Essential Books for Writing

centerforfiction.org/writing-tools/essential-books-for-writing

Writing Tools
Maybe calling our list "Essential Books for Writers" is a bit of a stretch. We know that
there are many opinions on what makes great writing, and what works for one person
may not work for the next. Can you imagine Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor, and
Charles Dickens debating about the right way to write? But we wanted to give you some
options and inspiration on your path to whatever a successful life as a writer looks like to
you. We hope you'll find your essential guide in our list. And check back—we will continue
to add books as we come across new favorites. Happy reading and writing!

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On Writing
By Stephen King

Leave it to the literary rock star to compose a craft book that’s as entertaining as a good
novel. “This is a short book because most books about writing are filled with bullshit,”
King writes. What follows is a witty, practical, and sometimes poignant guide that is
refreshingly devoid of the aforementioned BS. King relates his personal story of
becoming a writer, then offers a “toolkit” of clear advice about everything from dialogue
and descriptive passages to revisions and the head game. And there’s more: tips for
beginning writers on submitting work for publication, a mark-up of one of King’s own
manuscripts, and a reading list. You might not be awake at 3 a.m. turning these pages,
but we promise On Writing will open your eyes to essential tricks of the trade.

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Still Writing
By Dani Shapiro

Dani Shapiro’s book, Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life, is a
perfect walk through an imperfect process. She shares the tried and true rules that some
aspiring writers may want to hear, like using the five senses, sticking to a work schedule,
and avoiding clichéd characters; but it is the places where Shapiro acknowledges
the ambiguity of the process that stand out. Peppered with personal history and insight
into how and where she created novels like Black and White as well as acclaimed
memoirs Devotion and Slow Motion, Shapiro gives us a road map to writing with one
simple direction at its heart: Keep writing. The rules she lays out are meant to be broken;
no life-story is more worthy of being written than any other; no process (unless it
involves surfing the Web instead of actually writing) is wrong. Yes, Dani Shapiro is still
writing, and because she possesses that all-important need to create, it seems she will be
doing so for quite some time.

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On Moral Fiction
By John Gardner

John Gardner’s On Moral Fiction, by now a well-known classic, is as relevant in its

exploration of the obligations of literature as when it was first published in 1979.
Gardner discusses art and criticism, concluding that the artist has a responsibility to
produce “moral” works for the sake of society. “Art discovers, generation after
generation, what is necessary to humanness,” says Gardner. By linking literature to such
elemental ideas as immortality and death, entropy and truth, Gardner dramatizes the act
of writing itself, coloring literature and criticism with such vitality and excitement that it
is hard not to become exhilarated. “Art gropes,” Gardner says. “It stalks like a hunter lost
in the woods, listening to itself and to everything around it, unsure of itself, waiting to
pounce.” You might say that some of his ideas are outrageous or unconventional, but
none of them lack the ability to provoke us.

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First You Write
By Joni Rodgers

It’s fitting that Joni Rodgers’s First You Write: The Worst Way to Become an Almost
Famous Author and the Best Advice I Got While Doing It is available only as an e-book.
Rodgers’s writes with wit and candor not only about her circuitous route to becoming
a New York Times bestselling memoirist (Bald in the Land of Big Hair, a searingly
funny account of her journey through cancer) and a critically acclaimed small-press
novelist (Crazy for Trying; Sugar Land), but also about her pioneering adventures in
self-publishing on Kindle. Rodgers’s willingness to experiment (isn’t that what artists
do?) and to turn preconceived publishing notions on their ear is wonderfully refreshing,
and her whip-smart observations will keep you turning (virtual) pages.

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The Forest for the Trees

By Betsy Lerner

Betsy Lerner’s The Forest For The Trees begins as a psychological compendium of the

writer’s life; written to the writer, with love. Lerner diagnoses writers: the ambivalent,
the natural, the neurotic, and as we relate to aspects of each, we are delivered through an
embarrassing adolescence of our own writerly growth, discovering who we were, are, and
might better be. Through humorous and often moving anecdotes and a wealth of
quotable quotes, we sweep through the personal and into the political landscape of the
literary industry. Like all good books, Lerner’s reflects the reader (as writer) back to
herself at every moment. She morphs between midwife and editor, weaving stories that
teach us how best to birth our own.

