Helpful books for writers

Hey everybody. Hope you all enjoyed the season 7 premiere. I haven't gotten around to watching it, yet.

Anyway, I mentioned this before in the author's notes for my story, A Tale of Two Suns, and if you haven't read it, I encourage you to do so. But the point is that I'm in the habit of cross-posting my work on various sites like fanfiction.net, Archive of Our Own, and Deviant Art.

And on the subject of DA, I've also done a few journals there on helpful tips for writers, trying to share some of the things I know when the inspiration and motivation strike me. Since this site has a blog feature, I thought I'd try something like that here. While I'm not going to re-post the few things I've written on here, I do want to re-post something I just finished today.

I want to share these things because I feel they're just as applicable here, if not more applicable since this site is entirely focused on the written word. This is something I've actually had in mind for a while, ever since I started writing these tips on DA.

So without further ado, here we go.

I'm basically self-taught when it comes to writing, in that I've never taken any real classes. I've learned from a variety of sources, reading books, fanfics, watching reviewers (even for other fictional mediums), and from reading books on writing, combined with my own practice.

Those writing books have really helped me, both teaching me, and as resources I can use when I'm in the middle of writing a story.

And since they're so helpful, I wanted to share them with those who are interested in learning about writing and/or want to improve their writing, whether or not you have professional aspirations.

With that in mind, I'll start off with the first set of writing books I ever got.

Write Great Fiction series

This is a set of five books, each by different authors, save for the last one. They are:

1. Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell
2. Character, Emotion, & Viewpoint by Nancy Kress
3. Dialogue by Gloria Kempton
4. Description & Setting by Ron Rozelle
5. Revision and Self-Editing by James Scott Bell

These authors are not only professional writers themselves, but they're also teachers, and each book is quite thorough in discussing its chosen aspect of writing. I will say that I haven't read the last one very much, and part of it seems like a summary of the other books, but I think it's still worth checking out along with the others, since revision and self-editing are important things to learn besides everything else.
Seriously, these are good if you want to learn how to write. Each chapter in each book also has exercises at the end related to the chapter subject. I never did them myself, but they're good exercises nonetheless.

There was also a CD too containing PDF copies of all of the books in the series. It was rather expensive admittedly, but worth mentioning. I actually got it along with the books for travel reasons, since paperback books tend to get damaged in suitcases, and I wanted the option to read the books on a trip.

Dynamic Characters by Nancy Kress

Just looking at the title and the author, you may think that this stand alone book is a repeat of the one from the Write Great Fiction series. Admittedly the content is similar. But since it's on the same sort of subject, that's only natural.

However, there is advice in this book that isn't in the one above, so it's still useful to read to have even if you have the other one, and especially if you want to learn more about character creation from a professional.

Thesaurus series by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi

This is another set of books that I strongly recommend, though they're more of resources than teaching tools. I'm not sure that's the official name of this series, but given the titles of these books, that's what I'm choosing to call them. This series is (as of now anyway, who knows if they're done) another set of five books.

All share a similar format and can clearly be considered a series, but you can also look at them as a stand alone book and two pairs of complementary books. I discovered these by accident, and I haven't regretted buying them. I'll start off with the first book I got from them.

The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide To Character Expression

This book helps you to express characters' emotions through body language rather than just saying it all the time every time. It has a large list of human emotions, and for each it gives a definition, physical signs of the emotion, internal sensations, mental responses, cues of acute or long-term emotion (and what that may escalate to), and cues of the emotion when it's suppressed.

Let me show you a tiny bit of the large amount of data in the book. This isn't the whole entry, but rather one or two points from each heading, except for the definition of course.

Adoration.
Definition: The act of worship; to view as divine. Note: The subject of adoration can be a person or thing.
Physical signs: A radiant glow.
Internal sensations: A quickening heartbeat.
Mental responses: A desire to move closer or touch.
Cues of acute or long-term adoration: Obsessing.
May escalate to: Love (page number in book here), desire (page number in book here).
Cues of suppressed adoration: Blushing.

Like I said, this book is great for helping you find ways to communicate a character's emotions to the reader through body language so you don't need to always say "X was angry" etc. The golden rule of writing (applying not just to emotion) is "show, don't tell". Not that you should never tell us emotion ever. There are times when you should. But showing is often better than simply telling. I use this book a lot to pepper my stories with body language and help improve the scenes.

