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
- Publishing Rodeo
- 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.