Category: rules

Okay, yes, I said I was only going to do this biweekly now but this is me posting for the third week in a row. I messed up my schedule/lost track of time because… look, life is a mess sometimes. And now I’m trying to play catch-up because some of these were planned to come out on certain days and I want to pretend this is still slightly relevant.

Point is, the ranty writing blog is still biweekly. Mostly. With only a few exceptions.

Anyway…

If you’ve been following along here for any amount of time, you know I’m a big believer in the rules of writing. Yes, there are rules. No, I don’t care what they said. There are rules and we have to learn them.

Now, granted, most of these rules are just in place to make sure we don’t end up in a metaphorical car crash before we’ve gotten any real experience. It’s like that driver ed instructor who screams at you to keep your hands at nine-and-three on the steering wheel. That’s a real thing. They’re not wrong to teach it and there’s reasons we need to learn it. But eventually we’re going to hit a point where we understand that a lot of the time we can relax a little bit while we’re driving. And that there are still absolutely times we want to keep two hands on the wheel.

One solid rule is spelling. Spelling’s important because that’s how we identify a word. If my readers can’t identify the word I’m using, they can’t understand what I’m trying to say. And if they can’t understand what I’m trying to say, well… It’s going to be tough to get them interested in what my characters are going through.

Of course, some folks will arrgue that spelling doesn’t really matter. I mean, really all those spellings were just made up anyway, right? Some random guy decided this was the right way to spell it and we all just went along with it. It’s not a rule. I don’t have to spell things that way. People wil figure out what I mean from context.

Maybe? Y’see, one of the other cool things spelling does is it lets us keep readign without any intruptions. Every time we notice a misspelled word, our brains sort of trip fir a moment. It might not completely knock us out of the story, but it breaks the flow a bit. And after the flow gets broken again and again… well, we’re not reading the stor yany more, we end up auditing it. Watching for the next typo to land

A solid follow up here is vocabulary in general. Sometimes I may know how to spell a ward, but I don’t actually know what it means. Other times I may know what it means, but I’m not entirely sure how to spell it… and maybe I’ve accidentally spilled something else instead.

You probably noticed both of these things in the past few paragraphs, didn’t you? Ha ha ha, he’s talking about spelling and he’s got typos. And that’s kind of my point. It knocked your brain out of reading mode. You were still working your way through the paragraphs, but it wasn’t a casual, gliding-along thing, was it? And that’s just here on a random blog post where I’m not really trying to draw you in. Imagine if you’d been trying to read a story?

Thank goodness for spellchecker, right?

Welllllllllll…

Here’s the problem. A spellchecker wouldn’t notice half the mistakes up above. I know, because I ran this post through mine. See, a spellchecker will notice a word that’s blatantly spelled wrong, but it won’t register a word that’s spelled correctly but being used wrong. For or fir? Ward or word? Spelling or spilling? A spellchecker doesn’t see a problem with any of these, so it doesn’t care which one I’m using.

But my reader? They’re going to notice. I mean, you noticed, right? Every one of those, ping, ping, ping

Well, that’s no problem, says random guy #23. I’ll just use one of those more advanced grammar programs, or maybe even an AI. They’ll understand the difference between a preposition and a noun. They’ll know the word I want.

Ha ha ha haa haaaaaa no they won’t. Sorry.

Kameron Hurley recently told a cute story on Bluesky about how she was looking through a blog about dentistry and the writer had capitalized the word tartar through several articles. When she asked why, the response was basically an internet shrug and “Grammarly told me to.” Because Grammarly can’t understand the difference between tartar (the build up on your teeth) and Tartar (an Asian ethnicity). This is a supposedly expert grammar program that doesn’t understand capitalization can drastically change the meaning of words. Which also should make you wonder about giving your Polish glassware a good polish, or that fine china you got in China.

Really, the more most of these assorted systems offer to do, the less they’re often capable of doing. I mean, heck, how many times have you gone looking for a specific book on Amazon and the algorithm instead recommends random Blu-rays? Or camping equipment? Or an anime t-shirt? None of these are bad things, but they’re definitely not what I asked the algorithm to find for me.

Again, spellcheck can’t solve all my spelling problems. A grammar program isn’t going to understand a lot of grammar situations. And this really shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. Human languages are complex, and English is one of the messiest, most confounding languages there is. Sometimes it’s hard for people to grasp subtext and nuance or even just basic meaning. So the idea that some guy threw together a machine that can understand all of that better than most people…?

