‘lol’ :p.

I am going to disagree with the folk above about the commas. The sentence is not a comma splice, it is a list(another acceptable usage for multiple commas).

The second para does need some work but I will leave it with you to decide how. You should do something to link the images of “…their blind lives” and John’s coming home though.

I actually meant to put the comma there as well as the ‘and’. I had already posted twice in a row when I noticed my error, and thought I had best shut up!

So, Daniel, yes, that is what I meant!

It depends on your generation. Me, I like it, because it’s consistent and symmetrical. And besides, I was taught to put it in. Old habits die hard. (Though I did manage to train myself to stop putting two spaces after a period.)

Later, the fashion changed and everyone was told to leave the comma out unless necessary for clarity. Then it came back into style and out yet again…which may be where it currently stands. I’m not sure.

I say, bah humbug and a plague on both houses…and I always put that comma in.

‘Everywhere he went, men threw down their swords, mages cast away their staves, and dragons knelt in awe.’

Help, please.

…replace the last comma-splice with an ‘and’.

Everywhere he went, men threw down their swords, mages cast away their staves, dragons knelt in awe.

Just a preference but I think it adds to the rhythm of the sentence to replace the commas splice with an ‘and’.

Everywhere he went, men threw down their swords, mages cast away their staves and dragons knelt in awe.

Everywhere this man went, men threw down their swords, mages threw down their staves, dragons knelt in awe.

Yes, those are technically comma splices, but the sentence flows more smoothly with them. Using semi-colons there would give it a more staccato feel,IMO.

(I would, however, do some other editing in that sentence; I think using “threw down” in the first two instances but not in the third sounds a little odd. Then there’s “man” and “men,” which are close enough together that they set up an almost-echo.)

Everywhere he went, men threw down their swords, mages cast away their staves, dragons knelt in awe.

While not technically grammatically correct, some poetic license is allowed in prose. Once you know the rules of grammar, it’s ok to break them, if and when you know exactly what you are doing and why.

Yes, Nicole L, but you want to pick and choose where you break the rules. If you’re not careful, you have every other sentence with grammar problems and people (i.e. editors) simply think that you don’t know the proper grammar and dump the story. Just a warning to go along with her advice.