A Few Great Books on Writing Fiction
By John Blossom
John Blossom
Without a doubt, creating novels has been the hardest intellectual challenge of my life. Honest writing supported by learned craft may be hard, but it has the advantage of teaching things in a deeply transformative way. It makes you and your reader grow in ways you cannot predict. It is, and always will be, a worthwhile human artistic activity.
So, I hope this motivates you to indulge yourself in some old-fashioned book learning about writing. It will charge you up! Each of the following books is fascinating in its own right. Each has helped me significantly as a teacher and as a writer. The human voice behind each of them is amazing. I can only imagine the work that was required by these wonderful authors to bestow their gifts upon us.
GETTING STARTED
Wired for Story and Story Genius by Lisa Cron
Wired for Story is an inspiring look at the history of why humans value storytelling and how to tap into the hard-wired human need for it as you craft your own story.
Story Genius is especially good at providing a step-by-step guide for establishing early rapport with your readers and maintaining that rapport throughout your novel. Yes, your personal experiences are valid and deserve to be told, but crafting them so that readers care about them requires technique and a shift in mindset that Cron is remarkably helpful in providing.
THE MIDDLE
The Secrets of Story by Matt Bird
Even with a great opening, all novel writers struggle with sustaining reader interest throughout the many long chapters until the end. The Secrets of Story lays it all out for you and provides a framework for keeping your readers eagerly turning the pages. It is particularly good at breaking down the myths and misconceptions about writing that can easily lead us astray.
This book literally transformed my approach to the middle sections of my novel, The Last Football Player, and helped the novel sustain wide-audience interest through its many necessary but twisted football scrimmages.
The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass
A great follow–up to Lisa Cron’s books, The Emotional Craft of Fiction takes a deep dive into the structure of emotional manipulation and, despite how that might sound, the high and noble value of doing so. Maass helps you craft your hard work so that the result is not only engaging but ultimately inspirationally worthwhile for your readers.
Maass gave me the courage to believe that my latest, not yet published, novel, Mahina Rises, a book about a Hawaiian teen in justifiable despair about no one doing anything about climate change, could still be uplifting and inspirational. Had I not read Maass’s book, Mahina Rises would have been a much darker and far less fulfilling story to craft.
AFTER THE FIRST DRAFT
Self-Editing for Self-Publishers by Richard Bradburn
This book covers everything technical, but it is written in an engaging style. It’s a great guide for understanding structure, character, and point of view. Think of Bradburn as an expanded and more entertaining Strunk and White (The Elements of Style). Very useful when you don’t want technical and basic rhetorical errors to mar your work.
Editing Fiction at Sentence Level by Louise Harnby
This book is very similar to Bradburn’s but with a larger emphasis on the rhetorical reasons for close editing. It is thorough and engaging. I used it extensively with Mahina Rises to make the prose compact and easy to read.
Understanding Show, Don’t Tell by Janice Hardy
With five novels and a memoir under my belt, I wish I had read Understanding Show, Don’t Tell years ago because it is by far the most transformative and eye-opening book on writing I have ever read. Many thanks to my editor, Kahina Necaise of The Fabled Planet for this recommendation!
We all think we are “showing” when we write, but you will be amazed at how deftly Hardy points out how often we are actually “telling”. My novel, Mahina Rises, was several years into the making, through the developmental phase and copy-edited and, I thought, ready to present to a publisher, when I stumbled upon Hardy’s book for the first time. What I learned was so significant that it made me rewrite every chapter. Short and clearly written, with lots of examples of how to do things correctly, Understanding Show, Don’t Tell is a must-read for every writer of fiction.
As writers, we have the obligation to combine the mysterious complexity of our humanity with learned craft skills to achieve the highest levels of meaningful authenticity as we give artistic “birth” to our writing. With good guidance from books like these, hard work and practice, you, too, can learn to tap into the genuine emotional experience of a human heart in a way that will connect convincingly with the human hearts of others.
[Ed. John Blossom is the author of five novels and a memoir, including the published novel The Last Football Player and the completed novel Mahina Rising. John says that, before his retirement, “middle school and high school students taught me that they are the most intelligent and thoughtful people on the planet. Now my quest is to create challenging and insightful novels for them that reflect an unflinching but optimistic exploration of today’s most timely issues.” Presently, John’s home is on an organic farm in Waimea where he provides fruits and vegetables to the neighbors and maintains an active free library at the end of his driveway. He joined Hawaii Writers Guild in May 2023.]
