Your Recommendations

[Catherine Barrett]

Writing to the Point by Algis Budrys is out of print but available on Archive.org, which has suspended waitlists through June 2020 so you can click and read instantly. Angela O’Brien-Malone pointed out the modified loan terms and and Wulf Moon has sung the praises of this volume on Facebook so I wanted to make sure that it got added to our book list here. In my opinion the most important part of this book is his coverage of which parts need to be present for a story to work, without getting into rigid prescriptions that can be intimidating.

Matt Bird’s Secrets of Story is a book directed a bit more at screenwriters than novelists, but I found many of his points very thought-provoking. The audiobook narration is excellent.

Ursula K. Le Guin’s Steering the Craft has exercises that can be done in a writing group or individually and feels more like taking a writing workshop than many books, in a good way.

[Monica Zwikstra]

Books that have made a difference
to the way I write.
​
Craft books by Orson Scott Card

Craft books in the ‘Elements of Fiction Writing Series’
(This series contains craft books on all aspects of writing.)

Self-editing for fiction writers by Renni Browne and Dave King

Techniques of the selling writer by Dwight V. Swain

The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puclisi
(Also their books on settings both rural and urban)

The Writing Active Settings series by Mary Buckham
(She also has a series on hooks)

Eats shoots and leaves by Lynne Truss

Rivet your Reader with Deep Point of View by Jill Elisabeth Nelson