In an effort to clean up my blog roll, I'm moving my writing advice list to a linked blog post.If anyone else has read any good writing advice books, please mention the book and author in the comments section on this post and I'll add it to the list. Much thanks!
Writing Advice Books Highly Recommended by Josie:
Goal, Motivation, Conflict - Debra Dixon
Techniques of the Selling Writer - Dwight Swain
The Career Novelist - Donald Maass
Writing the Breakout Novel - Donald Maass
Making a Literary Life - Carolyn See
Characters and Viewpoint - Orson Scott Card
Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer - Peter Turchi
Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott
On Writing - Stephen King
Becoming a Writer - Dorothea Brande
The Art of Dramatic Writing - Lajos Egri
The Elements of Storytelling - Peter Rubie
How to Write a Damn Good Novel - James N. Frey
The First Five Pages - Noah Lukeman
The Secrets of Power Negotiation - Roger Dawson
Don't Murder Your Mystery: 24 Fiction Writing Techniques To Save Your Manuscript From Turning Up D.O.A. - Chris Roerdon
A Writer's Time: Making the Time to Write - Kenneth Atchity
Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need - Blake Snyder
The Shortest Distance Between You and a Published Book: Everything You Need to Know in the Order You Need to Know It - Susan Page
Writing Advice Books Highly Recommended by Friends of Josie's Blog:
jjdebenedictis recommends:
Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee - contains excellent writing advice for both screenwriters and novelists
Travis Erwin recommends:
The Weekend Novelist by Robert Ray
Kanani recommends:
"WHAT IF?" Writing Exercises for the Fiction Writer by Bernays and Painter.
Solid advice with good literature examples as well as exercises. Probably the best I've ever found.
Merry Jelinek recommends:
one from The Elements of Fiction Writing series by Monica Wood - Description; How to engage readers ad keep stories moving by creating vivid, believable depictions of people, places, events and actions. There's some great examples in there about how to build your characters' environment to mirror the emotion of the scene.
ML Joy recommends:
The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes: (And How to Avoid Them) by Jack M. Bickham
19 comments:
Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee contains excellent writing advice for both screenwriters and novelists.
Thanks JJ! I've added it to the list.
The Weekend Novelist by Robert Ray
Hello Travis and welcome! Thanks much for the recommendation.
You have all my books on your list already! I love the Pat Walsh book! That is my favorite one!
I'll second the recommendations for Stephen King and Robert McKee.
Thanks for putting the list together.
YES! There's a very good one called, "WHAT IF?" Writing Exercises for the Fiction Writer by Bernays and Painter.
Solid advice with good literature examples as well as exercises. You'll have to find it through Amazon because it was meant as a college text for creative writing programs.
Probably the best I've ever found.
Thanks to all who have weighed in.
Keep the suggestions coming!
Great idea, Josephine! I can only think of one that's not on here -
It's from The Elements of Fiction Writing series by Monica Wood - Description; How to engage readers ad keep stories moving by creating vivid, believable depictions of people, places, events and actions.
There's some great examples in there about how to build your characters' environment to mirror the emotion of the scene. I found it when I was still in college and I still page through it now and again in between revisions.
Lots of good titles listed so far, advice books I'll be checking out myself. Keep 'em coming!
Just a note to say well done for your pitch over at the Bookends Blog - I hope you've got your submission package ready! :)
Thanks for some new books here.
Patti, thanks for stopping by. My blogger friends have contributed some great advice books the list.
Just wanted to stop in, like conduit, and congratulate you on your pitch at bookends...
Yay, you!!! Great, great work, I'm so excited for you!
Merry, I was so busy reading the comments on my revised pitch over at crapometer to even see it!
That and struggling to finish school projects. Ugh!
But what an even bigger shocker it was since I was certain that pitch sucked and I deleted it hoping she hadn't saved or archived it.
My very first version I managed to get rid of since I was fast on the draw, and I'd assumed I'd done the same with the second version.
Not.
Either way, I still pitching Donald Maaass that idea in January.
Years and years ago I pitched this to an agent as "Silence of the Lambs" meets "La Femme Nikita" meets "The Paper Chase" as they said they were VERY interested, so I guess I've always known it was an idea, at least, with some potential.
Thanks for the praise!
One by one, we will all become published authors.
WOOOOOO HOOOOOO, JD!!!! Just saw your pitch reviewed at the BookEnds blog! So cool! So excellent! Can't wait to read the published novel some day!
Precie, I was sure she'd hate my pitch! Which is why I deleted it!
At least we both know we'll have one agent on our query list to be hopeful about.
Criminal Forensics? That is way cool!
Did you have Stephen King's On Writing? And then I was blown away by Francine Prose's Reading Like A Writer, although it's usually shelved in literary criticism rather than writing instruction. Excellent book, though.
The NaNo book, No Plot, No Problem! has very little on how to write, but its a wealth of information on how to navigate the mental waters of writing a novel, and also how to make writing a daily discipline. A few years ago, I thought the book was fluff, but this year I checked it out and loved it.
Thanks for popping by my blog!
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