How-To Writing Books - Recommended

How to Writing Books - Recommended

There's a lot of myths when it comes to pursuing a career in writing. The biggest of them all is that you are born a writer. That you are genetically created with pen in hand and an incredible grasp of language.

To some extent people are born with certain talents. Someone may be born with a greater capability for language than others. But someone could also be born with great athletic ability. But even an olympic athlete needs to train to achieve.

Language is to a great extent taught, as is reading and writing ability. Some find it easier than others but to say that you cannot ever learn to be a better writer is in my opinion just plain idiocy.

I can guarantee you that even the best out there today have worked and worked to perfect their abilities. Some will do it through research, other through constant revision and practise. They may attend writing courses.

Very few will ever just sit down and instantly write a masterpiece.

Writing is a skill which can be learned and improved throughout your entire life.

For the novice writer there is a massive wealth of writing books, websites and general advice that you can take on board when starting out. Some of them are good, some are terrible but a lot of them will give you the same end advice: That writing advice is a guideline and should not tell you how to write but give you ideas and tips that might help to improve the quality of your work.

Of all the books I've read I would advise starting out with the `Write Great Fiction' series.

These books give you plenty of exercises and outline a lot of the general basics. They tend to be catergorised into `Dialogue', `Description',`Characters and Viewpoint' etc making it easier to pick specific areas to work on and help you to understand the function of these areas.


Next I would follow with the books listed below (not necessarily in this order. Just read whichever you feel is best.)

One word of warning though...

... Don't get too sidetracked with reading about writing that you don't actually write.

This is a common problem that writers face as they tend to be constantly distracted by new ideas, books, TV programmes, films etc. At the end of the day good writing is best learned by plenty of practise.


Recommended Reading List

* Write Great Fiction Series - Different Authors

* Elements of Fiction Writing Series - Different Authors
Similiar to WGF series but shorter

* Novelists Essential Guide to crafting scenes - Raymond Obstfeld

* Words Fail Me - Patricia T O'Connor
Excellent general advice and fun to read. Highly recommended for great advice on general writing structure, getting to the point and putting things in the right order. Absolutely invaluable

* The New Well-Tempered Sentence. A Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed
Clear explanations of Grammar (which I definately need)

* Comics and Sequential Art - Will Eisner
A must have if you're even considering writing for comics or using visual art with language. Explains in-depth how complex this form of story-telling can be and how everything from perspective to the structure of the page can be. Plenty of pictures but can be very technical if you're not arty-minded.

* Alan Moore's Writing for Comics
Uses lengthy paragraphs but worth it for some of the advice given especially about the changes in comic book writing since Will Eisner's guide was published.

* A Dictionary
Always have a dictionary. Don't just rely on spell-checkers, they can be wrong especially if you hit English-US when you need English-UK (of if you're MS Word keeps changing the language to US by itself like mine does!)

* A Thesaurus
prefer the Roget's thesaurus. Very valuable to have but some writers can kill their sentences (as mentioned in Words Fail Me) creating over-flowery sentences when its not necessary. Use wisely.

Recommended books about Publishing and Writing for Money
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I have yet to put any of these to practical use myself but I found them all very interesting reading with lots of advice from people who have worked in freelancing and/or publishing for many years.

* The Renegade Writer - A Totally Unconvential Guide to Freelance Writing Success by Linda Formichelli and Diana Burrell

This one lists many of the basic rules of freelancing and debunks them. It gives clear examples of what has worked for these writers and what hasn't. For example:

Rule: Start at the Bottom. The book explains how this can be true but that there's no reason why someone who is confident in their skills and who has great ideas can't head for the top.

* The Insider's Guide to Getting Your Book Published - Rachael Stock.
This is written BY a publisher. (Or at least that what it says.) You can't get more inside than that. She explains markets, profits, contracts and what can immediately send a manuscript to the scrap heap.

So which of all these books is the best, most valuable you ask! The truth is that each of them are good on their own merits. If you are looking for general advice I would go for `Words Fail Me'. If you need help on specific areas search out specific books and learn about that particular area. If it's writing as a career I'd check out the two books above and search through websites and writer's markets.

Useful Links
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* www.writing.com
Well of course I couldn't miss this one out.

* www.writersweekly.com
This has a list of paying markets as well as whispers and warning list which anyone can add to and it's all completely free.

* http://www.aar-online.org/mc/page.do
Agents Association.Has a list of agents who are members of the organisation.

* http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/getwriting/A2981982
Info about getting an agent

* http://www.author-network.com/competition.html
Competitions listings

* http://windpub.com/literary.scams/
WARNING OVER NATIONAL POETRY CONTESTS!

* http://www.writerswrite.net/pubbrws.cfm
List of magazines/publications.

* http://www.soyouwanna.com/site/syws/publishbook/publishbook3.html
Publishing, how-to info.

* http://www.online-literature.com/
Free online classical literature if you have time.

* http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/
You can register copyright here if you feel it's necessary. You can also email them with questions about copyright. They responded very quickly to me and were very helpful even though I did not register with them.

* http://www.wordsmitten.com/coverletter.html
Specifially about writing cover and query letters to agents or editors.

* http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/ - Writing forum.
Not spent much time on this one but looks good. Worth a look. Lists paying and non-paying markets.

* http://forum.sfx.co.uk/
Hot link. Largest sci-fi magazine in the country (United Kingdom)
They work with Gollancz publishers and have a annual short story competition and on occassion a review competition. The review competition is a first come first served basis where you apply and if you are in time you get a pick of a few soon-to-be published novels. You may not get your first choice ( but you get a free manuscript to read and review. They give you plenty of time to read and even if you don't win you can usually read other peoples entries and sometimes they give general feedback (not usually individually) as to what they were looking for. You don't have to send a review once you get the manuscript if you choose not to but it's worth a shot as you are competing against a very small number of people once you get through.

* http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/bookrev/tips.htm
Info about writing book reviews.

* www.lulu.com - Self-publishing site.
You can choose just to pay for making the book - the site takes a percentage of each purchase someone makes and covers the cost of the book. It's an on-demand market though which means if no one buys it none get printed. While this saves on cost and means you can do it from the comfort of your own home it also means that you have to spend time advertising, editing and basically creating your own product which can be time consuming and may not bring in much revenue. However if you feel there's something you really want on the market and think people will like but find that no publisher wants it because it is not something they want follow through then it could be ideal.

Phew. And there's tons more out there. Some published authors will post writing advice on their websites but you'll likely find many will be will be reluctant to provide much more info - for obvious reasons. You're their competition!