TheNextBigWriter Premium → Favorite book on the craft of writing? - Writing Craft
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I've trolled through Amazon recently looking for great books on the craft of writing, only to come up pretty much empty. There seems to be an increasing trend where books are broken into bite-size Kindle fare that sell for $4 - $10 each. Has anyone come across a great book on this topic that made you a better writer? Please tell me there's more out there than Fiction for Dummies.
Thanks
Dirk
These are some that have guided me:
The Art of Fiction - John Gardner
The Book on Writing - Paul LaRocque
The Way of the Writer - Charles Johnson
Stein on Writing - Sol Stein (probably my favorite)
How to Grow a Novel - Sol Stein
On Writing - Stephen King (not a fan of his writing, but this is a great read)
On Writing Well - William Zinsser (generally on non-fiction, but much is applicable to fiction)
Thank you, Temple. I'll look into those. I'm on a limited budget, so I have to restrict myself to one or two.
I'll repeat my recommendation for =The Secrets of Story= by Matt Bird.
"How to Write Good," by Michael O'Donohue. Best tip ever: At the end, have all the characters run over by a truck; if it's a story about truckers, have them run over by a big truck. Never failed yet. (Yes, it's a joke. National Lampoon. And they had an issue with spoilers and had to say "no joke" for the end of "Lonely are the Brave.") But originally, Gene Roddenberry thought of having the series end with the Enterprise blown up. (Which wouldn't have been fatal should, as it did, the series rose from the ashes. Heinlein, in "The Rolling Stones," had the family pay their bills by a series on subetheric TV which they finally ended by having the hero at the bottom of an ocean on Jupiter, tied up and running out of oxygen, with menacing methane monsters closing in (no, they didn't know what they were). When they had to resume the series, the hero was just about to explain how he got out of this when an alert was rung and he ran off. So, if Roddenberry had blown up the Enterprise, in the first movie, as Admiral Kirk was about to explain, there would be a red alert.
Yes, writing tips from a comedy writer and the dean of science fiction. Can get any better than that.
Seriously, I often refer to Ronald Tobias' "20 Master Plots (And How to Build Them.)" And I ignore Stephen King.
The Emotions Thesaurus. While not a "book on writing" per-se, it's a fabulous companio for "show don't tell".
Kiss,
Gacela
That's a great book. Very handy.
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TheNextBigWriter Premium → Favorite book on the craft of writing? - Writing Craft
