Best resources on writing prose?

[Joe Qunt]

Hi all. Been reading and writing a lot recently (usually when I should be working), so much so that I want to write some short stories. It's been a long time since I last wrote prose, however, and I'd like some suggestions or recommendations for books on the subject.

Alternatively if you have any advice yourself, I'd be delighted to hear it.

Thanks in advance

[SweetPomPom]

Story by Robert McKee is worth a look, it is primarily for screen writing though.

[iamcoop]

I suppose the obvious one is Stephen King's On Writing which you can probably pick up for pennies online.

It's as much a memoir of his writing career as it is a resource of advice but it's pretty good and contains lots of useful stuff broken down into layman's terms.

[Mister Six]

If you're writing a novel, you could check out Story Genius by Lisa Cron. There's some guff about using BRAIN SCIENCE to interest your readers in the story, but that's just an angle, really, the meat of it is a series of exercises designed to build up your story bit by bit, solving potential problems before you reach them, so you don't waste three years writing something that goes nowhere.

The flip side to that is that I realised my novel wasn't really worth writing (just not enough to it, but worth revisiting in the future), and now I've shelved Story Genius to write a screenplay instead. However, a friend of mine finished the first draft of a novel using SG and said it really helped, so...

[Mr Vegetables]

I found Will Storr's Science of Storytelling extremely useful; I've no idea if it's actually scientific, but it's definitely given me more confidence in having characters with thoughts and motivations who use those to drive my plots. And that's grand.

But really "do things that excite you and be willing to get better at them over time" is probably the most important advice for anything creative. Hopefully advice will be about informing that process, because in the end I expect it's more important than the advice.

[touchingcloth]

There are tons of guides to writing screenplays in particular and stories in general. They all say much the same thing, but couched slightly different buzzwords and with things divided into 3, 5, 7, or more acts.

Syd Field's Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting is a pretty mercenary guide to writing something that will sell in Hollywood in particular.

Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces is the ur book on the topic of stories and myths more generally, not specifically for print, stage, or screen. John Yorke's Into the Woods covers similar ground, but with a particular focus on analysing screenplays and the odd novel and staged work.

All of the above discuss plots, arcs, and characters rather than prose per se, and it's plot rather than prose which make works succeed or fail I think. Some prolific authors - maybe Lee Child, but don't quote me - essentially sketch a detailed plot and then hand the work of actually writing the complete story to an assistant because it's not the specific choice of words which make their books popular.

[ProvanFan]

I started reading A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders, in which he analyses short stories by Gogol and Tolstoy and that lot.

Then I found out the audiobook had an interesting cast, so I started listening to it instead.

Then I forgot all about it.

I bet it's good though.

[Mister Six]

All of the above discuss plots, arcs, and characters rather than prose per se, and it's plot rather than prose which make works succeed or fail I think. Some prolific authors - maybe Lee Child, but don't quote me - essentially sketch a detailed plot and then hand the work of actually writing the complete story to an assistant because it's not the specific choice of words which make their books popular.

Depends on what kind of story you're telling. For airport thrillers, absolutely, and there's nothing wrong with that. But Wolf Hall isn't a great book because of its plot.

Oh, and I'll one-up your Conrad and say Aristotle's Poetics. ;)

[touchingcloth]

Depends on what kind of story you're telling. For airport thrillers, absolutely, and there's nothing wrong with that. But Wolf Hall isn't a great book because of its plot.

I'd say a great structure is part of what makes Wolf Hall a great book. If it wasn't for that structure, it'd just be a lot of Thomas standing round in empty rooms pondering nothing.

"I wonder if the chamber pots are full, he thought; they'll need emptying if so."

[amputeeporn]

Some prolific authors - maybe Lee Child, but don't quote me - essentially sketch a detailed plot and then hand the work of actually writing the complete story to an assistant because it's not the specific choice of words which make their books popular.

Funnily enough, Lee used to be an exception to this rule. Famously never plotted his books, just started with a good first line and went wherever it took him, and only ever wrote one draft. I guess you could say the book itself was his outline, and his style was just so terse and hardboiled that it worked as the book itself.

He actually had a guy watch him write a book to prove this, and the guy wrote his own book covering it, which makes for an interesting read (called Reacher Said Nothing, covering the Lee Child book Make Me).

Sadly, now, he 'co-writes' the books with his brother, due to health issues I think, and apparently will hand over the reigns to him full-time soon (the newer books are baaaaad, losing that edge and terseness and perfectly rendered airport thriller style for something far sloppier and less elemental).

Will be interesting to see how badly they fall off when his brother's name is the only one on the cover. I realise Lee Child's not thought of as a great writer, and even accused of stylelessness at times, but it just goes to show how subtle that stuff can be. Thousands of writers have tried to rip off his style, which looks so simple, without success, his brother being one of them, with his own (now-abandoned) woeful series of books.

A slight thread derail, but it proves to me that prose style can be a very subtle thing. Something about Lee writing those books clearly works. Something about anyone else doing it crashes and burns.

[touchingcloth]

I was going to say that the form of the prose needs to match the function of the story, and muse what a Lee Child plot written in Mantel's allusive and symbolic prose would be like, and then I realised that that's essentially what The Name of the Rose is, and it's bad because of it.

[Mobbd]

All this stuff about structure and arcs and whatnot. It's all useful-ish: I'd say use those conventions but use 'em naturally, with your gut, based on your reading of other things over the years, without fretting about what's right. "Be a camera" someone once said, and you've been doing that all your life. Studying the technical side (specifically in writing, I mean) can lead to contrivance and you can smell it a mile away. Just my opinion.

