Best Books On Craft

Jeff Vandermeer's Wonderbook is pretty good, if a little different - and possibly a little more useful for SF/F.

The Emotional Craft of Fiction, by Donald Maass.

Arguably the best craft book out there, because it focuses on what makes a book memorable rather than functional, and works on the one area I think most authors (published or not) are often lacking in.

In addition to the two mentioned above (Sol Stein and Donald Maass), which are in my top three, I would also highly recommend Gary Provost's Beyond Style: Mastering the Finer Points of Writing. It discusses (and this is on the cover) "Form, Tone, Pacing, Subtlety, Tension, Metaphor, Theme, Viewpoint, Flashbacks" and more. This is definitely a beyond-the-basics book.

Anything by Sol Stein

Subquestion: Many books touch on voice... but I'm curious if there is a book recommended for focus on and treatment of voice.

I would put voice in the category of a strong physical core (meaning, your body), metaphorically speaking. It's somethign improved on by refining lots of different areas.

A few writers and editors recommended to me Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life

I've been told if you ever get stuck in your writing it's a great book to read.

I like the Write Great Fiction series.

The two I have reread many times and always seem to get a little something more out of (considering I've had one for over 30 years...) are Beginnings, Middles & Ends by Nancy Kress and Story Trumps Structure: How to Write Unforgettable Fiction by Breaking the Rules by Steven James (forward by Donald Maass).

Maybe it's not the right sort of book for this thread, but it's become such a known standard, I'd throw out Stephen King's On Writing as a good resource to read up on craft too.

Deep hero's journey.

There's two books that I love when I'm incredibly stuck and I rely on often.

Orson Scott Card's Characters and Viewpoint. It lays out the various types of stories, the promises you make to the reader, and greatly details the twist to stop your idea from getting stale.
The other is Creating Character Emotion by Ann Hood. She shows examples of bad writing and compares them with good writing. She goes into detail about why common mistakes for writers detailing emotion occur and how to avoid them. There are exercises for more hands on writers but I admit I have never done them and they are not required for the book to be useful. This book I feel particularly answers your query as it has examples.

I'll take two selective quotes from that book. Excuse any typos, they are mine not the author's.

Bad example:

George was mad as a hornet (mad as a wet hen, mad as hell)."

Click to expand...

Cliches always make us stop and as questions like "How mad is a hornet?" They have stopped working from overuse. None of the above tells us how or why George is mad; none of them tells us what his anger is like.

[The book gives two more examples, one of which explains the pitfalls of mistaking violence for anger. I'm cutting that out in the interest of time.]


Ann Hood then quotes an example from E.L. Doctorow's "The Writer in the Family". I never read that book, but still got the sense of anger without using any cliches.

My mother slammed down the phone. "He can't even die when he wants to!" she cried. "Even death comes second to Mama! What are they afraid of, the shock will kill her? Nothing can kill her. She's indestructable! A stake through the heart couldn't kill her!"

Click to expand...

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers is indispensable.

For fun and inspiration, I love Chuck Wendig's The Kick-Ass Writer.