how to read a how-to-write book

[marycatelli]

There are a lot of them out there. Some of them are even useful. But they do need to be approached with caution, and a salt-shaker in hand.

I find the best way to chose them is to ask for recommendations. But if you do want to just browse and pick one up -- check the byline. If you do not recognize as a published author's, check the about-the-author note. Ensure that the writer has actually published something other than a how-to-write book.

And then, of course, you read. While you read, remember that the author is sharing his bag of tricks with you. If he's an editor or an agent or someone who taught writing, he may have a large repertoire than someone who just writes. But regardless, the techniques he uses are just tricks you can try, to see if they work, and discard if they don't. Experiment. Do writing exercises. And stick to what works.

Some writers are quite insistent that you do it their way. That's when you use the salt-shaker to take it with plentiful grains of salt. Some, in fact, get quite silly. One book said that first you chose your genre, and then you work on a "what-if" and hammer it into shape that fits that genre. Especially if it doesn't fit that genre originally. Why not change the genre? The book doesn't even touch on it. Now, if the what-if would only fit a genre you don't like to read, that's one thing, but why must you stick to your genre if you don't get ideas for it?

Then, of course, there's always the little problem that reading how-to-write books is an excellent way to vacuum the cat. Put all those techniques you are trying out to work. It will give you real standards to judge them by.

Comments

[marycatelli]

John Gardner's Art of Fiction and On Becoming a Novelist
Ray Bradbury's Zen And the Art of Writing
Robert McKee's Story
Nancy Kress's Characters, Emotion, and Viewpoint and Beginnings, Middles and Ends
Orson Scott Card's Characters & Viewpoint
Jack Bickham's Scene and Structure (But keep the salt shaker handy)
Jane Yolen's Take Joy
Ursula K. LeGuin's Steering The Craft

For advanced work, Donald Maass's Writing the Break-out Novel but that presupposes ability to write a story.

And here are the weird ones. Trust me, they are how-to-write books.
C.S. Lewis's Studies in Words
Wayne C. Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction
Henning Nelm's Magic and Showmanship

[marycatelli]

Oh yes -- and in the weird ones:
Umberto Eco's Six Walks in the Fictional Woods

[jongibbs.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the list :) I've read some of them - Donald Maass is my personal favorite. That Ursula LeGuin one looks interesting.

Have you read Give 'Em What They Want, by Blythe Camenson and Marshall Cook? It has the best breakdown of how to write a synopsis that I've seen to date.

[marycatelli]

Nah.

A synopsis for selling?

Gardner & Bickham

[jjbrannon.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I prefer Gardner's controversial On Moral Fiction and Bickham's Writing & Selling Your Novel.

The former hands one an ax and advises, "Chose good timber to build your house." The latter offers nuts & bolts, nails & glue.


JJB

Re: Gardner & Bickham

[marycatelli]

On Moral Fiction is good, but not quite as useful as the other two, I think.

Haven't read the other Bickham, I think. (I may have. I've read a lot that I got out of libraries.)

[arhyalon.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed John Gardner's books, too.

[marycatelli]

It doubtlessly helps that he not only wrote but also taught writing.

[arhyalon.livejournal.com]

I really think it's the teaching that did it. He got to move beyond what worked for him to what worked or did not work for a large number of students. That's why I think teachers and agents and people like that often write much better writing books than people who just write.

[marycatelli]

Then, he does discuss his limits as a teacher -- he wrote, and taught, mostly traditional plotted stories and would not, for instance, be as good for experimental fiction.