I can't imagine that many of the really great writers would have bothered with how-to-write books. Besides, I'd rather read an inventive book by an honest newb than an overly perfect one by a another fucking Franzen or [insert Booker prize listee here] any day. Charles Rennie Mackintosh: "There is hope in honest error. None in the icy perfections of the mere stylist." Or: I'd rather be The Shaggs than another autotune pop sensation.

I suppose I have two main rules of thumb about writing:

1. Philosophy first. In other words, know approximately what you're saying before you start saying it. In fiction, this means being able to summarise your story approximately before committing. It also means knowing your allegory or deeper meaning (if you want there to be one) too. Then again, these things can be emergent and/or strengthened in future drafts.

2. Write the work you'd want to read. And read widely to inform that viewpoint.

Burp! Sorry. *wipes mouth*

There's other handy tips like "just write the shitty first draft" but I honestly think a person could get started with my idiot findings above.

I suppose if you want to write the Great American Novel or something, you could study hard first. But beware of perfectionism (think of Kubrick's Napoleon film that never happened and remember that you're up against more barriers than he was) and start writing. Get your medium-value words out first and keep moving, moving, moving.

Olga Tokarczuk won the Nobel Prize eventually (for Flights, I think?) but she wrote some absolutely darling stories first. I like some of her challenging later books but those earlier ones are far more enjoyable. Again, just a subjective take from a fool on a forum. Do what you're happiest with.

Oh! The Elements of Style is quite good. It's old-fashioned but it gets you thinking about style conventions. And you can ignore as much of it as you like. And it's short!

Orwell writes very tight and elegant prose in my opinion. No fluff or futzing about, all without sounding macho. You'll have read him already but I'd recommend doing so with a writer's eye if you haven't already and try doing an impression of him for a while. Or not. It's all good.

[Mobbd]

Oh! Artful by Ali Smith. More of a meditation on writing than a how-to but full of great takes from herself and some memorable quotations from people like Jose Saramago.

And Heart of the Original by Steve Aylett. Short and helpful. On the topic of originality.

[touchingcloth]

1. Philosophy first. In other words, know approximately what you're saying before you start saying it. In fiction, this means being able to summarise your story approximately before committing. It also means knowing your allegory or deeper meaning (if you want there to be one) too. Then again, these things can be emergent and/or strengthened in future drafts.

I'd add to this that it's easier to create an outline using post-its or index cards as part of the process of working out what you want to say before you write it. It's much easier to add to, remove from, or tweak the outline of something in that form than it is to do the same thing with whole paragraphs. Those post-it darlings are much easier to kill.

[Joe Qunt]

Thank you very much for the great advice @Mobbd, I'll definitely be using it.

My main writing experience has been screenplays, so it's taking a bit of time and practice to adjust to prose. The hardest part so far is the sheer number of words I have to write in comparison to the average script; I felt good about myself if I managed to write a page a day!

[Mobbd]

Thank you very much for the great advice @Mobbd, I'll definitely be using it.

My main writing experience has been screenplays, so it's taking a bit of time and practice to adjust to prose. The hardest part so far is the sheer number of words I have to write in comparison to the average script; I felt good about myself if I managed to write a page a day!

I was surprised I had anything to say at all so thank you for inadvertently hitting some kind of nerve! And being kind about what I did manage to squeeze out.

One place where I zigged when I should have zagged is that I didn't sense you were writing screenplays. Not sure why I didn't pick that up from the other posters' recommendations. I don't know much about screenplays and I haven't read this myself but Save the Cat is the classic, right? Do you know if it deserves its popularity?

[Joe Qunt]

One place where I zigged when I should have zagged is that I didn't sense you were writing screenplays. Not sure why I didn't pick that up from the other posters' recommendations. I don't know much about screenplays and I haven't read this myself but Save the Cat is the classic, right? Do you know if it deserves its popularity?

You were right the first time, I am trying to write prose/novels/short stories. I've ranted about Save The Cat! before, I'm not a fan of it.

I guarantee it will make your screenwriting worse. It's write-by-numbers, populist nonsense. A lot of it is outdated, cliched and only useful for making the kind of '80s crap that Snyder actually wrote. McKee's Story, Hero With A Thousand Faces, Yorke's Into The Woods, any Syd Field book, Truby's The Anatomy Of Story and – my personal favourite – Paul Gulino's The Sequence Approach.

[Mobbd]

Haha! That is very satisfying!

[pigamus]

1. Read Raymond Carver
2.

[sweeper]

I started reading A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders, in which he analyses short stories by Gogol and Tolstoy and that lot.

Then I found out the audiobook had an interesting cast, so I started listening to it instead.

Then I forgot all about it.

I bet it's good though.

The book is incredibly good for writing guidance, one of the best I have read. It gets into the technical specificity in way that is incredibly accessible and encouraging.

Even better is his substack Story Club, which continues the work of the book on a whole range of short stories, not just nineteenth century Russians.

Saunders is intimidatingly smart, and he seems to want to share his skills in a very open-hearted, non-didactic way which you don't tend to find with a lot of writers. I feel sure that if a growing writer could pick up what he's laying down then all the secrets are revealed therein.

So check that.

[Ray Travez]

If you're writing a novel, you could check out Story Genius by Lisa Cron.

Cheers, got this one now. Only on chapter 3 but I like her ideas so far.

[Ray Travez]

...got A Swim in a Pond in the Rain as well now. I'll probably buy Heart of the Original too.

I like Roy Peter Clark's, Murder Your Darlings. He examines the writing advice from around fifty books, condenses it and gives you the best bits. It's been a great springboard for me to explore different techniques.