Bungee jumping, sky diving, secret mission, Indy 500: how do these events compare to art of fiction writing? Each one brings to its ‘doer’ an element of anticipation, exhilaration, unfamiliarity, and adventure. A pure adrenaline rush. And as a writer of fiction, this is plateau you want your reader to experience.

Straying from anticipated ending to a twist makes for good reading, pleasing editor, and upping your chance of getting accepted. But be wary. Your twist should conform along lines of story you have crafted thus far. Not an easy task to accomplish, but plausible.

For example: fifteen-year-old John stole answers to his exam from his teacher’s desk. Throughout storyline, John has been portrayed as a ‘bully’ but every so often writer has offered either flashbacks or little inconspicuous hints into John’s childhood. The reader assumes that John will either get away with it, or get caught and suspended. The author has gripped reader into continuing book to see where this will end up. Here comes twist.

Because of these rare flashback insights, we’ve seen another side to John, although subtle, it’s still there. So when John ends up placing answers back with no one being wiser, reader is stunned, surprised, but content with this twist ending because it has been subliminally build into plot.

If writer’s portrayal of John had been exclusively ‘bullish’, mean-spirited, unfriendly throughout then reader’s reaction would have been stunned, surprised and obviously, left cheated with an ending that holds no basis with rest of storyline.

Don't they drive you nuts?

You can visit all rules of style you want, and you can read all books and articles you want. You'll still be confused. You'll see inconsistency. You'll see experts who don't agree with each other. And, you'll pull out your hair. Unless you're me, since my hair's falling out all by itself. I think it'd do that even if I weren't an editor hunting down errant commas.

Well, folks, here are some rules. A bare minimum. Internalize these and ignore everybody else.

(1) Never put a comma between a subject and a verb. It's always wrong. The dog, barked. What is that? Idiocy. Read it aloud, and pause at comma. Don't you feel stupid?

(2) If you want to separate a clause, put a comma on both sides of it. Otherwise, no commas at all. "The dog, who held a bone in his mouth, ran to porch." See how there's a comma on both sides? That's because you could skip that whole clause entirely and it'd still be a complete sentence. "The dog ran to porch."

If I delete first comma, I have to delete second one. You decide which looks best, two commas or none. But, one comma doesn't work. Try deleting either one and reading result aloud, remembering to pause at comma. It's a wreck, isn't it? You don't talk like that, so don't write like that.

(3) "He saw cat, cat was on couch." This is not a good sentence. It's two sentences. The one before comma has subject/verb/object, and so does one after comma.

Run-ons like that can emphasize run-on nature of a character's words or thoughts, but use device sparingly. It's okay to break a rule, as long as you know what it is and why you're breaking it.

But in example above, it'd be best to make them two sentences. If you find you just can't do it, consider a semicolon. Don't believe anyone who says semicolons aren't allowed in fiction. I wouldn't use one in sample sentence, but I've used them in other sentences I've written. Sparingly.