Category: tips

Sorry there was no post last week. Wednesday-Thursday turned into this blur of flight cancellations, rescheduling, re-re-scheduling, re-re-re-scheduling, and all the while coordinating with Blackstone’s marketing and publicity folks about the event I was supposed to be going to and hopefully still would end up at…?

I made it. Barely.

And yes, somewhere in there I forgot to write up a ranty blog post.

So, a few weeks back I mentioned how one of the cool things about following a bunch of writers is getting lots of tips and advice. And there is tons of it out there. Actual digital tons. Some of it ends up being stuff I enthusiastically agree with. Some of it… isn’t. Sometimes it’s things that don’t work for me, but may for other people. Sometimes they’re things that only apply to a certain point or stage in our writing careers. Being able to sift through writing advice is, in my opinion, one of the best skills an aspiring writer can develop.

And—pretty much inevitably—someone decides to make a list. It’s how the internet works. If there’s more than one thing, we have to have an order. A priority list. A number-one-thing-to-do! This is the most important rule when it comes to writing! Ravens hate this one trick that will save you years!

Anyway…

For your enjoyment and possible education—and with the Golden Rule firmly in mind—here are my top ten tips for writers. I made up an earlier version of this seven or eight years back but I figured what the heck—it’s the internet. There’s always space for an updated list.

1 – Write Every Day
The controversial one, right up front. Allow me explain. Or defend myself, depending on your personal feelings on the matter.

I’ve said more than a few times that my intended audience here at the ranty writing blog, since the very beginning, is the folks hoping to write professionally. Maybe as a side gig, maybe the stars line up and they get to do this full time as a career. If that’s not you—no worries at all. There’s value to your writing no matter why you want to do it, and I think a lot of the things I talk about here are usable no matter what your end goal is.

With that in mind… if you follow any pro writers on social media, a very common thing you’ll see is that all of them are writing every day. Yes, even the ones saying you don’t have to write every day. I post about toys a lot, but guess what? I’m writing every day, five or six days a week.

If I want to do this for a living, I have to think of writing as a job. Yeah, sure, we’re not all there yet. We were just saying that. But the whole reason I got here was because I stopped treating my writing like a hobby and started treating it like something that had to happen every day.

Yes, lots of things count as writing. We’re going to get to that, don’t worry.

2) Read
It’s three weeks into September as I write this and I’m picking up my 24th book of the year. I think that works out to a book every… eleven days? My final count for the year is probably going to be in the 30s. And that’s not counting research material, news articles, and things like that. Or stories I get in other formats– movies, tv, podcasts. As I’ve mentioned once or thrice before, I’m a big believer that you can’t have output without input. People who think they can write without reading, well… they’re going to have some problems. A variety of them, really.

So read. Read everything you can. Read things in the genres you know and love, but also try to read books by people you’ve never heard of in genres you’re not a fan of. Push yourself to grow and learn and experience more.

3) Learn to Spell
I’ve talked about this many, many, many times. Learn words. Learn how to spell them. Learn what they mean. Words are the bare-bones foundation of writing. Wanting to be a writer when I can’t spell is like wanting to be a chef when I don’t know the difference between salt and flour.

Never be scared to grab a dictionary or type something into Google. I do it all the time, even just to confirm I’m right about exactly what a word means. Nobody’ll judge you for it. But they’ll absolutely judge you if you get it wrong.

4) Exercise your mind
This is kind of related to Tip #2. I think our minds work just like a muscle. We can’t just do one thing with them all the time. Spend a little time doing something else. Build a bookshelf. Build a model. Cook a meal. Sketch something. Paint something. Sing something. Hell, balance your checkbook. Do your taxes. Give your brain a chance to flex in different ways and it’ll work better overall.

5 ) Exercise your body
Another sad truth about writing. It generally involves sitting on our butt and, well, that’s kind of it, physically. Sadder truth—our brains needs oxygen to work. Oxygen comes from blood, and blood flow increases with exercise and decreases when we… well, sit on out butts.

So exercise actually makes it easier to write. This doesn’t mean go get a gym membership or run a 5k every morning. If you can do that, great, but just stand up from your desk or kitchen table and move around a bit. Go for a walk. Play with your cats. Do some jumping jacks. Stretch! Just get that blood flowing.

6) Learn the Rules
Nobody likes to hear this part but… there are rules to writing. Like spelling (see #3 up above). They exist and they exist for a reason. Rules are the common ground we share as authors and readers. If I don’t know the basic rules of a language, I can’t be surprised if I can’t communicate with people who speak that language.

