Good story or good grammar?
Recently I put a sample of my work up to be critiqued on a writer’s circle. This particular site allows a period when the articles and the critiques can be anonymous. There is a warning that to use this, the writer must have a thick skin.
They were not wrong. The piece attracted far more critiques than when placed on the site in the normal queue. Nothing wrong with that you might think, and ordinarily I would agree. It was no surprise therefore, that the promise of anonymity brought out new breeds of critique writer.
Social media is not the only place for trolls. They live under every story arc and bridge in the fiction world too. Grammar gurus and punctuation police emerge from the dark to pounce on every misplaced colon and needless passive construction, with the obvious zeal and excitement of one who has just discovered the lost city of Atlantis. Apparently I had several spelling errors in the first paragraph. Had they bothered to check they would have discovered these 'errors' were differences between the Queen's English, and the version spoken across the Atlantic.
Now please forgive me if I am wrong, but I always understood the task of a fiction writer was to tell a story; to take the reader on a journey of discovery and escape from the realities of this world. To the trolls the story is completely irrelevant when a misplaced semi-colon comes to the fore.
I ask you this, can you remember the last time you gave up on a book having discovered the writer had not digested a copy of the Oxford Book of English Grammar? I am not saying that as writers we should ignore the rules, but I do believe having a good story and delivery far outweighs perfect grammar and punctuation.
Would I go through this process again? Yes of course I would. The feedback that I did receive about the plot, the characters and 'voice' was invaluable.
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