The best
Writing Skill Reference books:
Reddit reviews
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
The best of Writing Skill Reference books by number of unique Reddit comments:
![The Elements of Style [Illustrated]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41iY6fZT-DL._SL500_.jpg)
Top Reddit reviews mentioning Writing Skill Reference books:
There's a couple different routes you could go.
I've not used it myself, but Vellum is spoken of as the one of the nicest options. It's also quite pricey, but you could easily pay somebody to format it for you if you don't want to shell out the hundred or so bucks to have the program yourself.
Scrivener is another app that is spoken of highly. I've used neither of them personally, so take that with a grain of salt.
You could hand format it. Salacious Stories made a guide for erotica shorts, but I would imagine it would work for novels. It has the added advantage of Sal being a moderator on here who chooses to spend his free time being super goddamn helpful, and so if you have questions you can ask him directly.
The easiest route would be downloading it as a docx, ands chucking that into Kindle Create.
I'm not a formatting guru (though there are quite a few who hang out here), so I can only be of limited help, but that's the advice I'm capable of giving.
Congrats on getting your first novel done! Here's a celebratory tune I wrote just for you.
♪ Those smutbux will be coming round the mountain when they coooome ♪
♪ Those smutbux with be coming round the mountain when they coooome ♪
♪ Well enough with the chatter ♪
♪ Give me my happily ever after! ♪
♪ Those smutbux will be coming when they cooooooome ♪ ♪
Great book.
It's super easy to learn, honestly I would recommend anyone who self publishes to learn this part of the process because it is best to have fine control of it.
So learn up on some basic CSS, read this book but instead of doing all the stuff she says about formatting the text in word (search and replace), copy and paste your word document into this tool and let it do allll the work for you.
Otherwise, play with different CSS on your title pages (look at other authors for ideas), learn to embed custom fonts (fancy), and learn how to code a TOC from scratch (not hard! it's basic css).
I use Sigil personally because it gives me fine control of everything. You can use Calibre as she instructs, but Sigil is XHTML and will get pissed off if you screw anything up so it's a bit safer to me.
Why hand formatting instead of just grabbing Vellum and formatting for people? Vellum doesn't teach you shit, and you'll give people a better KENP by doing handformatting. You can do all that fancy Vellum shit with handformatting, and you can squeeze more pages out of it which is what everyone wants. How many more pages?
Some more schmuck uploaded this long ass story from a word document to Amazon and got 200 pages out of it. Using proper formatting, it went to 600+ pages. That is an uncommon example, but handformatting is nearly always better.
OK, I'll start things off. I had a pretty good week - sales picked up from the previous week, and my latest stories are doing pretty well.
The most important thing though is that yesterday I successfully hand-coded an ebook! Using the great guide "A Filthy Book in a Fancy Dress" as well as Guido Henkel's guide, I was able to reformat an existing book, add in all the backmatter, convert it to an epub file, upload it to Amazon and test it out on my new Kindle - and it looks great! I strongly recommend both those guides to anyone who is thinking about starting hand coding. I was helped by the fact that I'm very computer savvy, but I think anyone could get the hang of it with some practice!
So this week the goal will be to reformat a bunch of my existing books, starting with the newest books and the top sellers. Extra smutbux, here I come!
Might be a bit dated now, but The Elements of Style by Strunk & White was one of the first books I read on writing.
Even if some of their examples or philosophies are dated, it's a really good foundational book. Having that base can save even the most boring or uninspired stories. Good writing can exist independently of a good idea (unfortunately).
If you want to learn to write well in English, this book taught me more than anything else.
I'm a fan of Pat Pattison's book "Writing better lyrics". He has some nice organizational techniques for rhyme scheme and what types of words can convey better emotion/meaning. It's fairly cheap on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Better-Lyrics-Pat-Pattison/dp/1582975779
Reviewers incorrectly use the "Generic Store or Restaurant" because it has the word "Generic" in it, not because it is a Store or Restaurant.
See the book "Eats, Shoots & Leaves".
https://www.amazon.com/Eats-Shoots-Leaves-Tolerance-Punctuation/dp/1592402038/ref=sr_1_1
Check this book.
https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Better-Lyrics-Pat-Pattison/dp/1582975779
Also, start doing some listening / watching / reading on the concept of Story - what makes one, what is one.
