Comments on: 10 Writing Rules You Can’t Break…And How to Break Them

By: ray

ray — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 17:23:41 +0000

Re 1. Discuss means talk about

By: Carly

Carly — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:35:01 +0000

Number 6 really strikes a chord with me: I HATE it when the article doesn’t deliver. OR it does, but it is such a loose connection that they really shouldn’t have even bothered …

By: berruf

berruf — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 15:58:30 +0000

A blog is your personal space, so you should feel free to take all risks. But yes, you don’t want to aleniate readers. But it’s great to break the mould once in a while.

By: DiedofEnnui

DiedofEnnui — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 00:16:45 +0000

I don’t want to be *that* person, but I can’t help it…I think you mean we should feel free to “flout” the rules, not “flaunt” them.

I like your attitude. And one of my pet peeves is blanket injunctions against the passive voice – especially from people who don’t know what it is! I had a boss who used to just cross out any form of the verb “to be.”

By: kevin

kevin — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 02:19:43 +0000

Well, I have sold seven screenplays, thirteen plays and have worked on numerous TV shows and rounf tables. No one, and I mean NO one has told me I had too many ly words. In fact, I have several, major, Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning firnds who have called this complete nonsense. Worry about story and character. I mean, this rule seems sad and useless.

By: e.lee

e.lee — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 20:02:16 +0000

once you know all the rules inside out, they’re yours to break/bend/discard as how you see fit.

By: Peta-de-Aztlan

Peta-de-Aztlan — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 04:07:09 +0000

Good advice. We should strive to write well in a clear simple way, yet not be afraid to lose various tools in our tool kits.

By: Rules To Break (sometimes) « Audacious Ink

Rules To Break (sometimes) « Audacious Ink — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:38:20 +0000

[...] 11, 2010 · Leave a Comment Here’s a story worth sharing from Write to Done: “10 Writing Rules You Can’t Break and How to Break Them,” a guest post by Eric Cummings. My favorite, “Write Exciting Titles, But Don’t Write [...]

By: Eric C

Eric C — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:39:40 +0000

@ J – I love the analogy. Yeah, what Thelonious Monk does is completly fdifferent than what a three year old does.

@ Barb – rules are made to be broken. Expect common grammatical rules to go away as lang. evolves.

@ Anne – I’ll admit, I was ignorant of grammar. but since I’ve started taking wirting seriously, I study grammar and read books on it.

By: Anne R. Allen

Anne R. Allen — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:29:30 +0000

Great post. Important stuff here. Everybody who’s in a critique group should read it–especially what you say about the passive voice. People so often confuse the progressive tense “I was running into a wall,” with the passive voice “The wall was being run into by me.”

I’m amazed how many writers know nothing of grammar. As you say, you have to know the rules before you can break them. Picasso could paint the human body perfectly before he learned to abstract the image.