Well, I mean, we’ve been talking about how they don’t. They just don’t. Sorry.

Let me be clear. I still use spellchecker all the time. But I’m not expecting it to do the work for me. It does help me catch the odd blatant misttake that crops us—and usually a lot faster than I could—but it also labels a lot of other things in my story as mistakes that aren’t. I still have to keep an eye on it and make sure it’s not screwing up. I don’t assume every correction or suggestion is right, and most of the time they aren’t.

Y’see, Timmy, too many folks get a result from a spellchecker or some half-baked LLM and they immediately accept it. It has to be right because… well, it’s a computer. It knows everything, right? That’s what decades of sci-fi has taught us. Computers are never wrong. Computers is geniuses.

This is why I need to know how to spell. I need to have a good vocabulary. Because ultimately, I’m the one who needs to be doing the writing if I want it to be my writing, saying what I want it to say.

As they said in the Princess Bride, anyone who says differently is spelling something.

Next time… well, crap, if I get back to biweekly posts, next time will be Halloween, so I guess we’ll talk about something scary. Or something we want to be scary, anyway.

Until then, go write.

Old person pop culture reference.

If you’ve been following along the ranty blog these past few months, or maybe subscribed to the newsletter, you may have picked up on a few subtle hints that the past four or five months have… not been great here. Sickness. Sleepless nights. Anxiety. Lots of stress.

Lots of stress.

One thing that’s helped me get through it is stories. This might not exactly be a surprise, but I love a good story. Reading them. Listening to them. Watching them.

But let’s face it, that should sort of be a default for us, yes? We take in material to produce material. Input—output. If I want to build muscle, I need to eat a lot of protein. If I want to grow nutritious food, I need soil with lots of nutrition in it.

And if I want to write… look, it only makes sense that I have to read, yes? Again, input, output. No input, no output. We have to feed the machine.

That’s why, even with all the crap that’s been going on in my life, I’ve still read twenty books in the past nine months. Plus a bunch of comics and short stories. And I was glad to do it. Hell, I definitely wouldn’t’ve been able to write half of what I did this year without these pauses to rest and recharge with some good stories.

Now, the reason I bring this up every now and then is… well, every couple of years I tend to see some”pro” or “coach” insist that “real writers don’t have time to read.” Time reading is time you should be writing, they’ll say. And the folks saying this sort of thing, politely, tend to be the people who like to talk very loud and very confidently.

Despite being, y’know, 100% wrong.

I mean, this is kind of like saying real drivers don’t have time to stop for gas. I’ve met lots of professional writers, interviewed a bunch of them, and read about even more. And the one thing they pretty much all have in common is… they love stories. They love input. Seriously, check out some of your favorite writers and see how often they’re talking about other books, shows. movies. They all love stories.

Also, quick pause here. I’m going to talk about “reading” a lot in the next dozen or so paragraphs, but I don’t want you to think this is some screed about “only the printed word counts” or anything like that. Audiobooks count as reading. And ebooks. You don’t like ‘em, fine, that’s you. But they count as reading.

I’m a big believer that a writer should have a regular diet of works in their chosen field. I think it lets me keep up on what’s currently out there and what’s been done before. Plus it also… well…

Look, I think a lot of the folks who push this view are coming from a place of “I took classes. I‘ve read textbooks about this. I know how to write!” And that’s great. I’m all for educating yourself and learning the rules. For the most part.

But as I’ve mentioned here before, writing isn’t really something you can teach. Never has been. Because all of us are going to be telling our own stories in our own ways, and my process isn’t your process and it’s definitely not his process. All these classes teach us is the baseline rules. They’re showing us how to avoid the easy, common mistakes.

It’s not until I start reading and exposing myself to lots of other work that I really start learning how to break those rules. That’s when I begin to see how what would be a mistake there is brilliant here (and vice versa). How great writers sometimes use the fact that you, the reader, also have a grasp of the rules to guide you through their story in mischievous ways.

But again, I have to read. To expose myself to that beyond-the-basic material. It’s a knowledge vs experience kind of thing.

Having said that, let me give you a few little provisos experience has taught me.

