Storytellersunplugged

I never used to read books on writing. Which, coming from a contributor to a blog of essays on writing, may seem as unlikely a confession as a chef saying she never reads cookbooks.

It was a purist form of bias: The only meaningful way to learn the craft was to do it, then let the open market thrash you about the head and shoulders with your own rolled-up manuscripts until you cried. Repeat until improved.

And once I stopped blubbering and started getting acceptance letters, well, what would’ve been the point of prepackaged advice then? My boat was finally afloat.

Now, the bruising path of submission-and-flagellation is still, inescapably, the chief form of apprenticeship, but I’ve relaxed the stance on the rest. Look at it this way: What surgeon, mechanic, code monkey, or marketing agent relies exclusively today on an initial skill set picked up years or decades ago? And who, in any cherished pursuit, is really better off regarding everyone else’s experiential insights as if there’s nothing to learn from them?

It isn’t a matter of writers not knowing how to write. It’s more that we can find it easy to stick close to the habits and ruts that served us well early, and became as comfortable as extra-fleecy Underoos. Sometimes that’s a great place to be. Sometimes its limitations chafe.

But a worthwhile book on writing can pull off the same trick as any other worthwhile book: broaden your perspectives and expand your understanding. If you find the right one. When you’re ready for it. Which can be a challenge. Visit the reference section of a well-stocked bookstore and you’ll find enough trade paperbacks on writing to choke a hippo. Some are generic and average, and some invigorating and revelatory. An old bromide about wheat and chaff comes to mind.

Submitted for your approval, then, an armful of author’s helpers from which most writers should be able to derive something of value. Not a best-of list, necessarily, just the best ones I’ve encountered so far.

The Elements of Style, by William Strunk and E.B. White. Yes, the enduring classic that launched thirty million bleary-eyed collegians. Except I read this only within the past couple of years. Sure, it was assigned in one of my university classes, but by then I’d been winning and placing in school lit-mag contests for five years, so what could it possibly teach me that I wasn’t already doing by instinct, right? And then there was the slacker atmosphere perpetuated by the not-entirely-engaged professor, who looked and even sounded like Robert Mitchum, only shorter, and uttered a gem so sparkling that I’m still waiting for the right work in which to use it: “I started going to A.A. because I could never find my car on Sunday mornings.”

Turns out these Strunk and White fellows were onto something after all.

Their slim volume is stuffed with time-honored guidelines for achieving clarity and precision in prose. No more, no less. The contemporary reader might notice a bit of creakiness here and there, but still, knowing the rules is always the best precursor to breaking them.

Spunk & Bite, by Arthur Plotnik. Plotnik, author of The Elements of Editing, one of MacMillan’s companion volumes to The Elements of Style, rounds up a bunch of the dynamic duo’s mandates, flings them into the air like clay pigeons, and takes a shotgun to them.

It’s not quite as iconoclastic as it sounds. Plotnik clearly thinks Strunk and White’s rules are important, but that there can be plenty of justifications for breaking them … and he furnishes evidence that E.B. White ignored his own advice on occasion, and his work was all the better for it.

Plotnik’s assertion is that, in a world increasingly full of distractions, with attention spans as fragmented as cable TV bandwidth, it behooves savvy writers to amplify their signals to better compete with the noise. To use language in ways that will surprise and delight the reader. To make sure their words don’t lie flaccid on the page or screen, but sproing out to smack the reader in the eye.

This goes not just for fiction, but also articles, essays, reviews, blogs, op-ed pieces, e-mail, memos … pretty much everything but tech writing and obituaries. Plotnik covers around 30 elements of language use, and cites examples from a panoply of writers and sources — effective illustrations of the chapter’s topic, usually, but he tosses in the occasional clunker, as well, so one can learn from the toppled face-plants of overreaching writers.

Fortunately, Plotnik never forgets there’s an appropriate time and place for what he advocates, and realizes there’s a fine line between energy and obnoxiousness … even if a handful of his approval-stamped examples had me reaching for an airsick bag.

Chances are, you’ve already made some of these tactics your own. As for the rest, there’s probably too much here for any one writer to realistically incorporate, but that’s the modular beauty of it. Explore what resonates and jettison what grates on your sensibilities. At the very least, Spunk & Bite should inspire you to take a fresh look at your style, and if it’s been feeling anemic lately, suggests how to furnish it with a shot of adrenaline and a tank of nitrous oxide.

