The “Must Have” References for Every Writer, Regardless of Genre

There are many resources out there for writers, each looking at a different aspect of writing. Some will go into the nitty-gritty about how to structure a story or build a character. Others will go into narrative voice and points of view. And of course, you have the countless number of resources about punctuation and grammar.

Then you have all the genre specific materials that you might pick up along the way. For me, these include books about weaponry, criminal investigations, herbology, and, probably the most odd edition on my shelf, improvised munitions (complete with actual, functional recipes—thank you, U.S. Army).

If you're anything like me, most of the writing resources you have sitting on your shelf are books that you refer to occasionally. They're useful to have, but they aren't something that are an instant GO-TO for most things you write. Perhaps you've read them through cover to cover once, but they tend to sit on the shelf collecting dust.

But, there will be those books that you just can't do without. You love them so much that you seem to have accumulated multiple copies of them along the way. They are books that are so well loved that your paper copies (if you have paper copies of them) have little tabs added everywhere, marking important pages that you keep going back to. Or the electronic copies are annotated to the point of exhaustion.

And if someone asks to borrow that book... NO WAY! Get your own.

The following list of books is like that for me. These books are volumes that live within arms reach of my desk. For a few of them, I have both paper and digital formats, that way I can always have them with me when I'm writing. Regardless of the fiction genre you write, these books are beyond valuable.

Shapeshifter: A Literary Term Defined

There are times when the terminology seems to confuse the hell out of me. Sometimes, it’s because the odd term is completely new to my ears. At other times, it’s a term or phrase that has an obscure reference that I spend forever trying to work how such an odd term could mean that. And there are those terms that have a common meaning within pop culture that seem to be at war with the literary meaning.

The term shapeshifter is one of those terms that falls into the last category.

While pop culture would have us believe that the term shapeshifter refers to someone whose physical appearances change, the term actually refers to their behavior.

How much control do you have over your goals?

We're coming to the end of the year, which means that people around the world are going to start reflecting on the year that has just past and are going to start making those New Year's resolutions. It's only nature. A new year. A new start.

Many writers will start their year with new goals too. Some writers decide to finally get their names out there, building their online presence. Others will set the goal of publishing that book. Others just want to finish the dreaded manuscript. Whatever the goal, there will be common threads among writers.

You have likely seen a few messages or posts on other sites regarding SMART goals. This is important, because they do make the goals attainable and a little less daunting. However, there is an additional aspect to goal setting that I want my fellow writers to think about.

How much of your goal is in YOUR control?

How to Write Realistic and Professional Scenes About Shooting (Guest Blog)

How to Write Realistic and Professional Scenes About Shooting

by Jay Chambers

Let’s face it, most writers are not gun experts. And gathering reliable data about how gun fights actually happen is difficult, because there are a lot of tall tales out there and combat data collection is spotty, but there are a few things that we know.

The behavior of gun-savvy people is easy to observe and replicate in your writing. Here’s what you need to know to write realistic shooting scenes that make you look like a professional who does their homework.

Plotter vs Pantser: Is one really better than the other?

I have found myself in a few conversations lately about the merits of being a plotter or a pantser, with interesting insights on the two different concepts. In reality, the conversations always comes down to how we are all different and how there is no one way to get the initial draft on paper. We all do what we have to do to make the writing happen, but it is interesting how many of us have multiple tactics up our sleeves. Sometimes, we're forced to change gear and try something else.

So, which really is better? Well... It would seem that the answer is nowhere near as simple as the question.

The Traditional 3-Act Structure: Part 3

There is a natural instinct that exists among most writers about where to put the tension beats in, where things need to change, when the reader needs a break from all the action. That is because most writers read a lot, or watch a lot of movies, or... Well, we just spend a lot of time in a fictional world somewhere. When we do that, we do start to see the patterns, even if we don't understand the formula being applied to those stories.

The traditional 3-act structure is just one of countless number of models out there on story structure. Over the past few posts, we have been breaking down the traditional 3-act structure into the nitty-gritty, getting to the root of why it works the way it does.

In Part 1 of this series, we examined the elements of act 1, including the inciting event and the first transition point, what I called the first point of No-Return. In Part 2, we looked at the first half of act 2, heading into the midpoint, and we discussed what is meant by the A-story and the B-story.

In this, the final installment of this series, we're going to look at the final transition point for the manuscript and what the working components go into act 3.

The Traditional 3-Act Structure: Part 2

Much of what a writer does when crafting a story is based on instinct, weaving in the rise and fall of action. The same can be said about a developmental editor. Every story is different, so there is no strict formula that can be applied.

Tools like the traditional 3-act structure are only diagnostic tools, designed to help us understand why something might not be working.

In the first post of this 3-Act Structure series, we introduced the importance of this structure as a whole, and began breaking it down. We looked at the first act (The Setup) and the first point of No-Return. Today, let's get into the nitty-gritty of Act 2.

The Traditional 3-Act Structure: Part 1

Most writers have a natural instinct when it comes to story structure and plot. We do so much reading, or we see so many movies, that understanding pacing is just part of our makeup. Even new writers, still learning their craft, have this instinct.

We know that if we have action scene after action scene, eventually we need to have a calm scene that gives us the chance to breathe. We know that there needs to be those moments of reflection, looking at what has happened in the past, but if we spend too much time dwelling on the past, that explosion will be needed to get things going again. And there will also be those moments when a character decides to risk all and just go for it—damned the consequences.

As writers, we follow a story structure with the instinct of knowing where the rise and fall in the action needs to be. However, when something is off in the pacing of a story, that's when all the discussions come out about one of countless number of models for story structure and the analytical tools associated with it.

As a developmental editor, it is my job to look at story structure and pacing from the macro and micro levels. If pacing is off, for whatever reason, I delve into the mechanics of a manuscript and tear that structure apart to find out why things just don't work. Much of what I do on this particular front is instinct, simply because every single story is different. However, there are some commonalities within the beats of a story, which has given rise to models like the traditional 3-act structure.

It's time to start dissecting the mechanics of some of these models, just so you, as a writer, can see why editors use them so often within our work.

Writing Accent into Fictional Writing

You have a character that comes from a particular region of the world. The people from this region tend to speak in a particular fashion. It's distinctive, and the moment anyone hears it, they instantly get a sense of the type of environment that the character came from.

It's only natural to want to put that into our writing. We want to immerse our readers into the world. We want them to experience it. Being able to imagine a character's accent is only part of that experience.

However, building accent into the written form is not a simple matter of slapping a few letters onto the page. Like everything else we do in writing, it takes careful thought and consideration.

Writing accent into your story could add the perfect color to your fictional world, but it could also turn into a reader's nightmare.

Trick from the Editor’s Hat: The Top-and-Tail Edit

It doesn't matter how you look at it, editing is a BIG job. Any little tricks to help make things flow are always handy to have.

Here is just one of the many tricks that I employ when editing both my own and clients' writing, giving me a way to examine story flow.

The Top-and-Tail Edit

The idea behind a top-and-tail edit is that you examine the transitions between chapter and sections, looking at the last paragraph(s) of one chapter and reading the first paragraph(s) of the next. Everything in the middle is ignored. This is only looking at the transitions.

This particular idea is highly effective with the development of the cliff-hanger endings.