I know some folks try not to read similar things while they’re working on a project because they don’t want to be influenced. I think it’s fair to be a little concerned about that. But I also think this just serves as another bit of learning for us. Figuring out if we’re doing our thing or just copying someone else’s. Most of us learn by copying to some extent or another, but I think we’re also very aware of it and notice it happening pretty quick.

(I was going to tell you a whole story about how I inadvertently turned my weird western into an episode of Old Gods of Appalachia, but it’s just a little too long. Trust me, funny, relevant, very educational and relatable)

I also think sometimes this idea, trying to avoid influence, gets taken to an extreme and that’s where some of the “don’t read” mentality comes from. Don’t read. Don’t listen. Don’t watch. Definitely don’t talk to other writers!

Again, just my opinion, but I think this kind of advice ends up as more of a punishment. You’re a writer—don’t enjoy the written word! Don’t watch shows or movies with your friends! And while I know there’s some folks who believe being a writer is all about suffering, I’m a big believer that if my personal process makes me dislike writing, or openly hate it… maybe I’ve got a sucky process.

Read. Read everything you can. Read in the genre you want to write in. Read related genres. Read that genre you have zero interest in and see what the writers are doing there. Read that bestseller you can’t stand and try to figure out why it sold almost a million copies.

And as a bonus–you’re supporting other writers. And your local bookstore. Or maybe your local library. It’s all a win.

Next time, I want to talk about spelling. Yes, again. It’s been a while.

Until then, go write.

Wanted to try out a sort-of new analogy. Congratulations! You’re all my test subjects.

I’m going to make a bit of a leap here and assume most of you reading this know how to drive. Just, y’know, basic driving. A car. A pick-up. Maybe some of you even know how to drive a motorcycle.

I’m also going to assume most of you have a degree of experience at driving. You’ve been doing it for a while. Yeah, there’s a chance one or two of you are still in high school and only just got a learner’s permit, but the general vibe I get here in the comments—and from my readers in general—is most of you are solidly in the “adult” demographic, which means I can say you’ve probably been driving for at least a decade. You’ve got a license and got a solid feel for it. We can put you behind the wheel of a car and you can follow the rules of the road.

Of course… well, let’s have a little moment of honesty here. We’re all friends, right? We trust each other to a certain degree? And we can all admit that maaaaaaaybe we don’t always follow the rules of the road.

No. No we don’t. Come on, we said we were going to be honest. Okay, look. Quick show of hands. Just put your hand up, nobody else can see it. Well, I mean, all those people there at work, but they don’t know why you’re doing it. If they ask, tell them you’re stretching.

How many of us have broken the speed limit in the past week?

Don’t nitpick. It doesn’t matter if you were only going five miles over or that there wasn’t anyone else on the road at the time. Going over the limit means you broke the speed limit. So put your hand up if you’ve done it in the past week.

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Oh, of course I’ve done it too. I’m not lording it over anyone.

I’m sure more than a few of us have also failed to come to a complete stop at a stop sign. Made a U-turn we weren’t supposed to. Let’s not even getting into signaling for turns or lane changes.

Now here’s the thing. We all know this is wrong. We know we’re breaking the rules. But we keep doing it. And a lot of the time, we get away with it.

Why?

Well, a lot of it ties back to the experience thing I mentioned up above. Yeah, we were all taught the rules by a relative, in a drivers’ ed class, or maybe from a friend. We had to demonstrate we knew the rules to get our license.

And most of the time we need to follow the rules. I can’t just decide red lights and stop signs don’t apply to me anymore and plow through ‘em all at full speed. Eventually that’s going to catch up with me. So to speak.

But the thing is, once we’d been out on the road for a while, we started to see there’s still a degree of flexibility. Like driving on the freeway. Ten, fifteen miles an hour over? It’s breaking the rules but it’s also… just kind of accepted. We all do it.

Because we’ve all learned when and where it’s acceptable to break the rules of the road. When it’s going to make my driving experience a little faster or easier without hurting anyone. We know we can be a little excessive on the freeway, but we should probably rein it in a bit in school zones and parking lots. Making that u-turn on an empty road in the middle of the night isn’t the same as making it at lunchtime in heavy traffic. We understand why why it’s okay to do it here, but not here.