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The Writing Life
By Annie Dillard

In the years since its original publication, Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life has become a
must-read for aspiring writers of all walks. Perhaps this is because her approach to the
creative process manages a kind of golden ratio, a balance of magic and pragmatism that
continues to reveal its depths to writers of the 21st century. Plainly, this is not a field
guide. Dillard does not draw a tidy map. She does the opposite, acknowledging the
unknown and unknowable wilderness that every writer must face. “The line of words is a
miner’s pick, a wood carver’s gouge, a surgeon’s probe. You wield it, and it digs a path
you follow. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory. Is it a dead end, or have you
located the real subject? You will know tomorrow, or this time next  year.” A master in
the art of illumination, she focuses on the edges of big ideas. The resulting work is as
mystifying as it is enduring.

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Writing Past Dark

By Bonnie Friedman

In Writing Past Dark, Bonnie Friedman shines a light on the hidden ways we mess
ourselves up—with envy, fear, distraction, and other self-defeating habits of mind.
“Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who
keep writing,” she says. “They are the ones who discover what is most important and
strangest and most pleasurable in themselves, and keep believing in the value of their
work, despite the difficulties.” With warmth and candor, Friedman offers insights into
surmounting those tricky obstacles.

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The Elements of Style
By William Strunk & E.B. White

Of the hundreds of volumes written about the art and craft of writing, The Elements of
Style by William Strunk and E.B. White is the elegant granddad. This slim volume offers
no touchy-feely solutions for writer’s block, no inspirational exercises, and no musings
on the writing life. Instead, it contains clear, concise rules for writing well, delivered with
panache. Whether you strive for formal excellence or stylistic innovation, whether you’re
a first-time author or have a string of publications to your name, there’s something here
to learn—or gladly rediscover.

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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of

Screenwriting
By Robert McKee

Robert McKee (the renowned screenwriting guru whose real-life teaching persona was
portrayed by Brian Cox in the film Adaptation) is required reading, but not just for
screenwriters. He illustrates good plotting and structure that can make your novels or
short stories as gripping as your favorite film. In Story, McKee structures his advice by
first broadly stating a principle of writing, then expounding on different ways it can be
applied, with examples from all kinds of scripts. His pearls of wisdom have been
legendary in the Hollywood world, and they’ll certainly stick in your head after you’re
through this book. Whether you’re writing for the screen or the page, this fantastic book
will help you break your work down to the core of why we write fiction in the first place:
the story.

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Making Shapely Fiction
By Jerome Stern

It’s easy, when one is far enough along in the “writing life,” to assume that a manual
won’t have much to offer beyond technical guidance and fluffy prompts. But Stern’s wise
and thorough little book should be as indispensable to the master of the form as the
student. Like Stern himself, who was the head of the Creative Writing Program at Florida
State University for many years, it takes a brass tacks approach to fiction, one that can be
read straight through if you want to bone up on the basics or in bits and pieces as
inspiration is needed. The “shapes” in question are sixteen storytelling archetypes which
Stern breaks down in the book’s first section, followed by a tongue-in-cheek section on
whether or not to write what you know, and finally a glossary of terms “from Accuracy to
Zig-Zag.” This may all sound like stuff you already know, but to read them again in
Stern’s irreverent voice is like revisiting fairy tales from your childhood and discovering
all the dirty parts that went over your head. You’ll want to dig back into your own
discarded ideas box and sculpt something new.

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Steering the Craft and The Language of the Night

By Ursula K. Le Guin

Le Guin has published two books about writing. The more recent of these, Steering the
Craft (1998), is intended for experienced writers, the ones, she says, who “blow all Rules
of Writing to bits.” It offers exercises and advice on storytelling, point of view, and
grammar. For the younger author, there is her 1979 volume, The Language of the Night,
filled with inspirational essays on science fiction and fantasy, that are no less rigorous
than the later book. “In art,” she observes, “‘good enough’ is not good enough.”

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