Any Exceptional Books About Writing?

Just to throw out a few that haven't been mentioned yet. I really enjoyed Blake Snyder's Save the Cat It's a screenwriting book but it can be adapted for novels too. Also Story Engineering by Larry Brooks.

Both of these offer some great insights on plotting. Snyder's Book is one I re-read purely for entertainment's sake. Neither of them are a really heavy read either.

I suppose it's technically a book about reading, but How To Read A Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren is stuffed to the gills with excellent writing advice.

The Idiots Guide to Novel Writing by Tom Monteleone is a real page turning... seriously. He explains things very plainly and down-right honestly. I found it very helpful... and I look things up in it all the time.

The "Write Good Fiction Series" has helped me so much.

Description and Setting

Characters, Emotions and Viewpoint

Plot and Structure

They explain things very simply and at the end of every chapter it gives you some exercises to reinforce what you have just read.

Sometimes the Magic Works by Terry Brooks. It's not really about how to like most writing books, it's more of just him telling about his experiences as a writer and the lessons he learned. I found it incredibly helpful and enjoyable to read.

My absolute favorite book on writing is "Writer to Writer" by Gail Carson Levine. It is super fun to read and I think it was what helped me crawl out of my writing rut.

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Kitkat_1122_ wrote:Writing Magic: Creating Stories That Fly by Gail Carson Levine

I think this book was wrote towards younger writers, but it was still good. It had some good writing exercises and tips.

I was going to say that!

Hi,
It's really important question to find the books that help develop writing skills. And thank you for sharing your favorite ones.
The books that were useful for me and not already mentioned are "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser and "The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story" by Frank O’Connor.

The Art of Fiction and On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner.

He can at times sound harsh but I found these books to be helpful.

two that I've read that are quite helpful are 'steering the craft' by ursla K. leguin, and 'Elements of style' By William Strunk jr. and E.B. White (yes, the same E.B. white who wrote Charlotte's web). Steering the craft is more of an activity oriented book, while Elements of style is more of a textbook (though, at 95 pages it's the shortest textbook you'll ever read), both are relatively short.

On Writing by Stephen King

I never got far into it, but Write This Book: A Do-It-Yourself Mystery by Pseudonymous Bosch is supposedly pretty good! I would say that it's geared towards younger writers and ones who have probably read his Secret Series, but I still had to recommend it.

I haven’t finished it, but Letters to a Young Writer by Colum McCann has a bunch of tips.

If you need books about structure and plotting, Save The Cat does a really good job at creating a roadmap for you to follow if you want to write a successful book. It is for screenwriting but you can use it for novels as well.

There's also Save The Cat! Writes a Novel if you think that a book on screenwriting wouldn't be of your taste.

Here's the links.

https://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp/1932907009
https://www.amazon.com/Save-Cat-Writes-Novel-Writing/dp/0399579745

- Purple