Assorted Magical Spills

The comments section has been pretty dry lately, so I’ve gone digging through my list of “things to talk about,” trying to come up with a semi-interesting topic. I was about to fall back on recycling some general writing/publishing stuff from one of the other blogs I used to keep and then I thought “hey, you know what we haven’t talked about lately? Spelling!”

More importantly, when computers try to spell.

Three really common features these days are autocomplete, autocorrect, and spellcheckers. I’m betting the device you’re reading this on has at least two of them. Maybe all three. There’s also a good chance you’ve shut at least one of them off. Because.... well, they’re not that ducking great when you get down to it. Yeah, sure, some of them build up custom dictionaries or preferences, but even those can have issues.

Truth is, the more complex and nuanced we get with language, the less these things work. Because they’re tools. And that’s what tools do. They don’t replace skills, they just help focus them.

Think of it this way. I’m guessing you’ve got a hammer, right? Maybe it’s in that drawer in the kitchen (or was it in the office...?). Maybe you’ve got a little emergency toolbox with some basics in it. Maybe you’ve got a big rolling tool chest out in your garage with four different hammers and a rubber mallet and that other hammer you loan out to people who come over and ask if they can  borrow your tools. Anyway, wherever it is, you’ve got a hammer, right?

But we accept that a hammer only does so much. Owning a hammer doesn’t instantly mean I can now build a bookshelf or a rocking chair or a new deck out back. I’m more handy than some folks thanks to a few years of film and theater work, but I’ve got two friends who are professional carpenters and they both make me look completely unqualified to even own a toolbox.

And we all get this, right? The tool doesn’t amplify ability or replace it. It just allows me to use that existing ability better. If I didn’t have the skills to build a rocking chair before buying a hammer, owning one’s not going to change anything. And if I’m convinced holding a hammer suddenly does give me abilities and skills... well, I’m probably about to hurt myself.

(weird fun fact—the majority of cases where men lose a finger or toe involve them using a new tool. Seriously)

Spellchecker is a tool. So is autocorrect. And autocomplete. They can make things faster and more efficient, but only if I know what I’m doing in the first place.

For example...

faze vs. phase – one of these you grow out of

feet vs. feat – one of these is a measurement

losing vs. loosing –one of these is a release

week vs. weak—one of these is not that strong

bear vs. bare—one of these is a bit revealing

sconces vs. scones—one of these you eat

All of these are words I’ve seen recently in articles, headlines, and so on. And in every one of these cases... they should’ve been using the other one. But if I’m trusting my spellchecker to know more than me, it’s just not going to end well.

Seriously, computers are ducking idiots. They really are. Remember when I talked about Watson, the IBM supercomputer that was specifically built to understand language and nuance and crush opponents on Jeopardy? Do you remember how his success rate ended up working out?

If Watson isn’t going to be able to pick up the slack, why would I think the spellchecker they bolted on to my word processor at the last minute is going to be better?

Learn to spell. If I want to do this professionally, it’s not enough to have the tools. I need the knowledge that makes them useful. Cause if not... I’m just hammering away wildly.

Next time...

Honestly, the next thing on my list is an overdue update of the FAQ. But to be honest, nothing’s really changed since the last time I updated it (well, nothing I can talk about, anyway). So I’ve got... hmmmmmm, well a question about plot we didn’t get to during the WonderCon Writers Coffeehouse. Or maybe talk about my old trunk novel a bit?

Any preferences? Drop ‘em down below.

And then go write.

A2Q Part Nine—Editing

Well, if all goes well, we’re making a big time jump here. All the past things I’ve been blathering on about—plot, characters, story, theme—these are all elements that we can spend a day or three on. Maybe even less, if they’ve been fermenting in my head.

But between last week and this week, well... hypothetically a lot of time has passed. I’m really, really hoping you didn’t write an entire first draft in a week. If you did... well, that’s another issue we need to discuss. I’m hoping you took your time, within reason, and we are—hypothetically—a month or two or maybe even six later.

You have a first draft now. And it’s a beautiful thing. Maybe the file is so big it’s an entire meg on your computer. An entire megabyte of your words. I know that might sound laughable or dismissive, but seriously—you need a lot to hit a one megabyte Word file.

But...

(yeah, here comes the but)

...it needs editing. No probably. There’s a chance you wrote a perfect, flawless first draft, but more than likely... you didn’t. I haven’t yet and I’ve been doing this for a while.

It’s okay, though. Everybody needs to edit. Everyone. Anyone who says they don’t is either A) lying to you or 2) delusional. Our work needs editing and revising. If you remember waaaay back at the beginning of the A2Q, I talked about how ideas need to be cut and polished like diamonds? Well, that’s what we’re doing now. Figuring out what needs to be cut and then giving it all a good polish.

Again... this is okay. Don’t worry. Every book you’ve ever loved has gone through this process. And we’re going to go through it so this book can be one other people can love.

Ready?

First up, the easy part. This is a 100% complete draft, right? Beginning,middle, and end? I’m not going to get a hundred pages in and find blank space or notes to myself like [FIND WHAT THESE ARE REALLY CALLED] or [ASK ELLEN HOW TO DO THIS]. There’s nothing wrong with doing that on a first pass—I do it all the time—but before I start editing I need to fill in those spaces in my book with actual, y’know, book.

So, again... this is a 100% complete draft, right?

Fantastic.

Before diving in, may I suggest taking some time away from your book. You don’t want to finish a draft, then turn right around and start the next one. We want to get a little space, and let things fade in our mind a bit. I don’t want to be looking at the manuscript in my head, I want to be seeing the one in front of me—the one everybody else is going to see. We’re going to need some stark honestly for this, so I want to be clear what’s really there.