Let’s have one more moment of horribly honesty. Some folks get caught speeding and get a slap on the wrist. Other people get large tickets. Or worse. The ugly truth is, some people can get away with breaking the rules just because of who they are. Doesn’t mean the rest of us get to break them in the same way. Sucks, but that’s the way life goes sometimes.

And yes… there’s definitely someone out there who taught themselves how to drive and didn’t bother getting a license and drives 83 miles per hour past the school and the police station every day and they’ve never gotten a single ticket. Hopefully it’s clear this person is a rare exception, not a role model. Please don’t follow their example.

Now, hopefully you see where I’m going with this.

Y’see, Timmy, there are rules to writing. Absolutely, no questions, no arguments. There are rules, we need to know them, we should be able to pass a basic test on them. And a lot of the time we’re going to have to follow these rules to some extent or another.

But…

Once I’ve done this for a bit, I’ll get a sense of when and where I can bend those rules. Or break them. Or flat out shatter them. And I’ll know I’m totally, 100% justified in doing it. I’ll be able to tell you exactly why it’s okay. Yeah, the rule says do this, but I’m doing this because it’s better for the dialogue, the flow, the suspense, or what have you.

I definitely don’t want to break a rule and then just say “ehhhh, I don’t know why. I just felt like breaking it. Shake things up a bit, y’know? I’m disrupting storytelling.”

That’s not going to go over well.

Next time…

Well, there’s a whole aspect to this rules thing I just barely touched on, so next time I think I’m going to talk about why Doctor Watson told all those stories about his old roommate.

Until then, go write.

And what is this, you ask?

In the past, the majority of the posts were writing advice. Not publishing, but writing as the art of stringing words together into a narrative that will connect with an audience. That was the original point of this, to make up for the lack of basic writing advice out there. But over the past two years, with everything going on, people have asked questions about the business side of things and the greater writing meta-verse, so to speak, and I’ve been trying to help out by answering those.

The ranty blog’s also about a little bit about motivation. Helping you to sit down and get those words out. Maybe suggesting some easier ways to do something. Maybe giving you a little challenge or a tip or a trick to play with when your brain’s stuck on whatever. I’ve tried to do this a few times and a few different ways. For a lot of folks, the biggest, toughest part of writing is actually sitting down and writing, so I’m here to give you the occasional firm kick in the butt. Or a gentle one. Whatever works best for you.

Finally, if I’m doing this right, I’m giving you a little reassurance. There’s so much information flying around out there. We can go looking for it or just get smacked in the face with it on social media. How fast and productive this person is. What a great deal they got. How easy this was for them. It’s easy to see something like this and feel like I must be doing something wrong. I mean, if I’m not writing 3000 words a day and I struggle with dialogue and I don’t understand structure at all… maybe this just isn’t for me? Hell, I only wrote 15,000 words for NaNoWriMo last year, so I must be screwing this up somehow…

If any of this sounds familiar… don’t worry about it. Seriously. Hopefully I can convince you you’re not wrong, you haven’t screwed up, and you should definitely keep at this. Again, everybody approaches this a little differently, and just because somebody’s faster or finds this part easier or accomplished that quicker doesn’t necessarily mean we need to change how we’re doing things.

I suppose at this point it’s also fair to say I use this space for self promotion. Not a lot–I don’t want to be that guy shoving a book in your face every five minutes–but when the time comes, we do what we need to do. And, y’know, I do have a new book coming out in a few weeks so…. be prepared for that.

(The Broken Room, available this spring at your favorite local bookstore, chain bookstore, or monolithic online retailer)

And if you’ve made it this far, a couple changes in the weeks ahead. I’m probably going to be posting a bit more… well, erratically. Still at least once a week, but it won’t always be on Thursday. That was just kind of an arbitrary day and more than a few times I’ve felt kind of stuck and that a few things stumbled because of it. So watch for posts, y’know, whenever. Still probably a lot on Thursday, but other days, too.

Also… I may finally be migrating the ranty blog over to my own webpage– PeterClines.Com . It’s just kind of been sitting there for years and I want to get better about keeping it updated and making it somewhere for people to actually visit, y’know. Plus, that way the ranty blog’s a little more under my own control and not subject to the whim of some corporation. I’ll make sure you all know if it happens.

And I think that’s everything. Any questions? Comments? Requests?

Next time I’m probably going to talk about the people driving this thing.

Until then… go write.