Cats Rants

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[Chatty Catty's Writers' Resources]
[Commonly Confused Words and Their Meanings]
[Research & Grammar Links -- includes slash & adult]

Writing doesn't just happen. It's not magical, showing up on your doorstep to grant you three wishes. Writing is a craft, an art form where a story spontaneously jumps from the brain to the fingers as fast as a pen may cross paper. However, it is also a planned exercise in mental logic in which the author goes from A to B to C in a manner known only to herself. In order for the author to complete her exercise and make it seem an effortless bit a magic and spontaneity, she must practice and plan and rewrite and perfect her craft to the point where it does flow from her mind to her fingers as fast as the logical brain sends the impulse to write. Fortunately, the author has many things to help her gain perfection: time, perseverance, a knowledge of grammar and spelling, a lot of rewrites, the ability to self-edit, and the use of an editor or editors to develop a smooth style, solid characters, and situations that are logical enough to be believed.

Spelling is one of the cornerstones of writing. As a writer, you are trying to make yourself understood. If you misspell a word it interrupts the flow of your writing as the reader is forced to stop and figure out exactly what it is you're saying. Spelling not only means actually misspelling a word, but using the wrong word in place of the correct one, words that sound alike, but have different meanings. Examples would be using 'your' instead of 'you're' or 'except' instead of 'accept'. Always use the correct word to better convey what you mean when you write. The reader will thank you for it by coming back to your stories again and again. After all, how hard is it, in this age of computers, to press the spell check key on your word processor?

Another writing cornerstone is grammar. As you write more you will become more aware of what you are writing. A good writer understands how to use grammar to set a scene or show the attitude of a character. Now, this doesn't mean that you must always use textbook perfect grammar, but you must know how to manipulate it, how to use your words and sentences to get your point across. If you understand the medium in which you work, if you know the nuances of it, then you can play all you want, and what you write will be the better for it. Then whoever reads what you have written, even if it's only one sentence, will understand your meaning.

Beyond the mechanics of grammar and spelling come other things: characterization, plot, antagonists, protagonists, setting, and on, and on, and on. Should you have secondary or even tertiary characters? How much explanation is not enough or how much is too much? Does the reader need to know there's a scratch on the left front fender of the anonymous car speeding down the road? There's one answer to all those questions: It depends on what you're writing.

What are you, the author, writing about? Is it a simple PWP (Plot? What plot?) or do you have a five page outline setting on your desk? Is it a straight story that goes from A to Z, a single plot, or are there little twists and turns put in to lead the reader astray, sub-plots? Is the story horror, mystery, adventure, romance ... what? As you become more experienced in your craft you should undergo a desire to expand your horizons, to change your style, to even change the types of stories you produce. After all, you don't really want to keep writing and rewriting the same three page story over and over again, do you? Didn't think so.

You may say you're primarily writing for yourself, to please you, which is fine, since many writers do that anyway. If you are only writing for yourself you can do anything you want, be as sloppy as you please, because your idea, your story, is right there in your head and you don't need to write out all the details. For most people though, that kind of writing becomes stale after a while, and the need to find out if others can see what you see asserts itself. When you send the story out for others to read, the details need to be there. The readers can't see inside your head, they only know what you tell them. If you don't tell them enough, they'll be confused. If you tell them too much, they'll get bored. As an author, you must cultivate an awareness of your audience. Know they're there. Understand that every time you write something, there's an invisible person leaning over your shoulder trying to figure out what it is you're trying to say. That person is your audience. If you forget about them, they'll leave you. If you court their favor, they'll be with you forever.

It's a good idea to develop the habit of self-editing, better known as the dreaded rewrite. Most writers hate rewrites. Very few actually love them. They are necessary, however. Rewriting is your chance to polish your story, to give it that little extra pizzazz and sparkle here and there, and to find errors or problems. You might not find every word or comma you accidentally left out, but you might find that plot hole you missed, or that scene you forgot to change on page six that is the precursor to the new scene on page twenty-seven you just wrote. You might even find that you really didn't want your character to give the whole plot away on page three of a forty-five page story. This is your chance to go over your story, analyze it, and make changes before anyone else sees it.

