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A guy in my writing group showed me his draft and it had zero commas, and it weirdly worked
I joined a local writing group at the library on 5th street about 3 weeks ago and this guy named Ray passed around his first draft. It was a 900 word story with almost no commas and tons of short punchy sentences, and I gotta say it read faster than anything else on the table that night. I went back through my own draft later and cut about half my commas and it felt way less stiff. Ray said he does it on purpose in early drafts so he doesnt fuss over grammar and just gets the story out. Has anyone else messed with punctuation rules like that, or does it just look like a mistake to you?
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pat_hall878d ago
Wait, he showed up to a writing group with a draft that had almost no commas at all? That is wild to me. I get what he's saying about not fussing over grammar and just getting the words down, but handing that to other writers takes some guts. Half the people in my old group would have red inked the whole page before he finished reading it out loud. Cutting half your commas later makes sense though, since a lot of them are just clutter you toss in out of habit. I might actually try that on my next rough draft just to see if it loosens things up.
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