One tip for this—I’d suggest switching the font. Go from Times Roman to Courier. If you’re one of those folks who likes to write in Comic Sans, switch it back to Times. A different font is going to make everything sit differently on the page and it’ll make you actually read what’s on the page. You’ll become very aware of what is and isn’t there, and catch a lot of stuff that’s been sliding past you.

Once you’ve taken some time away, changed the format... read it. Just read through this new manuscript with those fresh eyes. Maybe make some quick notes, but for now just read it. Again—don’t remember it, read it. Try to see what’s really there on the page.

Now, I’ve talked about editing a bunch of times. It’s a big umbrella that a lot of things fall under, many of which I think can get broken down into three categories or types. It is my humble opinion that one of the big reasons people have issues with editing is they get these different types confused because they never get more specific than “editing.” I want to talk about each of these three types of editing and maybe give a few examples of each. You may have heard of one or two of them.

First up is story editing. This is when we try to improve the plot and story by reorganizing different elements, clarifying them, maybe even adding to them. Sometimes we might even add all-new elements.

Second is what I’m going to call reductive editing. This is when we’re cutting things, usually to tighten up dialogue, descriptions, and maybe even to simplify larger elements a bit. Sometimes, in all honesty, we’re just cutting to get closer to a certain word count.

Third is copyediting. This is when we’re correcting things throughout the manuscript. Formatting. Spelling. Grammar. The nuts and bolts things that are still important because they’re holding things together.

You may notice there seems to a bit of overlap here. I’d say it’s a little less “overlap” and a little more “weaving between lanes in high traffic,” as we’ll see. You may have also heard different names or definitions for these. Look, I never claimed to be an English major or anything. If you’ve heard it called something else, cool. I’m just trying to make this easy to distinguish.

Anyway... let’s go through these in a little more detail.

We’ve kind of talked about story editing already, in a sense. When we first had that pile of ideas and notes and we started sifting and arranging them into an outline—that was story editing. Trying to find the best order for things, the best way to introduce different elements, and so on. That’s what this is—taking what we’ve already got and figuring out if we can make it even better.

Yeah, we’ve already done that. But now we’ve written everything out. We’ve got a better sense of the characters and the size of the events and how they’re going to land with my audience. Maybe that needed a little more description than we thought and that bit needs a lot less. And maybe we’ve realized some of this... doesn’t really serve any purpose.

This is one of the reasons we want to look at this with fresh eyes. So I can see where problems have developed. Or maybe they were there all along, but I couldn’t recognize them until it was all here in front of me.

F’r example, now that I’ve looked at all of this again, does it have a good dramatic structure? Does the tension start low and rise throughout the book(maybe with a few dips and drops here and there for our heroes)? How’s the pacing? Does it feel like there are any slow parts that just stretch on a little too long with nothing actually happening?

That’s a good one right there? Are things happening? Are events pushing the plot and my characters’ stories along? Or are they stalling out in places. Are people talking or thinking about doing things more than they’re... y’know, doing things?

This is story editing. Taking an honest look and deciding what story elements do and don’t need to be there. Or maybe just need to shift to somewhere else.

Also—don’t get scared here if it looks like you need to make big changes. If it turns out my outline was wrong, then it was wrong. So what? The first draft’s done. Make a new outline if you want and then write to that one. I’ve written a complete first draft and then gone back and completely rewritten the ending, or ripped out whole chapters. It happens. Don’t worry if it does.

Next up is what I’m calling reductive editing. This is something I’ve talked about a lot here on the ranty blog. We all get a little wordy in our first drafts. We use a few too many adverbs. We describe things with a bit too much detail. We let conversations go on and on. And we also tend to...

Okay, a thought exercise for you. If I said you no-questions had to get rid of three characters in this book—three characters with names and/or dialogue, who would you pick? Why did they jump right to mind? Is it because you knew getting rid of Wakko wouldn’t mean too much rewriting? Or because Dot and Yakko could be merged into one character (Dakko? Yot?) pretty easily? Because really... they don’t do that much.

We all do this. We bulk up characters and their descriptions and subplots, letting them take up a lot more space on the page than their actual contributions might warrant. I’m not saying every single character has to be a vital linchpin to the plot, but... well, how fast did you come up with three characters you could cut?

And I’m sure some folks reading this are thinking “Ha ha, good thing there’s absolutely no literary fat in my manuscript. Every single element is perfectly balanced and artistically necessary.” Which, yeah, there’s a chance it is. Maybe.

But remember this. As a first time author—hell, even as a successful one—the odds of a sale are better with a smaller, tighter book. No one’s saying a publisher won’t look at something big, but if I can trim two or three thousand words off my manuscript it can make a difference. Even just a psychological difference, when they look at that cover page and see 98K words instead of 101K words.

Finally, there’s copyediting. The often long and painful process of going through a manuscript line by line, word by word, and making sure everything’s correct. I’m using the correct words, spelled the right way. I’ve got commas where I need them and all my dialogue’s got quotation marks at both ends. Indents and spacing and page numbers.

People get contentious about this for a few reasons. Some folks will declare writing doesn’t have rules and they can do whatever they want, however they want. Others say it’s irrelevant because the genius of their writing will shine past all that to illuminate the heart and soul of the reader. And still others say, well... I mean, isn’t that the publisher’s job? They’ve got people for that, and they know this isn’t going to be perfect.

There’s a bunch of problems with all these views, biggest among them... what if I plan on publishing it myself? If I’m the publisher I need to be able to do all of this. And if I want someone else to publish it... well, why would they bother to look at it if I can’t be bothered to give them my best work? I mean, if they get those first fifty pages and it’s clear I didn’t even bother to fix my spelling mistakes, what else didn’t I bother with?

