For Writers

Below are some of my favorite resources on writing and revising. Take special note of the podcasts, my particular addiction!

Grammar, Style, and Editing  |  Plot and Structure  |  Characterization  & Craft  |  Everything Resources  |  Podcasts

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Grammar, Style, and Editing

• The Elements of Style by Strunk & White (A classic, a must. Super short.)
• It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences: A Writer’s Guide to Crafting Killer Sentences by June Casagrande
• Write Right!: A Desktop Digest of Punctuation, Grammar, and Style by Janet Venolia
• The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation by Jane Straus
• Purdue’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) guides
• 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing by Gary Provost
• Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Browne and King
• Grammar Girl’s Handy Comma Usage Chart
• The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman (NOTE: I hesitated to recommend this one for a long time because it was written over 20 years ago, it feels very steeped in a certain area of the book world, and the tone is very condescending. BUT, there is a lot of useful information and examples. You are forewarned.)

Plot and Structure

• Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody
• Story by Robert McKee
• The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller by John Truby
• Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell
• Story Engineering by Larry Brooks
• Story Engineering Structure Cheat Sheet by Larry Brooks
• Outlining Your Novel and Structuring Your Novel by K.M. Weiland

Characterization & Craft

• Story Genius by Lisa Cron
• Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors by Brandilyn Collins
• Deep Point of View by Marcy Kennedy
• Understanding Show, Don’t Tell: And Really Getting It by Janice Hardy
• Creating Character by K.M. Weiland
• Cindy Baldwin’s series on writing description
• How to Avoid Telling in Writing Fiction
• Conquering Six Enemies of Deep POV
• This sentence has five words — A super fast lesson on sentence variety and rhythm.
• Writing Smooth Transitions
• Show Don’t Tell series by Rebecca McLaughlin — She posts excerpts from her own writing and walks us through the revision.

Everything Resources

• The Ultimate Collection of Resources for Writers on PublishingCrawl
• The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi, plus their online worksheets at Tools for Writers
• The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults by Cheryl B. Klein (My #1 go-to book for everything.)
• Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass (From DMLA Literary Agency. There are a million editions, so buy the most recent one. The workbook is great, too)
• GMC: Goal, Motivation, Conflict by Debra Dixon
• The Kick-Ass Writer by Chuck Wendig
• Damn Fine Story by Chuck Wendig
• After the First Chapter blog series by Amanda Rawson Hill

Podcasts

• Publishing Crawl (PubCrawl – has been inactive for years but the information is gold)
• First Draft
• LiteratiCast (with agent Jennifer Laughran)
• Print Run (with agents Laura Zats and Erik Hane)
• 88 Cups of Tea (with Yin Chang)
• Writing Excuses
• On Writing (with Amie Kaufman)