Writing is in my blood – my grandmother wrote poetry, my mother writes novels, and over the last twenty-plus years I’ve written just about everything (and now I teach writing at my local university). I’ve loved stories for as long as I can remember. While my fiction career may be newly revived, I spent over 20 years as a pop culture commentator, poking at the minutia of the stories I love. I think stories may be one of the most important things in our culture – they inspire us, they brighten our day, they bring us to tears, and sometimes when we are lost they show us the way.
On the surface,Re: Apotheosis is about fictional characters falling out of their stories into the real world, discovering that they are fiction, and coming to grips with what that means, meeting their creators, and fighting a war over them. How does a mech pilot like Atria Silversword process the fact that her world and the war she’s fighting to save it is the creation of an author struggling to finish her story?
Beneath that, however, it’s a book about creation itself, and the media industry around it – how we create, why we create, and how we relate to what we create.
I had been writing professionally for over two decades when I first picked up this book, and it left me kicking myself for not picking it up years ago. Not only did it make me understand why I do many of the things I do when I’m writing fiction, it raised my game as a storyteller. Robert McKee has clearly done a lot of thinking about the mechanics of how stories work, and he explains them with crystal clarity. It is the best book on storytelling I have ever read, and essential reading for anybody who wants to do it well.
Structure is Character. Characters are what they do. Story events impact the characters and the characters impact events. Actions and reactions create revelation and insight, opening the door to a meaningful emotional experience for the audience. Story is what elevates a film, a novel, a play, or teleplay, transforming a good work into a great one. Movie-making in particular is a collaborative endeavour - requiring great skill and talent by the entire cast, crew and creative team - but the screenwriter is the only original artist on a film. Everyone else - the actors, directors, cameramen, production designers, editors, special…
Before I discovered my previous pick, this book was my main recommendation for new writers. It is divided into two parts. The first is an immensely entertaining account of Stephen King’s journey to becoming a writer. The second is one of the best explorations of how to use language to tell a story I’ve ever read. Now, I don’t agree with everything King has to say on the craft of fiction writing – personally, I think he’s dead wrong when he recommends not using outlines – but I have yet to see better as guides go for how to create a specific effect in any given scene.
Twentieth Anniversary Edition with Contributions from Joe Hill and Owen King
ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE’S TOP 100 NONFICTION BOOKS OF ALL TIME
Immensely helpful and illuminating to any aspiring writer, this special edition of Stephen King’s critically lauded, million-copy bestseller shares the experiences, habits, and convictions that have shaped him and his work.
“Long live the King” hailed Entertainment Weekly upon publication of Stephen King’s On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer’s craft, comprising the basic tools of the…
This will be one of my more controversial picks – there are plenty of people who disagree with Campbell as a folklorist, a mythographer, and with his depiction of the Hero’s Journey. But, what is important about Campbell is his exploration of whythe elements that appear in stories have the impact they do on our psyche, and how they fit together. One may not agree with all of Campbell’s conclusions, but I don’t think there’s a writer out there who won’t benefit from his exploration of the subject. I know I did.
Joseph Campbell's classic cross-cultural study of the hero's journey has inspired millions and opened up new areas of research and exploration. Originally published in 1949, the book hit the New York Times best-seller list in 1988 when it became the subject of The Power of Myth, a PBS television special. The first popular work to combine the spiritual and psychological insights of modern psychoanalysis with the archetypes of world mythology, the book creates a roadmap for navigating the frustrating path of contemporary life. Examining heroic myths in the light of modern psychology, it considers not only the patterns and stages…
When I’m teaching or mentoring in the craft of writing, one of the things I most often recommend is to “read Hemmingway.” For this book, it’s not just the lively descriptions of some very famous authors and the 1920s Paris literary scene, it’s how these descriptions are told – Hemmingway’s language is deceptively simple. It is “bare bones” writing, and yet it conveys so much. And, I think it’s important for writers to see how Hemmingway uses language and what he accomplishes with it.
Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works. Since Hemingway's personal papers were released in 1979, scholars have examined and debated the changes made to the text before publication. Now this new special restored edition presents the original manuscript as the author prepared it to be published.
Featuring a personal foreword by Patrick Hemingway, Ernest's sole surviving son, and an introduction by the editor and grandson of the author, Sean Hemingway, this new edition also includes a number of unfinished, never-before-published Paris sketches revealing experiences that Hemingway had with his son Jack and…
This is a foundational book for me. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I would re-read it every year. But that’s not why I’m recommending this book. I’m recommending it for the same reason I’m recommending Hemmingway: how Tolkien uses language. While Hemmingway’s prose is very pared-down and simple, Tolkien’s is the opposite – it is almost (and frequently) poetic, and yet it is never overwrought. Just as it is important for writers to see how to use simple prose to its best effect, it is important to have an exemplar of how to use more complex prose as well.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell by chance into the hands of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins.
I became fascinated with 16th-century and 17th-century Europe after reading Don Quixote many years ago. Since then, every novel or nonfiction book about that era has felt both ancient and contemporary. I’m always struck by how much our environment has changed—transportation, communication, housing, government—but also how little we as people have changed when it comes to ambition, love, grief, and greed. I doubled down my reading on that time period when I researched my novel, Dulcinea. Many people read in the eras of the Renaissance, World War II, or ancient Greece, so I’m hoping to introduce them to the Baroque Age.
Dolça Llull Prat, a wealthy Barcelona woman, is only 15 when she falls in love with an impoverished poet-solder. Theirs is a forbidden relationship, one that overcomes many obstacles until the fledgling writer renders her as the lowly Dulcinea in his bestseller.
By doing so, he unwittingly exposes his muse to gossip. But when Dolça receives his deathbed note asking to see her, she races across Spain with the intention of unburdening herself of an old secret.
On the journey, she encounters bandits, the Inquisition, illness, and the choices she's made. At its heart, Dulcinea is about how we betray the people we love, what happens when we succumb to convention, and why we squander the few chances we get to change our lives.
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