And to be clear—there are times my story might require typos and odd grammar. I occasionally spell words in odd ways. I sometimes take certain stylistic liberties with commas when I write. So do a lot of writers I know. But it’s always very clear this is a deliberate thing—I know I’m doing it and why I’m doing it. But these are exceptions, and exceptions by their very nature are rare things.

So there’s a bunch of editing thoughts. Let’s apply some of them. Remember that first page and a half  of our werewolf novel I wrote last time...?

++++++++++

Chapter One

            “Luna!”

            Phoebe sifted through the laundry pile again, willing the black top to appear even though it hadn’t the last three times she’d looked. “Luna,” she bellowed again.

            Upstairs the sound of the shower finally stopped and she heard the thump of feet on the wooden floor. The bathroom door creaked open. “What?”

            “Where’s my black top? The one with the ribbing?”

            “I’m trying to get ready,” her little sister growled. “I’m going out!”

            “So am I! Where is it?”

            “How should I know?”

            “You borrowed it last night. You promised you’d wash it.”

            Silence. Then the bathroom door creaked again quietly.

            “Luna!”

            “What?” Her voice echoed in the small house.

            “Where is it?”

            A sigh echoed down the stairs. “I’ll get you a new one.”

            “You’ll what?”

            “I kind of... misplaced it.”

            “You what?”

            “I lost it, okay. I said I’ll get you a new one.”

            “Goddammit. I wanted it tonight. It fits under my armor.” She looked at the leather sleeves, vest, and gorget piled on the bed. Her mom's old hand-me-down armor. Stained dark brown with years of oil and sweat and blood that sank in before it could be cleaned off.

            “Wear the green one.”

            “It’s long-sleeved and I wore it last night. It stinks.”

            “It’s not like anyone’s going to complain.”

            Phoebe bit back a sigh of her own sigh and marched over to the hamper of dirty clothes. “How did you ‘misplace’ lose it?”

            “I was at a party.”

            “That’s not an answer.”

            “Yes it is,” Luna sang down the stairs. “I’m getting back in the shower now.”

            “We’re going to talk about this later.”

            “Whatever.” The bathroom door creaked shut and hot water started to gush flowed again.

            They’d have to talk about that too. The water bill and the gas bill had been high last month. Phoebe felt pretty sure Luna’s long showers were a major big part of that.

            She pulled the green top from the hamper. It had been warm last night, especially under all the leather, and she’d sweated a lot. The top was still damp, and it reeked. But it was that or she could try to find a Henley or turtleneck that wouldn’t bunch up under the armor and slow her down.

            She sure as hell wasn’t going to be some B-movie cliché, hunting werewolves with nothing on but a leather vest.

++++++++++

Let’s talk about some of the tweaks.

As far as story editing goes, you’ll notice I changed “mom’s old armor” to “hand-me-down armor.” Now it feels less sentimental and more a necessity from lack of funds—a subtle hint at their financial status.

For reductive editing, I snipped some adverbs and redundant words. Only seven altogether (when we count what I added in). Doesn’t seem like much, but this was only a page and a half. At that rate, we're talking about 1,400 words cut out of a 300 page manuscript—closer to 294 pages at that point. And those were really minimal cuts, weren’t they?

There wasn’t a lot to copyedit because, well, I checked it all as a regular part of the blog post last time. But I remember there were two or three typos in it, because I scribbled that all out really fast. One of them was my thumb not hitting the space bar hard enough so two words ran together.

Also worth mentioning you don’t have to do all of this at once. Some people like to just work in a single document through the whole process. Others write, save it as a draft, do an editing pass, save it as a draft, do another editing pass, save a draft, and so on. I’ve talked about my own method before, but figure out what works for you.

Y’see Timmy, that’s one of the toughest thing about trying to explain editing—even just these small tweaks. A lot of it does just come down to figuring it out. Yeah, we can study grammar, but so much of the raw art of it is just experience. Being honest with myself about my own work. Writing a lot. Reading a lot. Making mistakes. Learning from them. It’s how we get a sense of which words fit and which ones don’t. And like so much of this, it’s a flexible thing. Just because it worked last time doesn’t mean it’ll work every time.

In the end, the goal is to make this the best I possibly can. Not the best first draft or the best it can before I get bored. Ugly truth is, it’s going to be work, it’s going to take time and there’ll be points when you go back and forth about cutting or keeping things. That’s just the way it goes. But it’ll get slightly easier every time. I promise.

...at least, until you try to write a more complex book.

But we’ll get to that another time.

I think I’ve still two or three post left in this whole big process thing. Hopefully you’re still interested to read them. But next time I may take a quick break from the A2Q to talk about some related ideas.

Until then, go write.

And edit.

Vocabulary Time Again...

Holy crap this is post #600 here on the ranty blog. Six. Hundred. Take that, some other blog with less posts.

Anyway, we’re overdue to discuss that most favorite of topics... spelling. I know it seems silly that I keep revisiting this again and again.  But there’s a reason for it--I’ve simply got to have a solid vocabulary if I want to be a writer. I need to know what words mean. I have to know how to spell them. I have to be able to tell them apart.

Over the course of my writing career, I’ve talked with lots of editors, a couple of agents, and a double-handful of directors for screenwriting contests.  Pretty much across the board, they named spelling as the most common mistake they saw. Not subject matter. Not formatting. Spelling was the problem they saw again and again and again.

Which is why I tend to bring it up here at least once a year. If I’m spelling and using words correctly, I’ve just eliminated the most common problem from my manuscript. Seriously, think how many people that puts me ahead of in the selection process.

