What are the books about fiction writing you most recommend be in every fiction writer's library (or what you find indespensable)?
My picks:
Robert Olen Butler's From Where You Dream
Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones
Josip Novakovich's Fiction Writer's Workshop
Stephen King's On Writing
I'd say nothing is better Chuck's essays. Otherwise, Stephen King's On Writing.
Tim O'Brien's short story / essay "How to Write a True War Story" is a great place to start.
I've only read one that really marked me: John Gardner's The Art of Fiction.
Tim O'Brien's short story / essay "How to Write a True War Story" is a great place to start.
Yes, that. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Chuck and Craig's essays.
The First Five Pages by: Noah Lukeman
On Writing by: Stephen King
Novels are probably the best books to learn from.
Elements of Style- great for any writing piece.
@Jack: Yes, another great one. Good call buddy.
I have more books on writing than I can count, but I suggest anything by James Scott Bell. I like his approach.
Do you guys have suggestions for books that focus on world building? It doesn't have to be a book primarily on writing, either, just any tool you might have used to help flesh out the world your characters will play in would be helpful.
He did the plot book for Writer's Digest, right? I have that one and Characters, emotion and viewpoint. Also have Description. They're decent, sometimes have to dig for some good information, though. Description has helped me a lot.
@Miss K: Here's a few I found on Amazon. Don't know if this helps. I tried. :)
This one's one Kindle.
Here's a site, too. Just search for world building.
good suggestions. I'll throw some other titles I've come across here and elsewhere:
the hero with 1000 faces by Joseph Campbell (the basics of myth & storytelling)
Story by Robert McKee (about writing screenplays, but much can be applied to fiction)
Practical English Usage by Michael Swan (the ultimate grammar book)
Stein on Writing by Sol Stein (good general fiction/non-fiction guide)
A good dictionary (OED being the first choice, but who can afford it? not I not I).
George Orwell's Why I Write (including Politics and the English Language)
Of course, this is only my small addition to this very useful list, hardly a complete library in itself.
I really like that Orwell essay.
Thanks for the World Building links, guys. I've added to my toolkit. I also found a great website on the stuff, but I'm at work and don't have access to it at the moment. When I get home I'll add it to this list!
@Utah1977
It's an exceptionally literary version of the writer's handbook. Gardner was a good stylist and a good storyteller — but he was also a deeply opinionated and provocative guy, so all of that combines to make The Art of Fiction very inspiring reading. You can love or hate it, but it goes beyond the how-to and makes you think about what writing should be DOING, in a grander and loftier sense.
Jane Vandenburgh's "Architecture of a Novel: A Writer's Handbook" really opened my eyes into constructing the small, event-based components that make up all novels. It actually made me feel like writing a novel CAN be done.
It is a bit on the hippie side ("do what feels right, etc"), but interesting nonetheless.
^ Theres a good one.
Here's Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing. Enjoy.
Looking at my bookshelf, it seems like The Fiction Writer's Workshop was a pretty good one, so I'll second that one.
On Writing Horror, ed. Mort Castle, published by the Horror Writers Association, is phenomenal.
Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury contains what I consider to be the finest essays on tapping into your own creativity ever penned.
Also: How to Write Fantasy & Science Fiction by Orson Scott Card, Character & Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card, and Scene & Structure by Jack M. Bickham, Writer's Digest Books, are all tremendously useful and just as inspiring.
On Writing is a book most valuable as a call to action; a welcome boot in the ass, complete with no-nonsense wisdom and King's prescription to make time for 4-6 hours of reading and writing every single day.
Elmore Leonard's Rules have been updated. When you get to the page just type his name in the search box.
Anyone read The War of Art? Not about writing specifically (though it is by a novelist) but rather how to overcome "resistance" aka procrastination. Fast read and really insightful.
"Resistance is fear. But resistance is too cunning to show itself naked in this form. Why? Because if Resistance lets us see clearly that our own fear is preventing us from doing our work, we may feel shame at this. And shame may drive us to act in the face of fear."
I'm about halfsies into the aforementioned ART OF FICTION by Gardner. It's really engaging and, in spite of his superficial elitism, easily accessible and very practical to someone like me, who is both a lover of junk fiction and uneducated. Whereas I'm working my way up to Kundera's ART OF THE NOVEL, which I'm not yet smart enough to read, I don't think, and which seems to skew much more towards the analysis rather than application. Similarly in that I hadn't done enough reading for Italo Calvino's SIX MEMOS to hold as much weight as it should with me, though otherwise an enjoyable read. So I've put off getting that Kundera book, however I did also pick up with the Gardner book this LETTERS TO A YOUNG NOVELIST by Mario Vargas Llosa, and I'm hoping to limp through that one with my unacademic reading background.
So I was going to say that these are literary craft books that may be pertinent to genre writers as well, but if you have to brush up on your Chaucer and Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Cervantes to read them instead of books of your own genre, then are they really?
I am a big fan of Gardner as a writer and thinker. Not a big fan of his elitism, but I got a lot out of The Art of Fiction, as well as On Becoming a Novelist, and to a lesser extent On Moral Fiction. All three are pretty good. I've also got On Writers and Writing on my kindle, but I haven't read it yet.
I have a ridiculous number of writing books, so I wouldn't know where else to start.
Zen and the Art of Writing, and Stephen King's On Writing are particularly important. Bradbury makes you want to run to the typewriter, and King makes you want to stay there, even when it isn't going well.
I bought Robert McKee's Story for a screenwriting class, but it could apply to any sort of writing. The books 45 Master Characters and 20 Master Plots are interesting for generating ideas and thinking about archetypes.
I liked the Horror Writer Association's On Writing Horror, and I am currently reading Michael Knost's Writing Workshop of Horror, but both are mostly a collection of essays on different aspects of writing. However, they are good if you are in to that sort of thing.
I've heard Dwight Swain's Techniques of the Selling Writer is good, but I haven't read it yet. Just another of a hundred books I own that I keep meaning to get around to reading.