My favourite resources about the craft of writing fiction

Hey, fellow fiction writers (AKA people with too many imaginary friends)! There are a lot of resources out there about the craft of storytelling, because writers love to procrastinate by writing about writing, instead of whatever they're actually supposed to be working on.

Here's a hand-picked list of only my favourite resources, to help you hone in on the most useful stuff.

Books

If you're feeling creatively stuck or lacking inspiration:

• Stephen King's On Writing
• Anna Lamott's Bird by Bird
• Matthew Kalil's The Three Wells of Screenwriting
• Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones
• Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet
• Austin Kleon's Steal Like an Artist (and blog)
• Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way

Books about the foundations of storytelling - character, plotting, genre and structure:

• Chuck Wendig's Damn Fine Story (and blog) - wonderful insights about lovable characters, and the best plotting book for "pantsers"
• Jessica Brody's Save the Cat Writes a Novel - a helpful guide to structure and genre (also watch one of StudioBinder's excellent YouTube videos)
• Shawn Coyne's The Story Grid (and podcast) - a useful book for rigorous "plotters" who like having a spreadsheet
• Robert McKee's Story - long, dense, dated, but still an essential text
• John Yorke's Into the Woods - a more philosophical and psychological book about why stories have the shape they do

Books about style and language, most helpful in the editing stage:

• Strunk & White's Elements of Style
• Ursula Le Guin's Steering the Craft
• Matt Bell's Refuse to be Done
• David Michael Kaplan's Revision (tricky to find; here's a summary)

Finally, the best book about marketing yourself as an author without hating it is Austin Kleon's Show Your Work.

Online

• Dan Harmon's 6-part series about the "story circle"
• Chuck Palahniuk's "nuts and bolts" essays in Lit Reactor (and a later series) - I particularly love his piece about "thought" verbs
• Emma Coats' 22 rules of storytelling from Pixar
• Reddit's r/writing and r/screenwriting both have very useful Wikis - start there if you want to understand how to get published
• Tips for writing fight scenes and weapons accurately
• Martine Leavitt's essays about writing go into very helpful specifics - I specifically love this one about how to convey emotion
• A great roundup of other useful links across the web, including free online courses, writing organisations, manuscript formatting, how to find an editor/agent, and more. Many thanks to young writer Anna for suggesting this goldmine!
• Ryan Holiday's expansive blog post about all the steps that go into creating a book
• Jerry Jenkin's "How to Write a Novel" is a good beginner guide; and his self-editing checklist is very helpful
• The Jericho Writers' guide to preparing a manuscript for querying

Podcasts

• Scriptnotes
• Story Break
• The Tim Ferris Show (filter for episodes where he interviews writers, like this one with Joyce Carol Oates)
• The Writer's Panel
• Writing Excuses

Tools

• Panlexicon - a better thesaurus
• Grammarly - a better spelling/grammar checker
• Pro Writing Aid - various useful editing tools for serious writers
• Obsidian - my favourite digital note-taking app (if you're entirely in the Apple ecosystem, Bear is also great)
• For writing novels, I switch between Ulysses (best for the tech-savvy) and First Draft Pro (a fantastic tool for beginner writers). Scrivener is the devil and my work never feels safe there
• For collaborative editing, I use Google Docs, unless editors force me to use the turdpile that is Microsoft Word
• I'm currently using WriterDuet for screenwriting; Highland 2 is also good
• Ghost is my blog platform and email sender, Wix is your best option for simple websites, and Shopify is great for selling your own stuff

Got suggestions? I love suggestions! Pop me a mail.