So, I hope this motivates you to indulge yourself in some old-fashioned book learning about writing. It will charge you up! Each of the following books is fascinating in its own right. Each has helped me significantly as a teacher and as a writer. The human voice behind each of them is amazing. I can only imagine the work that was required by these wonderful authors to bestow their gifts upon us.
GETTING STARTED
Wired for Story and Story Genius by Lisa Cron
Wired for Story is an inspiring look at the history of why humans value storytelling and how to tap into the hard-wired human need for it as you craft your own story.
Story Genius is especially good at providing a step-by-step guide for establishing early rapport with your readers and maintaining that rapport throughout your novel. Yes, your personal experiences are valid and deserve to be told, but crafting them so that readers care about them requires technique and a shift in mindset that Cron is remarkably helpful in providing.
THE MIDDLE
The Secrets of Story by Matt Bird
Even with a great opening, all novel writers struggle with sustaining reader interest throughout the many long chapters until the end. The Secrets of Story lays it all out for you and provides a framework for keeping your readers eagerly turning the pages. It is particularly good at breaking down the myths and misconceptions about writing that can easily lead us astray.
This book literally transformed my approach to the middle sections of my novel, The Last Football Player, and helped the novel sustain wide-audience interest through its many necessary but twisted football scrimmages.
The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass
A great follow–up to Lisa Cron’s books, The Emotional Craft of Fiction takes a deep dive into the structure of emotional manipulation and, despite how that might sound, the high and noble value of doing so. Maass helps you craft your hard work so that the result is not only engaging but ultimately inspirationally worthwhile for your readers.
Maass gave me the courage to believe that my latest, not yet published, novel, Mahina Rises, a book about a Hawaiian teen in justifiable despair about no one doing anything about climate change, could still be uplifting and inspirational. Had I not read Maass’s book, Mahina Rises would have been a much darker and far less fulfilling story to craft.
AFTER THE FIRST DRAFT
Self-Editing for Self-Publishers by Richard Bradburn
This book covers everything technical, but it is written in an engaging style. It’s a great guide for understanding structure, character, and point of view. Think of Bradburn as an expanded and more entertaining Strunk and White (The Elements of Style). Very useful when you don’t want technical and basic rhetorical errors to mar your work.
Editing Fiction at Sentence Level by Louise Harnby
This book is very similar to Bradburn’s but with a larger emphasis on the rhetorical reasons for close editing. It is thorough and engaging. I used it extensively with Mahina Rises to make the prose compact and easy to read.
Understanding Show, Don’t Tell by Janice Hardy
With five novels and a memoir under my belt, I wish I had read Understanding Show, Don’t Tell years ago because it is by far the most transformative and eye-opening book on writing I have ever read. Many thanks to my editor, Kahina Necaise of The Fabled Planet for this recommendation!
We all think we are “showing” when we write, but you will be amazed at how deftly Hardy points out how often we are actually “telling”. My novel, Mahina Rises, was several years into the making, through the developmental phase and copy-edited and, I thought, ready to present to a publisher, when I stumbled upon Hardy’s book for the first time. What I learned was so significant that it made me rewrite every chapter. Short and clearly written, with lots of examples of how to do things correctly, Understanding Show, Don’t Tell is a must-read for every writer of fiction.
As writers, we have the obligation to combine the mysterious complexity of our humanity with learned craft skills to achieve the highest levels of meaningful authenticity as we give artistic “birth” to our writing. With good guidance from books like these, hard work and practice, you, too, can learn to tap into the genuine emotional experience of a human heart in a way that will connect convincingly with the human hearts of others.
[Ed. John Blossom is the author of five novels and a memoir, including the published novel The Last Football Player and the completed novel Mahina Rising. John says that, before his retirement, “middle school and high school students taught me that they are the most intelligent and thoughtful people on the planet. Now my quest is to create challenging and insightful novels for them that reflect an unflinching but optimistic exploration of today’s most timely issues.” Presently, John’s home is on an organic farm in Waimea where he provides fruits and vegetables to the neighbors and maintains an active free library at the end of his driveway. He joined Hawaii Writers Guild in May 2023.]
