Welcome to Writing Without Rules: Deep Dives
Being the first in an infinite series of bloviations.
HEY THERE. Welcome to the new essay series, Writing Without Rules: Deep Dives. Otherwise known as the Jeff Somers Has Way Too Much Time on His Hands series. We’re officially launching on June 15th, so feel free to sign up and await further instructions.
So, I’m Jeff Somers, and I’m a writer. I’ve published nine novels and dozens of short stories, I’m a Contributing Editor at Writer’s Digest, a full-time freelance writer who actually pays his bills with his writing skilz, and author of Writing Without Rules: How to Write & Sell a Novel Without Guidelines, Experts, or (Occasionally) Pants. I also already have a more general Jeff Somers is Kind of Awesome Newsletter. What does all that qualify me to write about in ritzy essays? Nothing, honestly.
But I spend a lot of my time writing about, well, writing. And stories. And how they work. I already spend a lot of my time writing about the craft of writing—getting into the weeds of the process, deliberating stuff like how to world-build or how to make your characters sound like real people. I even have a podcast where I natter on about my own writing. But that’s very technical, nitty-gritty stuff, you know? I also have many deep thoughts on stories in a broader sense, like what actually makes them work. Why do we love Star Wars so much we’ll keep lining up to watch the increasingly infuriating iterations? Why did we almost take to the streets to burn down our cities after the Game of Thrones finale? What makes us care so damn much about a story?
So, I decided to start writing down these deep thoughts about entertainments—TV shows and films, video games and such. I’m calling them Deep Dives not because there will be a lot of deep thoughts (disclaimer: there will not) but because I’m going to be digging under the surface to poke at the mechanics of stories using examples we’re all pretty familiar with. Honestly, there are no rules here: I’ll be writing about whatever I feel like, and try my best to be interesting, entertaining, and possibly informative in some way.
In other words, these are not going to be detailed, scientific essays about the art of tellin’ stories. They’re going to be the equivalent of getting a drunk dial from me at 3AM because I’m feeling nauseous in the back of an Uber and want to tell you why I think Bridgerton’s color-coding was brilliant.
But the key takeaway is that discussions like this are useful, even necessary, if you want to write—or even if you just want to enjoy stories on a deeper level. Writing can sometimes feel like trying to come up with a Grand Unifying Theory that ties all the advice you get about dialog, plot, world-building, characterization, and everything else into an algorithm that begins to hum mysteriously and produce fictions. Those technical aspects are vital—but so is a more primal and less specific exploration of the feel of a story and the often subliminal reasons we respond to it. If you’ve ever read a bad book or watched a terrible TV show you know: It might be very slick and professional, it might have all the things that make up a story, but it sucked anyway. We’re going to dig into why things suck or don’t suck.
It’s important to note that this newsletter is voluntary, so don’t be alarmed. There will be no actual 3AM drunken phone calls. Unless that’s something y’all want and would be willing to pay for. I am open to all ideas.
Thanks for reading. If you haven’t yet, go on and subscribe—it’s free! Unless you value your time here on this Earth, in which case I advise caution.
Excitment.