You can always just get over to the library or even Amazon for a little "look inside" action. Doesn't cost much to take a peek and see if it fits your style. There are people who swear by this stuff, even if grizzled old slushpile vets like me don't exactly swoon.I have heard that 'Bird by Bird' was more new-agey than not, but several writing websites have it on their 'must read' list. This kind of 'seals the deal', and I will skip it.Bolded what I feel are probably the two most useless "essential" writing books of all time. New agey and feel-good, without any real meat for the sincerely aspiring writer. Great if you need a little rah rah push, but if you need inspiration, writing ain't for you anyway. Not that they don't have their fans and adherents, but as a publishing guy, I wouldn't recommend either to anyone I felt had promise.
The King's good, and S&W is pretty much mandatory to at least understand (so you can actively decide when to ignore its advice).
If you aspire to write great short fiction, look at Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular by Rust Hills. Probably still the only worthwhile manual ever written on the literary short.
If you aspire to literary novel-length stuff, The Art of Fiction, and On Becoming a Novelist, by John Gardner. There'll be some carryover from the King book, but Gardner goes a lot more in-depth, provides the deepest portrait you'll find of the young artist growing into an award-winning novelist, and gives writing exercises that are standard prompts in many of the Writers' Workshop model MFA schools around the country.
If you just want to write some fun little books and get published, ignore all of the above, and just read heavily in-genre. Then maybe (maybe, mind you) get yourself a copy of The Marshall Plan if you're having trouble getting started or otherwise find yourself lacking direction, plotwise. It's pure formula, but it's a tried-and-true one that has pretty much limitless applications. If strict formula galls you, J.K. Rowling did okay for herself just kind of following Aristotle's Poetics.
Good luck with it.
Thanks for the advice! I will put your suggestions into the rotation.
Just skip the intro. Nonfiction bestseller types always put their hard sell into the intro. Read a couple pages of chapter two or three -- that's where you'll see if you connect. Thinking about it, I recall Bird by Bird being more "cutesy anecdotal" than new agey. Writing Down the Bones veered the other way. Probably twenty years since I read either, though.
ETA: Although, if you want to write Lovecraftian stuff, just absorb everything humanly possible on building atmosphere, and on creating and sustaining tension and suspense, and maybe memorize a thesaurus from 1910 for good measure.
Last edited by a moderator:
