The Word

First there was the letter, a single letter, and it was good.  Then the writer made a word and it was better.  The word begat another, and another, until a sentence was made and it had a form.

Yes, I realize some people may consider the above borderline blasphemous, but it gets my point across, I think.

No matter what we write, it has a form.  We might not know what to call it.  We might think it is something we have developed ourselves.  Writing without form makes little sense.

The forms divide themselves into three major categories:

• Fiction
• Nonfiction
• Poetry

The forms are further broken down into genres and subforms.  Each has its own rules that we either follow or break, depending on how well we can work within them and if we know how to determine when they can be broken.

There are some who will say rules can never be broken.  There are others who will argue they can and indeed must be in order for the forms to evolve.

Personally, I agree with the latter, though sometimes I think things can be taken too far. Rules can be broken to the point where the form makes no sense. I have read arguments that say it makes sense to the writer and interpretation is open to everyone else, which makes it valid. The only time I agree with this is in the case of poems.

During a workshop at a conference, poet Harvey Stanbrough said if a poet writes one poem and a hundred people read it, they have actually written 101 poems. He illustrates this with an example. At a reading he gave, a member of the audience came up to him afterward and said they loved a particular poem he had read and asked the meaning. Harvey asked him, “What do you think it means?” to which the person gave their interpretation. Harvey told them they were absolutely right and asked, “Who am I to tell him his interpretation was wrong?”

Follow the rules, know when to break them, and do it effectively.