Andrew Chapman / Author and Screenwriter

I don’t know what the key to this whole writing thing is. I’ve spent the last fifteen years trying to find out. I must have read fifty books on the subject. I think maybe its clarity. So much writing is just filler, or confusing sentence structures.

It becomes a kind of music. I know I break some grammatical standards but hopefully not in a way that jars. There is no sensible reason for a sentence to not start with and. Or begin with or. Here is some dialogue between two students whispering to each other in an English lesson –

“Why can’t a sentence start with and?”

“Because she said so. And maybe she’s right. Fuck it. I don’t know. And anyway, that’s not how we speak so why write like that?”

“But what if we lose marks by writing realistically.”

“You shouldn’t start a sentence with but,” says the Teacher, overhearing the conversation.

“Why?” says the boy.

“Because that is the rule.”

“You shouldn’t start a sentence with because,” says the boy, “It’s a subordinate conjunction that requires more than one clause.”

“I’m glad you’ve been paying attention,” says the teacher, “but my first clause was in the sentence you interrupted when I said; ‘You shouldn’t start a sentence with but’.”

“This is all very confusing,” says a drunk man stumbling into the classroom by accident.

“Can I help you sir?” says the teacher.

“None of this is real,” says the drunk.

Why did I write that in the present tense? The second most difficult tense for a reader after the second tense. I’ve never written in the second tense before. I think I’ll give it a go;

               You walk into the gents at the pub. A man by the urinal is touching   himself inappropriately. You enter the cubical with the broken lock. You drunkenly undo your trousers and let them fall to the ground. You sit down and pee. You would have pissed at the urinal if it wasn’t for that masturbating man. Why did you sit down anyway? Too drunk to stand. You focus on a round convex lens on the back of the cubical door and think to yourself, why is there a camera in here? And decide it’s time to stop drinking in this particular watering hole.

Good. That was fun. You know, as these blog posts get further down the page the empty beer can count on my desk gets greater. It’s no wonder I lose focus.