Check out this little list of words... and the words they were supposed to be. They’re from assorted books and articles I’ve stumbled across. Things that we can consider published (I’m not going to give anyone crap for typos in a tweet). The important thing is all of these are from people claiming to be professional writers.

going or gong

canon or cannon

fair or fare

right or rite

taking or talking

possible or posable

root or route

milk toast or milquetoast

Personally, I think certain technologies have made spelling a hard problem for some folks to acknowledge. If you’ve been following the ranty blog for a while, you might remember me using this sentence a few times before...

Inn odor two kell a vampire yew most half a would steak.

While the first instinct is to say pretty much every word in that sentence is spelled wrong, the truth is—like the list above—none of them are.  Oh, most of them aren’t the right word, yeah, but they’re all spelled correctly.

That’s what I’m talking about with technology. I ran this post through a spellchecker and it leaped right over that sentence. Because there aren’t any spelling mistakes in it. And so technology leads a lot of people to believe they’re much better spellers than they really are.

If I don’t know the difference between they’re, their, and there, I’m going to have a tough time as a writer. Same thing with its and it’s.  If I think I know what anathema means (deadly poison, right?), but never bother to actually learn what it means (something I really dislike), odd are I’ll be using it wrong a lot. 

And again, when I make these mistakes, my spellchecker’s still going to tell me my manuscript is fine. So some folks who are really awful at spelling never improve.  They see no need to. After all, the computer’s got them covered and it told them all their words were correct.

That kinda blind faith is when things can get ridicules. Sometimes the spelling will be so off on a word the spellchecker flails for a second and throws out its best guess. And if I don’t know how to spell or what words really mean, I’ll probably just accept whatever the computer tells me. 

Like up above. I meant ridiculous at the top of that last paragraph, typed out radekulos to make my point, and the computer thought the best match was ridicules. Because it doesn’t know what I’m actually trying for. I’ve mentioned once or thrice the manuscript I saw where the writer was trying for corpulent but assumed the spellchecker had made the right choice when it gave him corporeal.

I need to be able to spell. I need to understand the words I’m spelling. I can’t depend on my computer to do it for me because at the end of the day, computers are idiots. And idiots make lousy writing partners.

           

Next time... it’s Valentine’s Day, so let’s talk about what you’ve got on under there.

Until then... go write.

Word. By. Word.

Thursday’s Thanksgiving and my parents are coming into town tomorrow, so I've got a lot of cleaning to do. No post on Thursday. But I had a simple idea I’d been meaning to toss out to you for a while now and this seemed like a good time.

Random theory of mine, probably not all that original. I think we tend to batch-read words. We tend to look at larger text elements—the clauses and phrases and sentences, rather than the individual words that make up those elements. I mean, you’re doing it right now. You’re not picking out the individual words, you’re reading this as a whole. And that’s a good thing. It’s what we want readers to do. It means my writing has a great flow to it.

But...

By the same token, this can make us kind of blind to things in our own work. Once we’ve written a sentence, we tend to gloss over it. Especially after reading it three or four times. We get overly-familiar with it. Even when we’re re-reading it in an edit draft, a lot of the time we’re just taking in the big picture and not looking at what’s actually there on the page.  It’s how we can read a sentence a dozen times and never notice that glaring typo in the middle of it. Or not notice there’s a word missing altogether.  Or that twice on this page we refer to Stu as Ted, but we don’t think about it because we know Stu was called Ted in an earlier draft and so they’re the same person in our heads.

That kinda thing.

So here’s my quick tip for you.  Do at least one pass where you  don’t read your story. Read the words on the page. Actually look at each individual word there on your screen  and. Read. Each. One. Of. Them.

Yeah, it’s slow. And it's tough. That sounds silly, I know, but it is super-tough to go through a story this way. Especially a story we know. You need a ton of patience and focus. But I guarantee you’ll find dozens of things that were missed on earlier passes.

In fact, here’s a tip for that tip. Before you do this pass, change the font on your whole document. If you normally write in Times, switch it over to Courier. If you normally write in Courier, switch it over to Times. If you normally write in Wingdings, what the hell’s wrong with you? Seriously, nobody’s going to be able to read that. Put it in Times, make everybody’s life easer.

Anyway... remember what I said about how we get overly-familiar with things? Well y’see Timmy, by changing the font, I’ve just made the whole document unfamiliar to me. The spacing’s different. Things will sit on each page in new ways. Which means I’ll be looking at it with fresh eyes, and things will be a little easier to catch.

And there you go. This writing tip has been brought to you by cranberry sauce. And by Nana’s special holiday rolls.

Next time... well, look. Black Friday’s coming up, and if you’ve been here for any amount of time you know what I’ll be talking about. And then there’s Cyber Monday, plus NaNoWriMo will’ve been wrapped up for a couple of days. I’m going to be blabbing about a lot of stuff for the next week or so. Check back often.

Until then, go write.

The Most Basic of Basics

I don’t have a lot of time this week because tomorrow is the start of (cue cheering) WonderCon in Anaheim.  I’m going to be there hanging out for parts, signing some books, and Sunday I’ll be holding a two hour version of the Writer’s Coffeehouse.  Please feel free to stop by, say hi, and listen to me talk about this crazy business of writing stuff.

Speaking of which...

Keeping in mind our limited time, I wanted to take a quirk moment to chat with you about one of the most important thing to learn in storytelling.  This can easily be a make-or-break thing.  I’ve heard contest directors talk about it, agents talk about it, editors talk about it.  They all see it constantly and it makes all of them roll their eyes.

Spelling and vocabulary.

I’ve got to know how to spell if I want to make it as a writer.

Now I’m sure a couple folks have already rolled there own eyes and moved on to watching some cool YouTube videos.  I mean, I said this was going to be about basics, but nobody thought we’d go this basic, right?  We don’t need a grade school refresher.  Besides, its the 21st century.  People have spellcheckers on their phones!  Technology’s made knowing how to sell pointless.

Right?

