McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Books about writing

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Starbeam:
Not so much about how to write, but just about writing.  I went to the bookstore the other day, and browsed through the writing section, which I do sometimes when I get bored.  I came across a couple books that kinda kicked my mind into overdrive.  Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury, and I forgot the title of the other, but it's by Terry Brooks.  Neither is really much about how to go about writing, but more just about how they write and some of the things that affected them.  Somewhat similar to King's On Writing.  Figured I'd mention them and maybe they'll be helpful to others.

Few others I bought but haven't read yet, Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maas, Janet Evanovich's book about how she writes(don't remember the title), and some book called Write.  I skimmed the Evanovich book, and the one thing I pulled out of that was that she doesn't outline, she storyboards.  Silly little word change to some, but for others, like me, that could be a huge change that makes it easier to do.  The write book was something about making the left and right brain work together to overcome writer's block, but from doing the little exercises in the first few chapters, I don't seem to have the sort of problem that's geared toward.  Though out of that, I got the setting word count goals for a reward, and wrote almost 1400 words this week, and now my b/f's going to take me out to eat.

Kali:
Writing the Breakout Novel was one of the rare writing books that had a piece of advice that I've used repeatedly since I read it.  That alone makes it a book I always recommend to people. 

Starbeam:
I usually don't bother with books that are more how to type things, but the guy owns/runs a literary agency with quite a few names I recognize on the client list.  And has a seminar thing with the same name.  I figured he probably knows what he's talking about.

Kali:
That's why I picked it up.  So many books on writing are by people I've never heard of, it's hard to take them seriously.  Well, to be fair I hadn't heard of Donald Maas at the time either, but like you said, his credentials spoke for themselves.

And it's different than other "how to write" books. It's not...  It's not long, rambling discussions on the power of the outline or anything. It's practical advice, things you can try in your own writing.  The bit I talked about above, for example, was when he suggested consolidating characters.  If you have a bunch of characters, try combining two or more of them into one character. Then instead of having a lot of semi-formed characters, you get one really rich, layered character. 

I have a before-and-after of a story I wrote where I combined the main character's ex-boyfriend and the man who wants to use her for her talent into the same guy.  I ditched the ex-boyfriend idea, but gave the user and the main character the same sort of irritate-each-other vibe, plus gave the user the ex-boyfriend's role in the story -- that of partial antagonist and foil for the main -- and they clicked beautifully.  I ended up with a really cool dynamic because of that change. 

And I've used that advice in almost every story I've written since. In my NaNo, the two cops have become one cop with a dual function, most recently. 

Murphy's Stunt Double:
Another good one by Stephen King was "Danse Macabre" - it was the text book he wrote to teach his horror writing class from. It's very good, and in it he goes into what makes horror scary.

I've also heard good things about Natalie Goldberg's "Writing Down the Bones", and Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird". But I've gotten the most use out of "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron.

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