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I love commas. Between them and the semicolon, my writing is populated (some say overpopulated) with pauses, breaks, and spaces to breathe, sharing with the reader the pace and clarity I hope for. Commas have more jobs than any other punctuation mark, which is why so many writers treat them like seasoning and sprinkle them wherever a sentence feels bland. In The Language of Fiction, Brian Shawver argues that real rules lie beneath it all. He focuses on four that give fiction writers the most trouble, plus a few common mistakes. 1. Two complete thoughts get a comma before the "and." "I went to the game, and I bought a hot dog" has two independent clauses, so the comma goes in. "I went to the game and bought a hot dog" has one subject doing two things, so it doesn't. Shawver almost lost a teaching job over this one. Writers bend it all the time, though. Drop the commas from a chain of clauses and the prose rushes forward, which is useful in a chase or a panic. Just watch for misreads. In "Jerry whacked the baseball and his father grinned," readers spend a half-second picturing Jerry hitting his dad. 2. Commas separate items in a list. That part is simple. The Oxford comma before the final "and" has no settled standard, so pick a side and stay consistent. The craft is in the variations. Leave out the final "and," and the list ends abruptly, with the last item landing hard. Swap every comma for "and," as in "lions and tigers and bears," and the list feels crowded and overflowing. Tim O'Brien uses both in "The Things They Carried" so his many lists never fall into the same rhythm. 3. Equal adjectives get commas. Stacked ones don't. "The spastic, gray poodle" needs a comma because both words describe the poodle equally. "The fat German shepherd" doesn't need a comma because "fat" describes the whole phrase "German shepherd." To test it, put "and" between the adjectives or reverse their order. If it still sounds right, use the comma. This rule also gets broken on purpose. Hemingway's "plump brown legs" skips the comma because the words are short and quick. George Saunders writes "fat little unemployed guy" without commas because the line is meant to come out in one breath.

Add this to the list of things I wish I had known before I started writing my first novel. “Narrative distance” sounds like one idea, but writers use the term in two ways. Sorting them out will save you some confusion. Distance as closeness to the character- In the most common usage, narrative distance (often called psychic distance) describes how far the reader feels from the narrator and the character. At the close end, the reader sits inside the character’s experience and sees events through their eyes. At the far end, the reader watches from outside, as if observing a scene on a stage. Your point of view largely sets the range- - First person and third person limited are deep and intimate, so they call for close distance. - Third person objective stays out of every character’s head and shows only action and dialogue, so distance is naturally far. - Omniscient allows far distance and gives the narrator more room to tell rather than show. A quick tell for where you are on the spectrum: distancing words like “she thought,” “he knew,” “I wished,” and “she felt.” They put a small pane of glass between reader and character. In deep POV, cut these filter words, along with excess adverbs and pronouns, and let the experience land directly. Also resist blunt explanations of what a scene means. Trust clear details and a few breadcrumbs to let readers draw their own conclusions. Distance as one of four- A second view treats narrative distance as only one of four “cardinal distances” you balance in a story: 1. Psychic distance: how intimate the narrative voice is with the character. 2. Temporal distance: when the story is being told from. A narrator looking back from the future has hindsight, so use reflective passages sparingly, or they pull readers out of the moment. 3. Physical distance: what a character can actually see, hear, and know from where they stand. A woman walking under storm clouds can’t see the light on top of them. 4. Narrative distance: how much the story itself knows about its own theme, even when the characters don’t. Fairy tales state their morals openly. Literary fiction tends to hold back and let readers find the theme in the subtext.