Young Writers Society

So, I have a ten pound book token, and was thinking about using it to buy a good writing book.

Any suggestions? Anything on the whole writing shebang is good, or ones that deal with fantasy writing, or ones that are just plain helpful.

If you are looking into writing Fantasy, How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by Orson Scott Card, is remarkably good. He deals with World Building, Story Construction, writing well, and getting published as well. I found it remarkably helpful. Good luck.

I'm not big on those How to books, but if your writing fantasy I have a regular book that's one of my favorites and helps me write. The Sword of Truth series is excellent and very amusing. The first book in the series is Wizard's First Rule.

I've heard that The First Five Pages is good. But I've got Writing a Novel and Getting Published for Dummies.

I've always loved Writing Fiction but you're probably not in need of that. It's more of a beginner's guide, though still helpful. The Artful Edit was also great, and as the title says it focuses more on editing than anything else, which is a great skill to have.

Then there is The Midnight Disease which isn't a how-to book, but a book about writer's block and the study of it in writers. I found it fascinating.

Hope you find something good!

This may not apply to TLG, but if anybody hasn't read Strunk and White (The Elements of Style), it's high time you did. It's a classic for a reason. So very useful...

This may not apply to TLG, but if anybody hasn't read Strunk and White (The Elements of Style), it's high time you did. It's a classic for a reason. So very useful...

I bought that at the beginning of this school year because my Lit teacher told me we would need some sort of grammar reference, and I hadn't gotten that yet. I think it is hardly reading material? Of course I've only flipped through it. It might be great reference, but even then it's not like it hits every possible question you could have about the English language. I find a college text book on writing to be more useful (or even the internet) when I have a question. But this is just my opinion.

More than anything, if TL wants to read something, I'm not certain that is readable. Great for bumbles, though!

Some books I find helpful are:

The Writer's Complete Fantasy Reference by Writer's Digest Books. This one gave me my first story idea and got the ball rolling for several more.

Dynamic Characters by Nancy Kress is really, really good for character development.

Beginnings, Middles and Endings by Nancy Kress is hilarious and very useful.

Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint by Nancy Kress has some things Dynamic Characters does not, like writing about fight scenes and the run-down on POVs.

Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy by Crawford Kilian is really nice because it gives you other books and websites to look up (including two fantasy cliche lists). It also comes with a CD that has articles, exercises and web addresses.

Description by Monica Wood is what I'm currently reading and I really like it. It gives flashback tips, showing and telling tips, and how to keep things moving.

I also really like The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler. It's got the difference character archetypes and the steps in the hero's journey.

And finally, a fantasy cliche list I frequent is: http://amethyst-angel.com/cliche.html It's called the Not-So-Grand cliche list (Do not be deceived by the title, it is long). It's from Kilian's book, and it's a good list of overused things in fantasy. There is also the Grand cliche list ( http://www.geocities.com/area51/labyrin ... liche.html ), which is also from Kilian's book. Surprisingly it isn't as long as the Not-So-Grand list.

I have more, but those are my current favourites.

Hope I helped!

Suzanne wrote:

This may not apply to TLG, but if anybody hasn't read Strunk and White (The Elements of Style), it's high time you did. It's a classic for a reason. So very useful...

I bought that at the beginning of this school year because my Lit teacher told me we would need some sort of grammar reference, and I hadn't gotten that yet. I think it is hardly reading material? Of course I've only flipped through it. It might be great reference, but even then it's not like it hits every possible question you could have about the English language. I find a college text book on writing to be more useful (or even the internet) when I have a question. But this is just my opinion.

More than anything, if TL wants to read something, I'm not certain that is readable. Great for bumbles, though!

The grammar is boring, but the last two sections are priceless. A lot of books on writing (Stephen King) pretty much steal straight from the last section.