After you've gone over your story and are satisfied with it, don't hesitate to send it to an editor or beta reader, as they're called on the web. What's that? You want to know why, after all the work you've done you should send your golden words to someone else to be torn to shreds? That's easy: you're not perfect. No one is perfect. Every writer who ever lived has thrown out more clinkers than diamonds. Why should you be any different? The editor is there to help you make what you write better. They'll look for the words you accidentally left out, the plot holes you've missed, the awkward phrasing that's crept in. They may even have knowledge you do not possess on some aspect of your story. What if you had written that your main character looked out a window to watch the sun rise over the ocean, and that character lived on the west coast? An editor would remind you that the sun rises in the east, not the west. Don't ever discount the value of a second or even a third pair of eyes.

I guess what all this is leading to is that stories are so much more than words strung out on paper. They're the very lives and souls of those who write them. You give of yourself when you write a story. Don't you want people to see the very best of you?

Here're a few little tricks that might help you improve your writing, or at least start you thinking about it more.

Observe your favorite writers and emulate them. Think about it. Which writers produce the best stories? How do the grammar and spelling in their stories differ from the stories you didn't like? Why is this? How can you apply this to your writing? What is it about your favorite authors that makes you want to read their stories over and over? Think about these questions for a while and you might be surprised at your own conclusions.

When you write, always remember to apply 5W-H: who, what, when, where, why, and how. You cannot go wrong if you apply these six simple questions to a sentence, a paragraph, and, most importantly, a story. If you can answer these questions, and answer them well, then your story will be halfway to wonderful.

Before you write your story, have an idea of what you're going to do, what you're going to accomplish, how you're going to do it, and how it will be resolved. It doesn't matter if your idea is one sentence, a whole paragraph, or a complete outline, as long you, the author, understand what you're trying to do. In other words: have an 'idea' of what the beginning, middle, and end of your story will be. Of course, then you have to convey that to the reader.

Spelling. Spelling. Spelling. I cannot emphasize this enough. If you know how to spell, or at the very least, if you recognize when you make a mistake, then what you convey to your reader is clearer, easier for the reader to understand. You will find that spelling well makes the job of expressing yourself through writing much easier. Of, course the easiest way to improve your spelling, is to have a dictionary handy so you may look up any words you're not certain you've spelled correctly.

Different kinds of dictionaries will have different words in them, some not found in other dictionaries. Some dictionaries deal in college level words, foreign words, even slang. Dictionaries are not all built alike. Plus, I'm the original 'can't spell worth sh*t kid.' Every word I write goes through my spell checker, sometimes more than once. You'd be surprised at the errors you find that way, and how much your spelling will improve if you pay attention to the words you consistently misspell, even the ones you know that you know how to spell.

Another way to find mistakes is by reading your story line by line, looking at the words to see if they fit the words around them. I do it. I have to do it. I'm not in any way near perfect when it comes to spelling. Many spelling errors are a case of fumble fingers, or of the mind getting ahead of the hands. Everyone does it, it's not a bad thing, but you should be aware you do it so you can correct yourself and not depend on others to find your most common mistakes for you.

Use your word processor when you write your story. When you're done, or done with the current writing session, save the file to look at later. Don't ever write a story as part of an e-mail and just send it off. If you use your word processor you'll find it's so much easier to check for spelling and grammar mistakes, and you won't send a story out with glaring plot holes or wish you could take it back and rewrite just that one little scene. The word processor is there as a writing aid, a tool for your use. Use it!

Okay, I'll jump off my soapbox now. I just want you to understand where I'm coming from.

Enjoy my little pet peeves, and if you have a few of your own, drop me a line and I'll see what I can do about adding them here. Don't be shy, just go right ahead and let me know what your pet peeve is. You saw the name at the top, right? Well, think of me as an Ann Landers of grammatical pet peeves. Of course, if all you want to do is moan and complain, talk to the hand.