Good Grammar or Perfect Grammar?



 




I'm of that school of thought that says that your book must have good spelling/grammar. But how good it should be is another ball game of its own. Personally, I believe that, in fiction writing, grammar should be as good as it needs to be, but not any more than that. 
I've read some books that have overly good grammar and it's a perfect example of 'too much of everything is bad'. Reading such books is exhausting and almost irritating, especially if you're reading them with the intention of enjoying a nice story. Everything is oh-so-clean and perfect like a hospital floor. And things are further made worse by the author throwing in big words that will surely never be found in small dictionaries. You could spend so many minutes on one line, going over it and trying hard to understand it because the grammar is strange and unusual albeit very correct. If you manage to cross that hurdle, there'll also be the hurdle of checking out Latin-like 15-letter words in your 10-pound dictionary. The whole story feels like a non-fiction book! Hey author, you're not writing for a professor, you know. Even professors would sometimes want to relax and enjoy a good story in everyday English. The objective of writing a fiction story is usually to educate, inform and entertain the reader while making him/her feel relaxed, and God knows no one can be relaxed when reading something they can't connect with. Perfect grammar pushes the reader away, telling him/her 'you're not in my league!' 

In summary, good grammar to me is grammar that can be understood by all; grammar that doesn't kill the flow of the story for the reader; grammar that doesn't need you to read a book with a dictionary beside you or with Google on the ready. Good grammar is common grammar, everybody's grammar.

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