Well...  As I’ve talked about once or thrice before, spellcheckers are pretty much idiots.  They can tell me if a word’s spelled right, but they can’t tell me if it’s the right word.  It’s the classic there, their, or they’re argument.

And that’s the vocabulary half of this.  Some of the greatest computers out there are pretty bad when it comes to understanding grammar, which means it’s doubtful they’re always going to know which word I’m trying to use.  Which means there’s a good chance it doesn’t’ actually know if this word is spelled right or not.  Did I want there or their?  Only one of them’s correct, and if I don’t know which it’s supposed to be...

F’r example, check out this list.  I’ve done this sort of thing before.  These are all words people used in articles on fairly popular, journalistic websites (some news, some entertainment) pared up with the word they meant to use.  I’m willing to bet all those articles were spellchecked and given a good thumbs up from the computer, but the writer didn’t know the difference.  Or maybe their editor.  Or maybe both of them

lede and lead

poles and polls

borders and boarders

allude and elude

right and rite

peek and peak

serfs and surfs
reign and rein

Yeah, a couple of those are laughable, I know, but I swear I didn’t make any of these up.  They meant to use X, but they printed Y. A couple of these I’ve seen multiple tines, even.

And I’m sure you know what they all mean, right?  You wouldn’t be laughing if you didn’t know both of the words.  If I only know one of them, well... that’s not entirely helpful, is it?  Especially as a writer.  Words are supposed to be my thing, the raw material of my trade, but I don’t know what they mean?  Would you want surgery from a doctor who knew what some of your organs did?

Now, a common defense I see for this a lot is that I don’t need to know.  Spelling’s not that important, and it’s all just an arbitrary constrict, anyway.  Readers will get my meaning from context.  If I meant polls and I wrote poles, when it’s actually in a sentence people will still understand what I’m trying to say

Yeah.  Yeah, they will.  That’s why most readers and agents and editors will excuse a mistake or two.  We’re all human.  We make typos.  We get a little tired and bleary-eyed during that 2 am line edit the day before a book’s due (not that I’ve ever done that...).

But, y’see, Timmy, if I don’t know how to spell, if I don’t know my vocabulary, if I’m just depending on the computer too do it all for me... I’m going to make more of these mistakes.  More and more, the longer my manuscript is.  Dozens, maybe hundreds of them.

And, yeah, we’ll all gloss over one or two points where we just need to get it from context.  Maybe even three or four.  But there hits a point—and it really isn’t that high—where we start to wonder if this person really knows what they’re doing.  Again, how many times do you really want to here your doctor joke “Wow, what do you think that does?”

Want proof?

Well, I’ve littered half a dozen or so of these mistakes all through this little rant.  You probably noticed some and chuckled.  Hopefully all of them.  I’m tempted to say someone might even leap down halfway through reading this to comment on the irony of my post on spelling having such blatant spelling errors.  And they’d be kinda justified.  Here I am, trying to say I understand the craft, that my words are worth your time, worth reading, and yet...

I’m making a lot of really blatant, basic mistakes in just three or four pages. 

It’s understandable that they’d shake their head, scoff, and say “oh, no, good sir.  Not you.  Not today.”

To put it another way, we’d understand if I got rejected over that kind of thing.

And I don’t want to see anybody here rejected over that kind of thing.

This weekend—WonderCon!

Next time, I want to talk about what you can do.  Or, really, what your characters can do.

Until then, go write.

Top Ten Rules for Writers

            Two posts a week is becoming a  kinda regular thing here, isn’t it...?

            So, hey, you may have seen that a certain set of writing “rules” was passed around Twitter recently.  Not so much rules, in this case, as a collection of trolling and rejected fortune cookie messages.  People made fun of it.  I was one of them.

            But a few people also put up serious, much more useful lists.  Things to help with being a writer and with the writing itself.  And I thought, hey, I’m not going to be posting on Thursday because of Thanksgiving (I've got a turkey to cook and classic movies to watch)... maybe I could do a top ten list, too!
            Because I always make sure to jump on every trend a good week after it’s dead.

            I did a whole post about it over on my MySpace page.

            Anyway, for your enjoyment and possible education—and with the Golden Rule firmly in mind—are my top ten rules for writers.

1 – Write Every Day

            Yeah, this is one that gets batted around a lot, pros and cons, all that.  I’ve talked about it at length before.  Here’s why it’s the first rule I’m going to toss out...

            If I want to do this for a living, I have to think of writing as a job.  That’s an ugly truth.  This is my job.  I do it full time.  Probably more than full time.  I’d guess at least once or twice a month I’ll have a week where I work hours close to my film crew years.
            Yeah, you may not be there yet.  I get that.  But the whole reason I got here is because I started treating my writing like something that had to happen every week.  It wasn’t a hobby, it was something that needed to get done.  Because if it didn’t need to get done... well, it usually didn’t.

2 – Read

            As I write this, I’ve just finished reading my 46th book of the year.  That’s not counting a ton of comics, research material, a bunch of gaming rule/ sourcebooks, and probably three or four Washington Post articles every day.  Like anything, writing is input-output.  I can’t get the engine to run of it doesn’t have fuel.

            No, alcohol isn’t fuel.  It’s just lubricant.  And too much lubricant eventually just makes you spin and place without accomplishing anything.

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 building blocks of writing.  The bare-bones foundation.  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 sugar.

            Don’t be scared to grab a dictionary or type something into Google.  Nobody will judge you for it.  I do it all the time, even just to confirm I’m right about exactly what a word means.  Hell, I did it twice late last night as I was finishing up copyedits on a book.