Likewise, there are rules to storytelling. Again, not unbreakable ones, but they’re real and–on one level or another–we’re all aware of them. Certain universal expectations, and also some that are more tailored for different genres or styles. I need to have a good sense of how these rules work if I want to tweak or openly subvert them.

7) Enjoy it
Whatever reason I have for writing, I should be having fun with it. Yeah, even with all the rules and spelling and exercise. Writing should be enjoyable. Why would I want to spend all my time doing something I inherently don’t like? Write about stuff you love and ideas that fascinate you. Let writing be the high point of your day, and let that enthusiasm carry through onto the page.

And please ignore those weirdos who talk about starving artists or suffering for their art or any of that nonsense. All that approach does is make you… well, not like writing. Why would I approach this in a way that makes me not like doing it? Believe it or not, you can be a real writer without ever once feel tortured, traumatized, or misunderstood. Like so many things, if writing makes me feel miserable and frustrated… maybe I’m doing it wrong.

8 – Actually write it
I 100% believe that a lot of things count as writing. The planning and outlining. The twenty minutes kind of staring into space, or maybe the long walk where I quietly murmur dialogue to myself as two characters talk in my head.

But at the end of the day, the only real yardstick we have for progress is making words appear on the screen, the legal pad, the expensive little notebook, or those parchment scrolls you make yourself at your secluded cabin out by the lake. I can attend all the conferences and seminars, read every instructional book, or skim every random blog post with a list of rules, but if I never actually write anything… does any of it matter?

I was that guy for a while. I could tell you a lot about writing, what it meant to be a writer, what I planned to write, what real writers needed to do… but I never wrote anything.

The only way to move forward is… writing.

9 – Don’t be Scared to Break the Rules
So there are rules. No question, no discussion. Rules exist. We were just talking about that a few paragraphs up. But I don’t need to be trapped by them. I shouldn’t feel like rules are the end-all, be-all of writing. Just because someone can quote a rule that my story breaks doesn’t mean I’m doing anything wrong. It doesn’t mean I’m doing anything right, either, just to be clear, but it doesn’t mean automatic failure.

Y’see, Timmy, the rules are there as sort of a baseline starting point. Learn to do X and then we can talk about Y. They’re trying to get you past all those mistakes we see again and again and again in submission piles and sophomore writing classes. As Django Wexler pointed out a while back on Bluesky, all these rules have the silent, unwritten coda of “…until you know what you’re doing.”

Writing is an art. Even if I’m writing for commercial purposes, it’s still an art. And art is unique to every artist. I can use creative misspellings and odd story structures and characters who don’t fit perfectly in that heroic mold. Or the heroic tights. Or the heroic top… which seems to have shrunk a little in the mid-section since I became a full-time writer. We learn the rules so we can learn how to break them for maximum effect.

For example, you could tell everyone you’re doing a top ten list and just stop at nine. That’s okay. It’ll give people a chuckle and they’ll be more likely to remember the other things you said.

And that’s that.

Oh, if you’re in the Southern California area, this Saturday I’m going to be at Artifact Books in Encinitas signing copies of the Dread Coast anthology with a bunch of other authors. You should stop by and hang out, maybe pick up a copy. It’s for a good cause.

Next time… well, it’s getting near the wonderfully gruesome time of year, so let’s talking about cutting out that pound of flesh.

Until then, go write.

This is going to be another one of those kind-of rambly ones.

Big shock, I follow a lot of other authors on social media. Some I’m a fan of, some I’m actually friends with, and there’s a pretty good-sized Venn diagram overlap there. Actually, I think it’d be a circle-within-a-circle.

Anyway…

It’s always neat to hear other writers talk about craft. Y’know, the nuts and bolts stuff I like to talk about here. Tips. Tricks. Common problems and uncommon solutions.

I bring this all up because Kameron Hurley was at a con a few weeks back and sort of live-posting things she heard from different panels. Not panels she was on, just different ones she decided to attend. So it was interesting takes on things and little snippets of advice.

Now, at one point an author on a panel brought up a certain story element and referred to it as XX. And Kameron Hurley noted that, huh, she generally called that element YY. Sad to say. this whole overall idea I’m talking about it what stuck with me and I didn’t make a note of the actual, specific element they were discussing. But we don’t really need it.

Once or thrice here I’ve talked about the idea of plot vs. story. But I’ve also mentioned that some more literature-minded folks out there might refer to these same ideas by fancy Russian names. And some folks might say what I’m calling story is just the character arc.

Writers are weird. The vast majority of us are more-or less self-taught at this, and sometimes we’re too creative for our own good. We each come up with our own unique ways to say similar things about how to tell stories in our chosen format. And once or thrice here I’ve talked about different college professors and the terms they come up with to describe those same things.

