'll never win a Pulitzer if, after all my work, the thoughts and ideas I put onto paper don't make any sense when I'm done.

I agree LK. If you are a writer who knows nothing about sentence structure or grammar you are like an artist that is unable to draw. Your ideas may be brilliant but you lack the skills to express yourself. Where would Shakespeare be if he knew nothing about the grammar of language? I think it is good that people here are interested in grammar as well as spanking! I am learning still. Never can get my their's right. Or is it there?

'This forum' as you put it doesn't actually 'demand' anything, we simply take a pride in what we're doing and we wouldn't be much of a 'library' site if we ignored the basic principles of the English language. Speaking personally, I simply wouldn't bother reading anything that totally ignored basic grammar and punctuation, including the omission of quotation marks for speech such that you had to read everything twice in order to determine when one character's dialogue had finished and another's started.

Sorry Blimp! English teacher can't resist!
Their = belonging to them (possessive adjective like my, your, his, her, our), hence also 'it's theirs' (like 'mine')
There = 1. opposite of here 2. indefinable, as in There is, there were, there would be...
and then of course there's 'they're' ...

Firstly we should distinguish between punctuation and grammar. Punctuation is a late development which does ease reading but is arbitrary (set off nonrestrictive relative clauses with commas but not restrictive ones, place punctuation within quotation marks not out side them, capitalize proper nouns - English or all nouns - German) and is in no way necessary for understanding. All of Old English literature exists quite happily with no punctuation.

Grammar, on the other hand, is the structure of the language and speaking language X, much less writing it is impossible without it. But an explicit knowledge of grammar is usually superfluous, German children (and adults) have no problem using dative forms although they may be at a loss when called upon to define the dative.

Superimposed on the grammar of a language may be a set of prescriptive rules of social rather than linguistic value - don't use multiple negation, do not split infinitives, do not end a clause with a preposition. These contribute nothing to intelligibility, does anybody actually believe that a speaker who says "I know nothing about it" has expressed the sentiment that s/he knows something about it? Following these prescriptive rules may help somebody pass an English course, be published in an edited journal, or simply feel superior to others, but doing so does not increase clarity of writing.

corncrake
I wonder if biscuit dunking is a British thing?