4 – Exercise your mind

            I just talked about this a while ago, too.  I’m a big believer that the mind is like any other muscle group.  You can’t just do one thing with it.  Don’t be scared to experiment with other creative things.  Build a bookshelf.  Play with LEGO bricks.  Cook a meal.  Sketch something.  Paint something.  Sing something.  Hell, balance your checkbook.  Do your taxes.  Let your brain flex in different ways.

5 – Exercise your body

            Another sad truth about writing.  It generally involves sitting on your butt and well, not doing much.  From a physical point of view.

            Cool science fact.  The brain needs oxygen to work.  Oxygen comes from blood.  Blood flow increases with exercise and decreases when we... well, sit on out butts.  So exercise actually makes it easier to write.

            And I don’t mean go buy a punching bag or get a gym membership.  If you can do these things, great, but just stand up from your desk or kitchen table and move around a bit.  Go for a walk.  Play with your dogs.  Just get that blood flowing.  Khorne cares not from where the blood flows, as long as it flows!  Skulls for the skull throne!

            Wait, sorry, ignore those last bits...

6 – Learn the Rules

            I know nobody likes to hear this part but... there are rules to writing.  Like spelling (see # 3 up above). They aren’t ironclad things, but they do exist and they exist for a reason.  Rules are the common ground we interact on as authors and readers.  You know why I can’t read Chinese?  Because I don’t know the basic language rules of Chinese.  Those writers are communicating in a way I can’t understand.  And the same holds for writing in English if I don’t know the basic rules of English.

            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 – Have Fun

            I know, I know... After some of the other things I’ve said, this sounds impossible, right?

            Whatever reason I have for writing, I should be having fun with it.  Don’t listen to those weirdoes 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 want to spend all my time doing something I inherently don’t like?  Believe it or not, you can be a real writer without ever once feel tortured, anguished, or misunderstood.  Like so many things in life, if writing makes me feel miserable and frustrated... maybe I’m doing it wrong.

            Again, be really cautions about listening to those “artistic” folks who insist writing has to be  a traumatic experience.  Write about stuff you love, about ideas you’re enthusiastic about.  Let writing be the high point of your day, and let that joy carry through onto the page.

           
8 – Write

            Yeah, again.  It’s important.

            At the end of the day, the only real yardstick we have for progress is making words appear on the screen (or in the legal pad or on that parchment you make yourself at that secluded cabin out in the hills).  I can attend all the conferences and seminars I want, read every instructional book or blog post with a list of rules, but if I’m not actually writing... it doesn’t really 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... but I never wrote anything.  I never made any headway.  And if I don’t write—if I never produce a finished manuscript—it means I can never write a second manuscript.  I can never have a better draft. 

            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.

            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 necessarily mean I’m doing anything wrong.  It doesn’t mean I’m doing anything right, either, but it doesn’t mean automatic failure.

            This is why I always get a bit leery about gurus and books that say things like “by page twenty-three, you should have...” or “heroic quests follow this pattern...”  A side-effect of saying “do this” is people get the idea things always need to be done that way.  If the worksheet’s telling me I must know the answer to these seventeen questions about my character, the implication is that if I only know twelve I must be a bad writer who made a bad character.  Even if I know the answer to seventeen different questions, or twenty-nine other questions, the book said those were the important ones.

            Yeah, screw all that.  Ignore it. 

            I read these books sometimes, but I don’t worry about ignoring half of what they say and just pulling out what works for me and the story I’m telling.  Or using none of it and just tossing the whole thing.  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.

            For example, if everybody’s doing lists of ten, you could just stop at nine.  That’s okay.  It doesn’t mean your list is wrong

            And that’s that.

            I’ll see you all at the end of the week for the usual Black Friday talk, and next Thursday we’ll talk about, well... next time.

            Until then, go write.

            Once you nap off all that turkey.

Anneal Spilling Post

            Oh, get your mind out of the gutter.  It has to do with strengthening metal and glass. Which kinda illustrates the point I wanted to make...

            Well, you know what I haven’t talked about in a while?  Spelling!  Sure, it comes up a lot in random posts, but I wanted to focus on it for a moment.

            However, I didn’t want to just shout at you not to depend on your spellchecker.  I’ve done that plenty of times.  For now, I wanted to talk specifically about misusing words--valid, correctly-spelled words and the problems this creates for my readers.

            What’s that?  How can it be a problem if I’m using wards that are spilled the write way? Wall, here’s the think.  While spell-chick well ignore these worms—because all if then art correctly smelled—a person won’t.  Their going two peck up on each won, even if there pretty close too what I indented, and they’ll stubble wile they reed.

            And, sure, it’s easy to laugh off sentences or examples like the ones above because the rhythm of the sentence is still there.  It only takes a moment for my mind to adjust and then I’m reading just as fast as I would normally.  Understanding the actual meaning, too.

            But it only takes a small slip of a finger to type closet when I meany closed, and that’s a pretty big break.  It reads different and sounds different in my head.  Like how you stumbled over meany at the start of this paragraph when it should’ve been meant. A ridiculously simple typo that spellcheckers will just wave past, but it derails the reading experience.

            Here’s a couple of misused words I’ve collected over the past few months, in no particular order. These are words that were misused by journalists, politicians, even a copyeditor.  Plus the words they meant to use.  I think.

milk-toast vs. milquetoast

effect vs. affect

affects vs. effects

horde vs. hoard

hawk vs. hock

shotty vs. shoddy

peel vs. peal

peek vs. peak

peak vs. pique

heroin vs. heroine

cite vs.  site

desert vs. dessert

            I’ve seen people make a lot of excuses for this sort of thing in their manuscripts or articles.  Readers will get it from context.  The story is strong enough to cover for things like vocabulary.  An editor will fix it when it gets published.  Heck, one person shrugged it off and said “I’m just happy someone’s reading it.”