And that’s before we even get into different formats having their own terminology. Like, a scene in screenwriting is a very specific unit of storytelling, while in prose it’s a little more general. And an act is something very specific in television that’s kind of similar to an act in a play, but not at all the same thing as when we’re talking about three act structure. As I define it, anyway.

Yeah, even me. I say it here fairly often, but all the terms I use here on the ranty writing blog are just how I tend to describe these things. A couple of them I remember from college, some I picked up here or there, but a lot of the time… it’s just me. There’s a really good chance another author, an editor, a writing coach, or a random article on the web uses a different name for that exact same idea. Or maybe when they’re talking about XX on their social media or website, they mean something completely different.

Normally, no big deal. What does it matter what we call things, right? If I want to have my own special terms and phrases for that moment my hero does this or the specific challenge that causes that… so what? As I’ve mentioned here a few times it doesn’t matter how I write, all that matters is what I’ve written. What works for me won’t necessarily work for you and it definitely won’t work for him.

But…

I think sometimes we hit problems when these personal, unique terms get out into the wild and bounce off some of the more format-specific ones. People can start interpreting them in different ways. Weird ways. Because they see the same thing called by two different names—or maybe two different things called by very similar names—and then they try to distill these down to make “simplified” rules and definitions.

Like, okay, remember a while back and I was talking about structure, and how many different aspects of writing structure could refer to? And how often people would combine or confuse definitions and then spit that confusion back out as advice? Or, again, as rules that needed to be followed.

Heck, just a few weeks ago I talked about conflict, and all the different ways people define it. And then all the different ways people then try to judge conflict in a story based off all those random, personal definitions. It can get messy and confusing really fast.

Y’see, Timmy, we shouldn’t immediately take writing advice at face value when we stumble across it, no matter how simple or straightforward it sounds. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but pay attention to what being described more than what it’s being called. Someone might be giving you advice about conflict, but they’re really talking about action. They might keep referring to plot when they’re describing three act structure. It’s up to us to parse out what they actually mean and where this thread of advice fits in that big process -spiderweb of rules and tips and advice we each create

Yeah, the process-spiderweb. Doesn’t everyone call it that?

Random other thing—some of you may have noticed I didn’t post the August newsletter here on the last of the month as I usually do. I’m not doing that anymore. It’s making a few things feel a bit cluttered and redundant. From here on I’ll just add a link to the newsletter archive in the last post of the month. Like this. And of course, you can always just sign up for the newsletter and then this all becomes moot.

Oh, and if you’re in the San Diego area, this Saturday at 2:00 I’ll be at Mysterious Galaxy for the launch of the Dread Coast anthology. Come get books and get them scribbled in! Hear me read aloud in my squeaky, supposedly-accented voice.

Next time—unless I get a request from one of you—I’d like to go for a walk around the block.

Until then, go write.

I mentioned revisiting older topics last week and so now, rising out of the past—just when you were sure it was gone for good and there’s no way it was ever coming back…

I’d like to talk about revenge stories.

I think most folks love a good revenge story. Emphasis on most. Emphasis on good. When they’re done right they’re tons of fun, I think because we get a certain vicarious thrill from seeing someone get what they deserve. It could be a career-ending demotion. Maybe it’s getting embarrassed in front of the whole school. Perhaps it’s learning they’ve been left penniless by someone pulling a phenomenal heist.

And, yes, sometimes it’s them getting hunted across the tundra by somebody with a truly impressive collection of swords and pistols.

Now, this is just my opinion as a consumer of stories and occasional dabbler in the craft, but I think a good revenge story is a balancing act. Not too much of that. Just enough of those. A really solid foundation that can support all of it. If one of these things is off, my whole story can, well, become unbalanced. And once I’m off balance, it doesn’t take much for me fall over.

And we’ve all seen those, right? The revenge story that just seems kind of flat? Or maybe a bit… excessive? Possibly even a bit confusing?

So let’s go over four points I think a good revenge tale needs if it’s going to work. Again, just my own observations, and it’s always possible to find some exceptions, but I feel like these are four pretty solid points and I’ve yet to see them proven wrong since I came up with them.

With all that said… shall we embark on our path of vengeance against those who wronged us?

Well, actually, that’s a great lead-in to my first point. Has something happened that calls for revenge? I mean, there’s lots of bad things in the world but do they require me dedicating myself to balancing the scales of justice? A restaurant got my chimichanga order wrong once—does that require revenge? What about the person back in LA who broke into my car (well, jimmied the lock without causing any damage) but ultimately just stole a handful of change from the center tray. Maybe sixty cents, tops. Is that vendetta-worthy? Hunting that guy down doesn’t really seem worth it, right?