Here's a good start
https://www.amazon.com/Story-Substance-Structure-Principles-Screenwriting/dp/0060391685/
It's really hard to write lyrics without a musical context - even if you try to follow (or not follow) a certain structure, until you've given those lyrics a melody (or some other musical context, like chords or a riff or a beat), they aren't lyrics, they're poetry. Even if you go into writing thinking "okay, these are gonna be lyrics this time", without some kind of musical idea to support it and mold it, it's still just poetry. Some people do have luck starting songs by writing lyrics first, and then trying to write a melody that fits them, but personally I've had much better luck starting with musical ideas (a melody, a riff, a chord progression), and a really broad topic for a song (like "this song's gonna be about heartache" or something), and then writing lyrics that fit the rhythmic stresses and topic. Even if you do successfully write a song starting with lyrics, you'll often find yourself tweaking them anyway to fit the music you end up writing (and if you don't, there's a solid chance of your lyrics turning out awkward and forced).
I highly recommend checking out Pat Pattinson's Writing Better Lyrics from your local library / buying a copy if you can - I can't overstate how much it's helped me get into lyric writing in a more intentional way.
I thoroughly implore everyone to read <em>The Elements of Style</em> by Strunk and White. When writing, it's your best friend. If it were up to me it'd be handed out to every single NCO during BLC.
Here is an excerpt on the word irregardless:
>Irregardless. Should be regardless. The error results from failure to see the negative in -less and from a desire to get it in as a prefix, suggested by such words as irregular, irresponsible, and, perhaps especially, irrespective.
I just posted this on someone's question.
On Amazon, I once found an Emotional Thesaurus I liked being able to pick an emotion (such as wistful) and look at the different words and actions related to it.
Hope that helps!
I do somewhat agree with you to a point. Understand that being able to write is a necessary skill for communication though. While commenting on someone's grammar in this setting is rather pointless as most people can figure it out, if you or someone you know has issues with writing there is a great book for it and it's only $5 from amazon. Probably less at your used book store.
Romance is actually very simple. All romance novels follow a similar formula. To write effective romance, you need to understand two things: romantic story arc, and how to write emotion and conflict.
I’m going to point you to two resources I recommend to all my romance writer clients:
First is a book called Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes (a fellow romance editor). It costs less than $6 on Amazon and you can read it cover to cover in less than an hour. RTB will explain the formula for romantic story arc. Once you understand that, you can just plug your chosen setting, characters, etc. into the formula.
The second is Writing With Emotion, Tension, and Conflict: by Cheryl St. John (a romance writer). This book will teach you how to take your emotional conflict to the next level to really gut-punch your readers right in the feels.
Now go wrench some hearts, little fledgling romance writer. You got this. 👊🏼
I would recommend Strunk and White's The Elements of Style.
It's pretty much the definitive work on writing clearly and precisely.
I could do a lot of research for you and put it here, but I think it would be more beneficial for you to read a book called The Elements of Style, written by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. It's considered a great, if not the best, writing book out there, focusing a lot on style. I found a condensed version of the book as a PDF online for you. You can print it out and mark it up, or you can go online and buy the book there for a more comprehensive version. I'll put the link to the PDF and the Amazon purchase link for the 4th Edition if you want to do that too.
After you read that, don't stick to just that--you can branch out to other books. I haven't read much of Bird by Bird or Stephen King's On Writing, but I know there's some value in those books, or as I've heard from other writers. I've got other recommendations too if you'd like them.
Anyway, here's those links for you. Hopefully, I've been helpful.
There's three things I can recommend to help you improve your writing:
1) Get yourself a copy of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style. It's old, it's boring, but it's also been the gold standard of writing aids for decades, and for good reason. It's also like five bucks, so why not?
2) Read things. If you can, read worthwhile things. Get yourself a subscription to The Wall Street Journal or something. They offer student deals in a lot of places, and their articles are normally pretty top tier. But honestly even if you can't grind through that (I couldn't at 16) just read good writing. Fiction, nonfiction, who cares? If you read enough good writing, you'll start to pick up some of the strategies good writers use by pure osmosis.
3) This one is very important. WRITE things. Then edit them. Then edit them again. Annnnd another time for good measure. Then have someone you trust (maybe your English teacher?) edit them. Writing is like any other skill. The more you do it, the better you get.
And yeah, feel free to PM me if you have more questions, but honestly the best advice I can give you besides what I already wrote in the first post is: enjoy your life. Planning for the future is great and you definitely should think about it, but don't forget to stop and have fun sometimes. School (including undergrad) is honestly half about academics and half about learning how to interact with people. Later on they'll call that networking.
