grammatically incorrect
Any day now I'm going to get an email from my editor saying the copyedit of my novel is ready for my review, and I have to admit, I'm nervous. Not because i don't know my commas from my semicolons or my restrictive from my nonrestrictive clauses - I've worked as a copyeditor myself, after all. No, my anxiety stems from the fact that much of the grammar in my novel is intentionally incorrect, and I'm afraid my copyeditor might go crazy with her red pen.
Several of the major characters in my novel are from a low economic class, and their language reflects that. They don't always speak in complete sentences, and their grammar would make a high school English teacher throw up her hands in despair. To make matters worse, since the novel is narrated in first person, incorrect grammar permeates the entire text, not just the dialogue.
And I want it that way. I'm as passionate as anyone about the use of proper grammar and punctuation, and it pains me at times to see how ignorant of proper English our society as a whole has become. (For some cringe-inducing - and very funny - examples of this go to Martha Brockenbrough's hilarious blog.) But when I put on my fiction-writing hat, my priorities change. As a novelist, I want my dialogue and my characters' voices to feel as real to the reader as possible - and if this requires sentence fragments, noun/verb disagreements or other English-teachers' nightmares, so be it. I just hope my publisher's copyeditor is on the same page.
I'll leave you with this fun-to-watch commentary by Stephen Fry. Do you agree with him? For that matter, do you agree with me?
Several of the major characters in my novel are from a low economic class, and their language reflects that. They don't always speak in complete sentences, and their grammar would make a high school English teacher throw up her hands in despair. To make matters worse, since the novel is narrated in first person, incorrect grammar permeates the entire text, not just the dialogue.
And I want it that way. I'm as passionate as anyone about the use of proper grammar and punctuation, and it pains me at times to see how ignorant of proper English our society as a whole has become. (For some cringe-inducing - and very funny - examples of this go to Martha Brockenbrough's hilarious blog.) But when I put on my fiction-writing hat, my priorities change. As a novelist, I want my dialogue and my characters' voices to feel as real to the reader as possible - and if this requires sentence fragments, noun/verb disagreements or other English-teachers' nightmares, so be it. I just hope my publisher's copyeditor is on the same page.
I'll leave you with this fun-to-watch commentary by Stephen Fry. Do you agree with him? For that matter, do you agree with me?
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