The Positive Trait Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide To Character Attributes/The Negative Trait Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide To Character Flaws

These books take the same approach as before, but for positive and negative character traits, and both books cover them in roughly the same way.

For each trait, they have a definition, categories (character attributes book), similar attributes/flaws, possible causes, associated behaviors and attitudes, associated thoughts, associated emotions, positive aspects, negative aspects, examples from film/literature/TV, challenging scenarios for the [insert attribute here] character (attributes book), overcoming this trait as a major flaw (flaws book), and traits in supporting characters that may cause conflict.

Here's an example from the first entry of the flaws book. Again, this is only a small part of the entry.

Abrasive
Definition: Rubbing others the wrong way through lack of thought or care; irritating.
Similar flaws: caustic, coarse.
Possible causes: Poor social skills, a lack of empathy
Associated behaviors and attitudes: Showing impatience with others, living in isolation.
Associated thoughts: I know she doesn't want to talk about this, but I do.
Associated emotions: Annoyance, Confidence.
Positive aspects/Negative aspects/Examples from film/Overcoming this trait as a major flaw: I am skipping all of these because these are paragraph length discussions I will not copy out.
Traits in supporting characters that may cause conflict: Affectionate, timid.

I haven't used these books very much, although that's a mistake on my part, as they really are quite detailed and could be helpful for creating characters in an original story, or even for a fanfic writer when creating a good OC or perhaps understanding traits in already established characters and fleshing them out.

The Rural Setting Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Personal and Natural Places/The Urban Setting Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to City Spaces

These are the two most recent books in the series. As the titles suggest, while the first book covered emotion and the second and third covered character creation, these are all about settings.

Have you ever needed help describing a setting or place? These will help. A lot. Each one covers a very wide array of settings and even subdivides them in the table of contents.

To take an example from the rural thesaurus, here's just a tiny bit of information from each category for the first setting:

Attic (under At Home)
Sights: Dusty floorboards and wooden beams with visible pipes and wiring.
Sounds: Creaks, squeaking mice.
Smells: Insulation, mold.
Tastes: Damp or stale air.
Textures and Sensations: Balancing on a wobbly ladder.
Possible sources of conflict: Hearing something moving around in the dark.
People commonly found here: Construction workers during renovations.
Related settings that may tie in with this one: Rural volume: Basement, Urban volume: Antique shop.
Setting Notes and Tips: I am actually omitting this bit because of length.

Setting Description Example: Under this heading is a brief example of a scene in the chosen setting. I am omitting it by choice. These are not from any published books but are completely original examples. After each example are the subheadings "techniques and devices used" and "resulting effects", listing things like multisensory descriptions, hyperbole, simile, etc, and foreshadowing, characterization, and reinforcing emotion respectively.

There is a tremendous wealth of data in each of these books that could be useful to even a fanfic writer, which is why I recommend them. I've certainly used them in my work.

And for those on Fimfiction, even if settings in Equestria will have differences since, of course, the characters are a different species, the books could still be useful if only for stimulating the imagination.

Update on the series here

The Describer's Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms and Literary Quotations by David Grambs

This book is yet another resource, one useful for fanfic or original writers. Separated by various categories like shapes, colors, animals, various parts of the human appearance, terrain, buildings, and so on, it provides different kinds of words to describe various things and help improve your ability to describe.

Say you need a better word to describe someone with a certain kind of face, or a certain sort of eyes. This is a book that will help you.

Now I know that getting all of these books would be expensive, even without remembering how much each of these cost, which I don't. And I'm not saying you have to get all of these. They're recommendations. So if you're interested, check them out. They're definitely useful, I can guarantee that.

There are actually several other writing books I have on my shelves. I'm rather overzealous in getting them, since there are some I haven't really gotten around to reading. But for now at least, these are all the ones I have to recommend.

To everyone out there working on their own stories, good luck to you all.

And as far as my own story, I'm making some planning progress on A Tale of Two Suns, in between working on some of my other, non-MLP fanfics. I can't give an estimate on when chapter 8 will be out, but rest assured, it will be.

Goodnight everybody.