You need to try a little harder. I can see that you are a fan of minimalism but you have missed the mark. I suggest a different font for the title at the top (maybe Kenzo or Futura). Your site is responsive but having so many Soundcloud's open is causing it to be a bit slow to load I think. Your writing skills are lacking. Try working on your grammar (I recommend the book 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves'). Try taking a course on copywriting (I recommend this one).
Have shorter titles, they are currently too overwhelming. I don't look at many music blogs other than Pitchfork so I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve here but good luck.
Hang on, I can overlook breaking our laws, but now they’re breaking the rules of punctuation. I’ve got half a mind to go down to their little club and dramatically drop a copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves on the bar.
There were girls that wrote like this back in HS and I always found it so obnoxious.
​
Everyone that want's to get into clear and concise writing should give this book a perusal.
I think this could be useful: https://www.amazon.com/Emotion-Thesaurus-Writers-Character-Expression/dp/1475004958
There are others in the series that also could be very helpful.
This series of books can help with ideas and can get you started or unstuck. That said if you are writing a first draft then you may not want to bother with anything that interrupts your flow and worry about such things on edits.
Strunk & White. Very short, very clear, the only grammar/composition book you'll ever need. Can't recommend it enough.
https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William-Strunk/dp/020530902X
Chicago Manual of Style or Strunk & White, please
https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William-Strunk/dp/020530902X
I’m new to writing, so I purchased On Writing Well by William Zinsser. It’s very insightful for my writing itself, and the advice translates well to blogging.
https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-Classic-Guide-Nonfiction/dp/0060891548
On Writing Well by William Zissner is easy to follow, informative, and succinct, and I'd recommend it to just about anyone.
The Elements of Style by Strunk & White is often recommended as the de facto grammar book, but I've never read it (though I think I own a copy somewhere) so I don't know how good those recommendations are.
I would recommend the Associated Press Stylebook as, in my experience, that seems to be the most commonly required knowledge clients expect you to know. There are often free guides available on college and university websites and elsewhere, though I'm not sure if those are published with permission or infringing any copyrights.
Other than that, I think the best resources to learn how to write well are really dependent on how you learn.
I personally excel at learning via immersion, so reading a lot and practicing writing usually has the most significant impact on the quality of my writing. (There's a marked difference in how well I write when I'm reading a lot vs. how well I write when I haven't read much in awhile.)
I think that writers who are unfamiliar with English conventions or who didn't grow up with English as their primary language could do well from immersing themselves in the type of writing they hope to emulate, i.e. if you're writing for American consumers, read the same type of content they'd be reading to try and discern what's common among each piece you read, how to craft contextual and relevant analogies and metaphors, how to alternate cadence, when proper grammar conventions are necessary and when you can get away with breaking those rules, etc.
I also think that this might be one of the rare occasions where it's worth looking into a course or tutoring to bring you more up to speed with the knowledge you lack. Maybe getting your hands on some middle or high school English textbooks could be beneficial too, especially since most online content aims to be written at a 7th-9th-grade level.
Have you read Romancing the Beat? It's very helpful and shows the different stages of the romance. Usually both the hero and the heroine have a problem with love that has kept them from finding anyone. The first 0-15% of the book is set-up for the normal world and everything changes at the inciting incident. You can still have the meet-cute in the set-up but you are showing their normal world. Does that make sense? Here is the book. https://www.amazon.com/Romancing-Beat-Structure-Romance-Kissing-ebook/dp/B01DSJSURY
Learn proper punctuation. You use way too many commas, and that makes your sentences sound scattered all over the place. It's hard to read when there are five pauses in every sentence.
Cut down almost all the unnecessary metaphors. They're nice when they're used sparingly and in a clever way.
Use shorter paragraphs. Every instance of dialogue must have its own paragraph or it's really hard to read.
Lastly, embrace brevity. Keep it short. Get to the point. Don't draw out how long it takes to get up, for example. We get it. We all wake up every day. The entire post could easily be cut down to a single easy-to-read page.
There is potential here, so keep at it! I strongly recommend reading <u>On Writing Well</u> by William Zinsser. While it is predominantly for writing nonfiction, I find it's an excellent resource for all writers. You can easily obtain a pirated ebook copy on LibGen. Good luck!