On Writing, by Stephen King. “A Memoir of the Craft,” this is subtitled, and while it’s half-autobiography, half-manual, the blend works seamlessly. In the interest of full disclosure, it’s been a long time since King the Novelist has grabbed me the way he once did. But King the Memoirist has held me rapt and fascinated twice now. He’s so informal and comfortable here it really is as if the pages dissolve and you’re sitting down face-to-face with him. And if you don’t think there’s anything you can pick up from one of the world’s top-selling authors, I can only wish you a pleasant stay in that ivory tower.

The Writer’s Journey, by Christopher Vogler. If your work suffers from structural problems, this one may be able to help you pin down what’s missing and what’s going awry by using time-tested strategies going back … well, back to prehistory may not be overstating it.

Vogler takes Joseph Campbell’s classic on mythology, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, extracts the core elements that underlie countless myths and fables from around the world and throughout the human timeline, and shows how they work together to form a kind of master storyteller’s template. These include both the 12 stages of the hero’s journey and 7 character archetypes that populate the story.

If that sounds like a straitjacket that will leave you wriggling in a corner, trying to bite your nose in frustration, not to worry. Vogler takes pains to show how endlessly malleable it all can be, applying both the master structure and individual elements to a diverse array of films that would seem to bear no resemblance to one another at all.

Dare To Be A Great Writer, by Leonard Bishop. This one’s unlike any other writing book I’ve ever encountered. It’s completely devoid of linear structure. Instead, it consists of 329 mini-chapters on every conceivable topic, arranged as if Bishop pulled them one at a time from a spinning lottery drum. Start anywhere, stop anywhere, open it at random … it doesn’t matter. Herein lies wisdom. If you’re looking for something specific, the categorical index will help you find it quickly.

Bishop was born in the 1920s and emerged in the ‘50s, which may be why some of his examples seem a little dated, but most of the underlying lessons are timeless. Read it and be humbled. The man may well have forgotten more about the craft of writing than I’ll ever know.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves, by Lynn Truss. Time, said Woody Allen, is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening all at once. The same can be said of punctuation. Which you no doubt appreciate every time you try to slog through a web posting or e-mail retched up by some doofus who doesn’t know a period from a zit.

But who knew a book about dots and squiggles could be so entertaining? All your favorites are here: the firm period, the hesitant comma, the authoritative colon, the urbane and mysterious semicolon, and my personal favorite — o, be still my heart — the irrepressibly adventurous em dash. And if you feel like firing a howitzer whenever you see unnecessary apostrophes polluting the landscape — as in “Try our world-famous chitlin’s!” — you’ll have found a kindred soul in Truss.

Self-Editing For Fiction Writers, by Renni Browne & Dave King. It’s been claimed that if Hemingway were starting out today, he probably would never have made it into print. Because his early books, at least, required the kind of extensive editing that doesn’t happen much anymore. You can count on some leeway if you already have an existing relationship with an editor who’s waiting for your next book, but if you’re trying to breech that hermetic seal around her desk for the first time, your novel better be at least 96% ready to go. Otherwise, you’re only making it too easy for her to send out the bad new letter.

Hence the enormous value of this book, written by a couple of editors to give writers a better idea of how this alien species thinks. The problems they look for, how they might fix them, and how you can get your manuscript that much closer to perfection before it ever sees a real editor.

One caveat: This doesn’t cover the sweeping arcs of plotting or how to wrangle a storyline. The book takes for granted that you already know how to tell a story. Instead, it gets down to the nuts-and-bolts of showing-versus-telling, crisp dialogue, prose rhythms, weeding out redundancies, achieving the proper balance between elements, and more.

Your mileage may vary — mileages always do — but for my money, this is the single most valuable book in the lot, at least for those who already have their writing chops down.

Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, by Elmore Leonard. I don’t put this here out of any towering merit, and don’t even agree with every rule, but it’s the only writing manual around that you can read in one standing. Not sitting, standing. Right there at the bookstore shelf. Even if you have gout.

The pages are thick cardstock, and many are given over to illustrations. Most of the other pages have no more than one paragraph, sometimes a single line, or even just a couple of words. Robert Rodriguez’s DVDs have his “10 Minute Film School” features…? Consider this the 10 Minute Writing School, if you don’t have time for anything more substantial.

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Got any of your own recommendations? I’d love to hear about them. Because I have a little free bookshelf space that, with apologies to Strunk & White, ain’t doin nuthin.