Mary Catelli's Erraticly Updated and Exceedingly Ill-Organized Journal

Dynamic Characters: How to Create Personalities That Keep Readers Captivated by Nancy Kress

A how-to-write book with the focus described above.  Starts with the externals of name, location, occupation and more -- I note that it's chiefly about more or less contemporary settings -- then the internals of motivations, attitudes, and more, and finally how this all interacts with plot.  Character is plot, after all.  Also secondary characters, character change, and more.

The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White

The third edition, which I read lo those many years ago, and re-read now. Still covers basic issues, in both grammar and style, and some development on the later by White

Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon

Advice about coping. Keeping going, inspiration, exercise, money management, and more.

Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon

An informal and lively discussion of some useful advice for creation. You may have run across some of it before, but as he quotes, "Everything worth saying has already been said. But since no one was listening, it all has to be said again."

Creating Character Arcs: The Masterful Author's Guide to Uniting Story Structure, Plot, and Character Development by K.M. Weiland

A discussion of character character. Indeed, of the old trio Boy Meets Girl, The Little Tailor, and Man Learns Lesson, it discusses only the last, describing a character who enters relationships and picks up skills as unchanged.

But it covers the arc of change nicely, in terms of the Lie (the thing the character must unlearn) and the Truth (the thing the character must learn), even if a bit abstractly. Covers an important point in introducing characters that I've never seen in another how-to book: introducing the character must give us a correct first impression. (Fun though that is with the issue of giving him flaws and making him likable enough that the reader will care.)

Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success by K.M. Weiland

A how-to-write book discussing various ways to outline a novel. And whether. She uses rather more techniques than I do, but some are useful even for my looser ideas.

Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels by Scott McCloud

This book is aimed at the aspiring comic-book writer. I read it as a comic-book reader and a prose writer. So a bit of an interesting review. . . .

Discusses all sorts of elements. Angles, characterization, details, choice of focus, story time. Tools for hand and computer. Collaboration. (Actually that one struck me as short, given its frequency. Writerly proverb: In any collaboration, you have to do 90% of the work. The other collaborator does the other 90%.) Expressions and body language. and more.

Business for the Right-Brained: (A Guide for Artists, Writers, Musicians, Dancers, Crafters, And All the Other Dreamers) by M.C.A. Hogarth

This guide, in fact, starts with the useful discussion of whether you even want to turn your art from a hobby into a career and the pitfalls of doing so.

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Fight Write: How to Write Believable Fight Scenes by Carla Hoch

A discussion of the nitty-gritty of fight scenes. For the writers who want to get down to the technical details of haymakers versus Superman punches, various kinds of swords, details of guns, and wounds. Going to the ground, self-defense laws, and differences between Japanese and Norse swords, based on the way Scandinavian is rich in bog iron, making good swords readily, and Japan in pig iron, much more difficult to use.