8 hours ago, Aditus said:

And then there are those where it's undecided...

 

burned or burnt?

This isn't so much undecided but more dependent on grammar usage. Burnt is most often used as an adjective directly preceding the noun (burnt orange, for example), while you'll find burned more common as a verb. Irregular -t verb endings are typically ones you just have to memorize since the part of speech doesn't always dictate the spelling, though. I can't even tell students to just spell it how it sounds because some -ed endings still sound like -t. Super frustrating since most grammar does have a reason or rule, even if they look at me cross-eyed because I'm telling them "We spell words with this vowel team, unless it's followed by this, this, or that letter, or occasionally this one." 🤯

Also, I can't tell you how many times I correct young students with "We goed..." Um, no "You went..." Irregular verbs are right up there with pronoun confusion of she/her. 

Just now, Aditus said:

So, the title of my story Burnt Dreams would be correct? When I wrote the story people told me choose what you want, there's no rule.

You wouldn't be "wrong" either way, as both are accepted past-tense forms of burned. But unless you're writing someone as a snooty asshole, then you typically wouldn't use burnt for a verb because it sounds pretentious since the current common usage is either used as an adjective (as you correctly did with your title) or to indicate historically common spelling/phrasing. Grammar has a lot of hard/fast rules and then some like these which are more dependent on consistency. That's why I'm always for learning what the rules are because then if an author decides to break them, they can do it consistently. That, above all, is what I strive for when I write. 

Just to complicate things further, the burned vs burnt is also an English dialect issue. In American English, burned is the norm, but in British (and Australian) English, burnt is the norm.

So, you'll words that end with a "t" instead of "ed" more commonly in writing from countries that also use words like "colour" instead of "color". That's one of the things I've "learnt" while developing as a writer...

Here's a link on British vs American irregular verbs. It's only a sample, but it shows some of the complexity in the different dialects of English. The Cambridge Dictionary site has a list of irregular verbs in British English.