Some things absolutely call for revenge, but a lot of stuff just… doesn’t. A revenge story is a bit like a redemption arc this way. I need to have a sense of how my readers are going to see that initial incident. Will they agree it’s something that requires vengeance? Or are they going to think my characters are overreacting?

Which leads nicely to my second point. Is the character heading out to get revenge the one who should be getting revenge? It’s not unusual for one family member to avenge another, or for someone to avenge their dear friend or beloved. But as the relationships grow more tenuous, the motivation for my revenge story gets murkier. I may be a good customer, but I don’t expect the folks at my local sushi place to swear vengeance if something happened to me. I’ve chatted with the mail carrier a few times and she seems nice, but I’m probably not going to be carrying out a blood oath in her name.

Heck, I’m not even sure I know her name. Should I be the guy making that blood oath? I mean, if I should, it seems like a lot of other people should too…

Revenge is a personal thing. In its own way, it’s intimate. Personally, I’d say it needs to be a family thing. And yes, this can take the broader definition where my characters consider their best friends or teammates as family.

My third point is, to me, one of the most important parts of a revenge story. Simply put, the people my character’s getting revenge against must know why this is happening. If the team that killed my character’s family is being hunted down and killed one by one, but they don’t know why this is happening or who’s doing it… I mean, from their point of view how’s that different from a random killing spree? It might as well be Jason Voorhees out there.

I feel that a big part of a good revenge story is that it’s kind of symbiotic. It’s a relationship between the revenger and the revengee, so to speak, and relationships need to go both way (we can all agree one sided relationships are really weird, right?). So yes, we want Dot to get her revenge, but we also want Wakko to know why she’s doing all this. Why she’s coming after him. Why she’s been ruining his life. He needs that moment of understanding, one way or another—even if he just laughs it off (“…You’re the girl! And you’ve been looking for me all these years just to screw up now? Hah!”).

The reason for this is we understand—as readers and writers, consciously or not—that if Yakko doesn’t know why this is happening, he’s just a victim. He’s not an innocent victim, sure, but he’s still just a victim. He’s someone things are happening to for no reason. It’s the difference between someone seeing their house burn down and someone knowing why their house was set on fire.

Which leads nicely to my fourth and final point. Revenge can be a messy business. Very messy. Often reputations are shattered, blood is spilled, property is destroyed. And we’re all cool with that. We like seeing people getting what’s coming to them. Maybe even with a little interest.

And that’s where it gets tricky. In a revenge story, it’s easy to go a little too far with the reputation shattering and the blood spilling and the property damage. And when I do, that’s when my characters stop being the hero and becomes monsters in their own right. Yes, Phoebe embarrassed Yakko in front of his friends and deserves to be taken down a notch, but holy crap now she’s naked in front of the whole school. And they’re all taking photos! That’s going to cause years of emotional trauma. And okay, Wakko’s getting revenge on the drunk driver who killed his daughter by… wait, he’s killing all the guy’s pets and children right in front of him? WTAF?

This shift is something I’ve talked about before. When those scales tip the other way, our mood’s going to shift, too. We stop feeling good about the revenge and we start feeling sympathy for the people getting revenge exacted on them. Suddenly they’re the victim and my hero’s become, well, the villain. Which, understandably, alters everything. The whole tone of my story will change, and a lot of things will be questioned. Not in a good way. Which, I mean, if that’s my intent, cool (digging two graves and all that). But if it’s not…

Y’see Timmy, a revenge story should be all about the characters. That’s how I see it, anyway. Why are they seeking revenge? How are they doing it? Are they managing to walk that fine line between being a hero and being a monster? Or have they fallen off it…?

Speaking of which, next time, I’d like to talk about the consequences of my actions.

Until then… go write.

Okay, look… tomorrow’s my birthday, and I ended up spending a lot more time than I thought I would at the DMV today. But—as I have in the past—I wanted to offer some thoughts that were less about writing-the-art and a bit more about writing-the-overall-sphere-of-community-and-career.

So at the risk of shooting myself in the foot… let’s talk a bit about writing advice.

Really, the whole reason I started scribbling out these little rants soooo many years back (my hair was still rich and full and dark back then) was because of writing advice. All I ever saw on various writing forums (novel and screenplay) was what I called “after advice.” It was all tips on how to get an agent interested, how to get your script in front of producers or actors, how to build word of mouth, and so on. Very, very little of that advice was about the big step that came before all of those.