            Reading for how long, though?  Every time I have one of these, my reader is knocked out of enjoying my story and needs to figure out what the hell I'm trying to say, and that means I’ve killed the flow. It’ll create confusion as it guides the reader's thoughts down the wrong paths and possibly shift the tone... creating more confusion.  Look at heroin or heroine.  If I plan on having my protagonist do one of these all weekend... well, I really need to be sure which one I want to use.  Those are two very different weekends, and each one’s going to make my reader view the protagonist in a certain way.

            Y’see, Timmy, this is why I need to know more than my spellchecker.  If I mess up, I’d guess 99% of the time it’s going to suggest a word.  And that suggested word will always be spelled correctly.

            But... it isn’t necessarily the word I meant to use.  Just off my own experience, I’d guess at least one out of four times it’s the wrong word. Maybe as high as one out of three.  If I’m just glazing over and automatically tapping change, I’m going to end up with a lot of mistakes. 

            And if I don’t know if the new word is a mistake or not... well...

            I probably won’t need to worry about an editor fixing it when it gets published. 

            Next time, I’d like to share this little idea I had about how active my plot and story should be.

            Until then... go rite.

Help From the Internet

            A random thought...

            Well, not that random.

            The other day I made a smart-ass response to a friend’s Twitter comment about different online writing aids and apps. There’s a bunch of them out there these days.  Some of them highly publicized.  My comment was... snarkily negative.  Let’s leave it at that.

            I know. Snarkiness with friends.  What has the internet come to?  It’s all downhill from here.

            Anyway, it did get me thinking about these different sites a bit.  I mean, a good writer wants to use all the tools available, right?  Is this just me inching ever-closer to cranky old manhood?

            I don’t think so.

            Okay, first off, let’s not even talk about the information side of this. If someone wants to hand over a bunch of their intellectual property to a random website and feels completely confident they’ve read and understood every single line of the terms of service... that’s up to them.  We’ll leave that discussion for others.

            I want to blather on about how useful these sites are, both short-term and long-term.

            So... let’s talk machines.

            (I feel hundreds of fingers poised over keyboards, ready to lunge at the comments section...)

            The most common computer tool we’re going to encounter is a spellchecker.  Pretty much every word processor has one.  Lots of websites do, too.  Blog sites like this one, Twitter, Facebook—they’ve all got some basic spellcheck capacity.

            That’s the important bit.  Basic.  The absolute best spellcheckers are, if I had to put a number to it, correct maybe 97-98% of the time. Don’t quote figures at me—I’m saying right up front that’s just based off my own experience.  These are the spellcheckers we usually find in the word processors.  The online ones... I’d drop it down into the 88-90% range.  Maybe even a tiny bit lower.

            What does this mean?  Well, there are words that have accepted alternate spellings, but a spellchecker will say they’re wrong.  There are also lots of common words—especially for genre writers—that won’t be included.  I was surprised to discover cyborg wasn’t included in my spellchecker’s vocabulary.  Or Cthulhu.  Okay, not  quite as surprised on that one, but still...

            Keep in mind, spelling is a basic, quantfiable aspect of writing. We can say, no question,whether or not I’ve spelled quantifiable correctly in that last sentence (I didn’t). That’s a hard fact (and, credit where credit is due, the spellchecker kept insisting we needed to change it).

            Also—a spellchecker doesn’t know what word I meant to use.  It can only tell me about the word on the page.  Or the closest correctly-spelled word to that word on the page.  Maybe it’s the one I wanted, maybe not.  At this point it’s up to me to know if that’s the right word or not.  And if I don’t know... well, things aren’t looking good for my manuscript.

            Consider all the things I just said.  The gaps. The problems.  The rate of accuracy.  And this is with the easiest aspect of writing.  Spelling is a yes or no thing.  It’s right or it isn’t.  This is something a computer should excel at... and the online ones are getting a B+ at best.

            How accurate do you think an online grammar program is?

           Grammar’s a lot more complex than spelling.  Spelling’s just a basic yes or no, but grammar has a ton of conditionals.  Plus, in fiction, we bend and break the rules of grammar a lot.  I tend to use a lot of sentence fragments because I like the punch they give.  A friend of mine uses long, complex sentences that can border on being run-ons.  I know a few people who remove or add commas to help the dramatic flow of a sentence.     And hell... dialogue?  Dialogue’s a mess when it comes to grammar.  A big, organic mess.  Fragments, mismatched tenses, mismatched numbers, so many dangly bits...  And it needs to be. That’s how we talk.  Like I’ve mentioned in the past, dialogue that uses perfect grammar sounds flat and unnatural.

            Think about this. I’ve talked before about Watson, the massive supercomputer that was specifically designed by MIT to understand human speech... and still had a pretty iffy success rate.  Around 72% if my math is right.  And it might not be--I'm not a mathematician, after all.
            D’you think the people who made that grammar website put in the time and work that was put into Watson?

            So, again... how accurate is that online grammar program going to be? 

            More to the point, how useful is it going to be as a tool?  Would you pay for a DVR that only records 3/4 of the shows you tell it to?  Do you want a phone that drops one out of every four calls?

            Now, I’d never say there’s no use for these tools or sites. But it’s very important to understand they’re not going to do the job for me.  They’re the idiot writing partner who’d really good at one thing, so I kinda need to keep both eyes on them when they’re set loose to do... well, that thing.  I need to know how to spell words and what they mean.  I still need to know the rules of grammar—even moreso if I plan on breaking them.

            See, that’s the long-term problem.  Assuming this professional writing thing is my long-term goal, at some point I need to learn spelling and grammar.  If I’m going to keep depending on someone (or something) else to do the work for me... when am I going to learn how to do the work? 

