A fantastic source of knowledge and inspiration for writers is other writers. Those who have been through it before can share their knowledge and experience with those who are just starting out or new to a certain area. From planning, writing, and editing to querying, publishing, and marketing—and everything in between—learning what others have already figured out can make our own writing journey a little bit easier.
My reference shelf sits at the corner of my desk with a series of books that I refer to regularly for help, for clarity, and for inspiration. This particular set of books works for me, and while other authors may find help elsewhere, I believe having the following books readily available is a good place to start.
Inspiration
Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. The “king” of horror’s fiction is a great place to learn storytelling, but King’s foray into non-fiction digs more into what it takes to be a writer. Part memoir and part textbook, On Writing details King’s path to becoming an author as well as tools and methods he has learned. Tools to develop and keep in your toolbox, their relative importance, and when you need to use them are all included. King digs through many aspects of the writing craft and reveals what works. It is both a fascinating read and incredibly insightful.
There are many books that are also both inspirational and helpful with craft. Ursula Le Guin has several non-fiction books on writing such as Steering the Craft and Words Are My Matter, and Octavia Butler’s A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky talks about being a creative person. Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird and Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life are also highly recommended.
Foundational
Once inspired to write, where do you begin? Or, put another way, how do I take the idea in my brain and develop it into an engaging novel? For me, Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody, and based on uber-successful screenwriting approach of the same name by Blake Snyder, provides the structure I need to help map out my story.
Without getting into a debate of Plotters versus Pantsers, I personally find that a solid structure at the beginning gives me enough direction to start that, when my characters decide to go off on their own, I still know where I need to wind up. I guess you would call me a Plantser. Save the Cat starts with a traditional three-act story (thesis, antithesis, and synthesis) and then breaks each one down into several story beats. By mapping out the beats beforehand, you know what you need to hit as an author to make a compelling story. I personally supplement the Save the Cat story beats with characters sketches, ideas about the ‘B’ story (character arc) as well as the ‘A’ story (plot), as well as the theme.
There are many approaches for organizing a story, many of which are based on the classic three-act structure of beginning, middle (with a climax), and end. Many authors prefer the scene-sequel approach, the building crisis points of The Fichtean Curve, or the circular storytelling of Christopher Vogler’s The Hero’s Journey. Ultimately, whatever works for you is the way to go.
Writing Aids
When you hit a rut where all the adjectives are ‘very’ and descriptions are reduced to monosyllabic vagaries, there are a few books that can help inject some flavor back into your writing.
The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi provides a variety of descriptions for various human emotions, including whether felt by the main character or observed in other characters. Acute and chronic descriptions of emotions and how they might affect physical traits are also included. And there is a whole series of these books, including Positive Traits, Negative Traits, Emotional Wounds, Rural Settings, Urban Settings, and Conflicts.
Rayne Hall also has a tremendously helpful series of 38 books called Writer’s Craft that cover a variety of topics like Writing Fight Scenes, Writing Scary Scenes, Writing Villains, Writing Deep POV, and many others that cover both writing craft and marketing/publishing.
Structure & Style
There are only two books that I reference for sentence structure and style. First is the Chicago Manual of Style, and I recommend getting a recent version. I have the 17th edition, and it is quite comprehensive. As a supplement and a quick-reference, Strunk & White’s Elements of Style usually does the trick.
I have also started developing my own style guide, which for the most part is a bullet-list in a document. But writing fiction has led to some scenarios that CMOS never considered, such as writing telepathic communications or presenting texts or screen output. For these new instances, I make a note in my document so that I can be consistent going forward.
Reference
And, of course, round out your reference shelf with a quality dictionary and thesaurus. An unabridged dictionary may seem like an unwieldy beast, but it likely contains much more detail than online dictionaries and is well worth both the space and the physical effort.
Another reference document every writer should absolutely have cannot be found on any store shelf as it needs to be created from scratch. Keep a three-ring binder (or a desktop folder if you’re digitally inclined) of all the awesome reference materials you find on the internet and social media. I have accumulated color charts (fifty different shades of blue), ship types, tastes, aromas, types of shirts, hand-held weapons, and even different types of shit. (It’s important to understand the difference between horseshit, tough shit, and no shit.) There are hundreds of these one-pagers out there. Find those that fit with your writing, print them and put them in your binder for reference.
Conclusion
Don’t try to do everything from scratch. There are a tremendous number of books to help you get inspired, to develop story ideas, to organize your novel, and to help with grammar, punctuation, and spelling. But most of all, don’t forget to save the little references you find out there on the Internet to help add a bit more flavor to your story.
A solid reference shelf helps every writer.
コメント