how-to-write books | My Antimatter Life

I have collected how-to-write books ever since I bought a copy of Lawrence Block’s Writing the Novel: From Plot to Print. I since have accumulated a bookshelf full of them, which doesn’t include the books on my Kindle. They range from good to bad to worse-than-bad, published by respectable major publishers, self-published by known writers, and a few self-published by ignorant schemers.

I have come to see two major divisions in the better group of how-to-write books. One group is more academic books, that might well be textbooks in a college creative writing course. The other group is by writers who have been out in the trenches, writing for a living. Some of the older books were written by authors who got started writing and selling to the pulps.

The first division has the flaws of academic writing advice. First, they tend to assume that if you were really serious about your writing, you would be writing attempted literary fiction, even though attempted literary fiction does not sell. Second, they often accommodate the wishes of classroom teachers of creative writing. The classroom teacher does not want her students batting out several short stories each week to be evaluated. He would rather have the students write ONE short story, and rewrite it many times until it is polished and all the unique and interesting elements removed. Much less work. And little to no risk that the students will send it out into the world, get accepted, and outshine the teacher’s own writing.

Some of my books of the second type do not use standard jargon for parts of a story at all. Lester Dent in his Master Fiction Plot tells the writer to swat his hero with a fistful of trouble. There is no sanitized academic-writing name for swatting a character with a fistful of trouble, but I think most of us can figure out what that means, unlike Inciting Incident or Mirror Moment.

Many of the writers of the pulp era were self-taught. They didn’t know the proper academic names for parts of the story, because they were too busy writing stories. I have read accounts of young men who went off to New York City with a suitcase and a typewriter, set to work writing for the pulps, and soon could pay their rent off the story sales. Such writers didn’t have time to learn all the official terms for the parts of their stories— they were busy making a living.

And though I have read all my writing books at least once, it is the second type of writing book that I come back to, that inspires me. I’m not inspired by something that holds up as a model books of attempted literary fiction that I don’t read. I’ve noticed that the older books by writers regarded as great writers sold well enough— that’s why those writers were remembered in time for the academics to decide they were great writers.

I have always wanted to write something similar to the kind of books I am willing to read. I think most writers do. I have heard in the days of the pulps there were New York City writers who hated the Western genre, but wrote exclusively for the Western pulps. I wonder, though, if such writers made the list of any Western fan’s favorite writers.

COMMENTS: Civil comments (polite, no swearing) always welcome, even if you don’t agree with me. But if you are a troll commenters who swears at people, bullies people, insults people for not agreeing with you 100%, don’t expect your comment to see the light of day. This is MY blog, after all.

I’m concluding this post with a short list of recommended reading. I hope it is helpful to you— I hope I’ve sifted out a few of the things I shouldn’t have spend my money on.

Recommended Reading.

Lawrence Block. Writing the Novel: From Plot to Print. 1979.

Bryce Beattie (editor) Pulp Era Writing Tips. 2018. (Old articles on writing.)

Dean Wesley Smith. Heinlein’s Rules: Five Simple Business Rules for Writing. 2016.

Robert Turner. Pulp Fiction. 1948.

James Scott Bell. How to Write Pulp Fiction. 2017.

Lester Dent. Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot. http://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/dent.html

JD Cowan. The Pulp Mindset.

Kit Sun Cheah and Misha Burnett. Pulp on Pulp: Tips and Tricks for Writing Pulp Fiction. 2021.

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