            Y’see, Timmy, these programs and apps are kinda like alcohol.  They won’t make up for a lack of knowledge. They’ll just emphasize it.  I definitely don’t want to be dependant on them.  At best, if I know what I’m doing and I’m careful (and use them in moderation), they might make things a little more smooth and painless.

            Next, a quick screenwriting tip.

            Until then, go write.

            You go write.  Not your computer.

            Go on...  go write.

Sentence DNA

            Okay, so, a few weeks back (before the amazing ten year anniversary) I said I’d blab on a bit about words.  That time has finally come.

            Be ascared. Be very ascared.
            Anyway...

            It’s been a while, so I figured I’d bring up spelling again.  I’m sure it seems silly that I keep revisiting this topic again and again.  But there’s a reason for it.  Words are the absolute core of what we do as writers, the bare-bones building blocks.  They’re the DNA of storytelling, the atoms to my sentence molecules.

            I must have a solid, working vocabulary if I want to be a writer. No question, no excuses.  I need to know what words mean.  I have to know how to spell them.  I have to be able to tell them apart.

            That last one’s a killer.  We’ve all seen people go on about there/they’re/their and of course about its and it’s.  But I’ve seen folks mess up corporeal and corpulent. I’ve seen major websites confuse possible and posable.

            Granted, ninety-five percent of the people making these mistakes aren’t claiming to be writers.  They’re just folks trying to express their thoughts online.  This isn’t their field of specialty.  As I’ve pointed out before, I can cook, but I’m not a chef.  I can do an oil change and rotate my tires, but I’m no mechanic.  And I don’t think the folks at my garage would look down at me for not being able to tell a carburetor and a fuel pump apart on sight.

            But...

            I’d probably look down on them if they couldn’t tell the two apart.  I’d eye all their work and claims with a bit of skepticism.  Truth is, I probably wouldn’t trust them with my car anymore. It’s the kind of ignorance that calls all their work into question.

            That’s why spelling is so important for writers.  It’s one of the first benchmarks we need to pass—one of the first indicators that we know what we’re doing.  I can’t tell you how many times, as a contest reader, I would start judging a screenplay because it had two or three misspelled or misused words in the first two pages.  If I hit twenty pages and there were more than ten typos...  Well, even when I wasn’t supposed to judge on spelling, there’s simply no way that’s not going to color my thoughts when I hit another problem.

            And y’know what?  The scripts with spelling problems always had another problem. Always.

            I wasn’t alone in this, just in case you’re thinking I’m some hypercritical jerk who’s scared of newcomers taking his job or something (keep in mind, this was almost eight or nine years ago—nobody wanted my job back then).  A good number of readers—and editors and agents—are also writers.  Even when we’re not supposed to judge on spelling... we all kinda judge on spelling.

            Anybody who’s a professional in this word-making field will.

            That said... here’s a list of paired-up words.  They’re homophones or malonyms or just... well, screwups.  As always, all of these examples come from actual mistakes I’ve seen in the wild—in books, catalogs, and on various websites that try to claim a degree of professionalism.  Hell, one of these was in an article about how to be a better writer!

            Yeah, it’s just painful to think people messed up some of these...

mote vs. moot

conscious vs. conscience

defuse vs. diffuse

reign vs. rein

angle vs. angel

dual vs. duel

idle vs. idol

dyed vs. died

pique vs. peak

emulate vs. immolate

bawl vs. ball

jive vs. jibe

do vs. due

sleight vs. slight

rouge vs. rogue

marital vs. martial

hansom vs. handsome

don vs. dawn

gild vs. guild

turn style vs. turnstile

            Neat list, eh?

            Did you know what both words meant?  In every example?  Because, again, I need to know what words mean.  All the words.  Not a pretty good idea, not a general sense of how it works, not pretty-sure-that’s-the-one-I’m-looking-for.  These are my basics, after all.  This is sugar vs. salt for a chef, or carburetor vs. fuel pump for a mechanic.  If I mess these up... well, I can’t be shocked when people stop treating me like a professional.

            Actually, if you don’t mind me running a bit long, I want to toss out something else here, too.  Another point I’ve mentioned before, but it still bears repeating.

            Sometimes, for storytelling reasons, maybe I want spelling mistakes in my work. Maybe it’s an epistolary story, or just a jutted-down note within the narrative, and the character in question isn’t supposed to be all that bright. Then it makes sense that they may not be good at spelling, yes?

            I need to be super-careful when I do this.  This is one of those things that can make me lose points with editors and writers.  Seriously.  I’ve seen both.

            D’you notice up above when I’d written jutted instead of jotted?  Not a huge mistake.  Understandable, even—U and O are pretty close on the keyboard.

            Which means, of course, there’s a chance that’s an actual mistake, not one I added in for narrative effect.  If I see somebody mess up they’re and their, I’m left wondering if the character’s not too bright... or the author isn’t. There’s no real way to be sure.

            Compare that to when I used ascared up top. It’s not a word you’ll find in many dictionaries, but it’s a generally accepted colloquialism. It’s also (take notes now) a spelling that would raise flags for copy editors or even the dumbest of spellcheckers. And readers. We’d immediately question how such a blatant, easily caught error made it in, and the default assumption would be that I meant for it to be.

            Y’see, Timmy, I need to be smart about deliberate mistakes in my writing. It needs to be very clear they’re deliberate—screw-ups the character made, not me.  Because if they’re not sure, most readers are going to assume it’s my mistake.  And as I mentioned above, if I make too many mistakes...

            Well, again, I can’t be shocked by how people react.

            Next time...

            This is getting tough, because I’m thinking of making Tuesday posts a semi-regular thing, but they’ll probably be a bit broader and not quite as writing-specific. So “next time” won’t actually deal with writing, but it’ll still—

            Y’know what? Just keep checking back here.  It’ll be worth it.  Hopefully.

            Until then, go write.