The problem with American fiction is definitely not that there's too much innovation and experimentation

Not sure why I chose this; a shark just seemed appropriate

Saw a post on Tumblr the other day which expressed a pretty common sentiment, which is that writers should grasp the fundamentals of story, plot, sentences, etc--you know, the basics--before they try to do anything fancy. The idea is that you need to know the rules before you can break them. And…