Y’know… actually writing the damned thing.

But as social media became a thing, I noticed more and more people offering writing advice. As in, advice about the actual act of writing. Often in short, bite-sized, very catchy phrases.

And also… a lot of it very scattered.

I think we can all agree people write for a lot of different reasons. Some folks enjoy crafting stories. Some like elaborate wordplay. Some folks want to make some money, while others want to make a whole career out of it. There are people who just enjoy the act of creation. Writing can even be therapeutic in some cases, like a great purge, or maybe a way to relax, like sliding into a hot bath at the end of a long day.

And to be very clear, all of these are good, solid, completely valid reasons to write. Anyone who says otherwise is an idiot. If all I want to do is write Mandalorian fan fic… cool. If it’s what you want to write, write it! Done.

People write in a lot of different formats, too. We can do first person or third person omniscient or third person limited or even the often-elusive-but-goddamn-beautiful-when-done-well second person. We can write books, short stories, comics, stage plays, narrative podcasts, screenplays for film or broadcast television or streaming television. These are all great, with their own challenges and rewards.

Again, anyone who tries to tell you television writing is all schlock or comics are stupid, just… look, don’t resort to violence, but know that they’re wrong. Very wrong.

Now… one of the big problems that happens a lot with writing advice is survivorship bias. If you’re not familiar, it’s when we only look at people who succeed at a task rather than everyone who attempted the task. Which means it’s tough to recognize how many elements of that success were skill vs inherent talent vs surrounding circumstances vs just, y’know, sheer luck. I actually talked about this a bit on a previous birthday post, although I didn’t mention it by name– just because Jennifer Lawrence moved from Kentucky and became a Hollywood megastar doesn’t mean every young woman who moves from Kentucky to Hollywood will become a megastar. Which sounds kinda silly to say out loud, right? But survivorship bias is kinda silly when you point it out.

And sometimes folks don’t recognize their own survivorship bias. They don’t recognize that outside elements were a big part of their success. So their advice is, well, a bit off. Not deliberately, mind you. They’re saying “I did this and it worked for me, I achieved my goal, therefore this is the method that works.” Which clearly isn’t wrong—they are successful after all—but it’s also not exactly right. It’s not considering other factors that maybe can’t be replicated by the people receiving said advice.

Using myself as an example… yeah, a good part of my success comes from writing and studying writing (in many different forms) for most of my life. But having an agent definitely was a big factor. And in all fairness I only have an agent because a bunch of sheer-luck things happened to line up in my favor. And sad to say, yeah, but the fact that I’m a white guy probably helped too. I couldn’t tell you exactly when or how, but I’m definitely not going to discount it. This is part of the reason I give big disclaimers on most of my writing advice. My path to success was unique. I can offer some suggestions on how to duplicate parts of it, but a lot of it was completely out of my hands.

Another thing some folks don’t grasp is that a lot of advice isn’t good for every situation. I can tell you the best dryer setting is permanent press because it’s a good balance of speed, temperature, and gentle motion that will get things done in a reasonable amount of time but also not be too rough on colors and most fabrics. But… this is lousy advice if you were asking how to dry your phone because you accidentally dropped it in the pool.

And this is true of writing advice, too. Like I mentioned up above, people can write for a lot of different reasons, and if I’m just writing for the joy of artistic expression (again, nothing wrong with that) my advice might not be that helpful if you’re trying to write as a great psychological purge at the end of a bad week. I’ve mentioned before how some people will offer advice on structure, but they’re trying to apply television script structure advice to a novel’s narrative structure. Likewise, most of my writing advice here on the ranty blog is geared around the idea of starting a fiction writing career, so it’s probably going to seem very contrary to a person who’s much more interested in writing as an art. The kind of writing we’re doing is going to affect the advice we’re giving and the advice we’re looking for. There’s some stuff that’s universal, absolutely, but there’s also stuff that

When I’m getting some writing advice, I need to think about all of this. I want to consider that another writer’s advice may have bias. I should be aware that they’re offering me advice about this kind of writing when I want to do that kind of writing.

Speaking of which, one final thing. I know this may sound obvious but… maybe don’t take writing advice from people who don’t actually write? If they can’t point to some notable level of writing output related to the advice they’re giving… I’m just saying, maybe their “advice” is coming from a different place.

And that’s all I’ve got for you on this fine pre-birthday afternoon. Sorry again for the lack of posts here, but I’m hoping to be better in the coming months.

Of course, I’m saying that but I’m probably going to miss next week. Editing.

But after that… redemption. Finally.

Until then, go write.