With my engineer’s temperament, I’ve always sought first-principle rules or heuristic patterns to follow. Anyway, what follows is yet another random internet dude’s list (i.e. mine) of books that helped teach me such heuristics.
Patterns and rules of thumb are great. Yeah, yeah, you’re no formula-enslaved engineer, sure. But then we all know, skill at codifying what works, even on artistic endeavors (or social ones, speaking as an introvert engineer (and no, that’s not tautological)) is what’s succeeded separating humans from animals. And I think it’s part of every craftsman’s journey. Anyway, here are some books I’d found helpful. Bon appétit.
General Style
I loved one class in particular in my senior year of high school. It was taught by a woman who enlightened us to the morphology of words (e.g. manacle binds your hands because man actually means hand in some proto-Indo-European source-language), to the latent emotion of word-choice, and to the effect of their word arrangements. Her class awakened me to English as an inter-connected and inter-connectable fabric. (But damn my school for hiding her until senior year!)
She’d suggested a book, practically revelatory. On par with God talking to Moses from the burning bush, imparting the laws of civilization. (If I understand history correctly, Moses’ grasp of English style was also sub-par before the tablets were conferred, so the analogy is just about air-tight).
Strunk and White’s ‘The Elements of Style’
Find all the classic advice here: Use the active voice; put statements in positive form; omit needless words; keep related words together; prefer nouns and verbs over adverbs and adjectives; use figures of speech sparingly; don’t explain too much; etc. Peppered with examples, you hear the advice ringing true. And it’s a short-n’-sweet pamphlet size, so there’s hardly any excuse not to peruse this classic.
Many fine rule-books stand on the shoulders of these giants, e.g. The Transitive Vampire, whose examples are just a hoot to read. Twenty years later, I still chuckle at “…she lies dreaming of biceps and divorce” (which gets us back to the importance of Catchy Turns-of-Phrase).
Your line-editing draws from such rules, e.g. your word-processor app’s grammar-checker and its little blue squiggles.
Fiction Style
Of course, persuasive general writing doesn’t guarantee compelling fiction. What techniques does that take?
Sol Stein’s ‘How to Grow a Novel‘
Stein tells us the reader will remember the character even as they forget the plot. Make the protagonist someone they’d want to hang-out with. And that they’d relate to, with vulnerabilities, flaws, scars, and apprehensions. But never passive; the protagonist acts.
Ironically, the reader loves in stores what they detest in real-life: Anxiety, tension, conflict.
Aim to minimize the reader’s effort to experience the story, with never a sentence that must be re-read to understand. Don’t repeat yourself: 1 + 1 = 1/2 — delete the duplicate. An under-recognized for of this is “he said angrily” when we’d already inferred that from the character’s saying “you son of a bitch!”.
One strategy found here serves me well: the scene-synopsis cards (for those on the left of the plotter-pantser spectrum, like me) should ask what we want the reader to feel within or after this scene.
See also Sol Stein’s ‘Stein on Writing‘
Browne & King’s ‘Self-Editing for Fiction Writers‘
Written by professional editors, you’ll learn tons of ease-for-the-reader tips. They unpack the nuances of advice like “Resist the Urge to Explain” (RUE) with nice check-list questions, e.g. how often, or how long, does a narrative-summary interrupt the action? Could a summary be converted to an action-based scene? They’ll call you out when you’re tempted to sneak by the tenet, e.g. Are you masquerading expository as dialog?
The reader, they’ll remind you, assumes if lots of page real-estate is devoted to something, it must be important to the story, hence a check-list question: Does this digression harmonize with or leech from the story?
They’ll tell you that dialog engages the reader more when it’s chock-full of conflict. They’ll tell you the reader wants to be able to identify with the main characters, even the bad-guys for whom only over-the-top evil would render cartoonish.
Higher-level than line-editing advice, but not a treatise on structural, developmental-editing.
Lisa Cron “Story Genius“
Here we’re going more up-level into what I’d consider more developmental-editing. Cron tells us how to connect scenes. Ask ‘Why?’ about everything, and if it’s too abstract an answer (“she seeks happiness!”), keep asking why/how/what’s-that-mean until you get to something concrete. Ask “and so?” about everything to ensure it’s got cause-and-effect links to what happened before.
Cron doubles-down on the importance of the “B-Story”, the character-flaw/misunderstanding that is what’s really holding them back (q.v. from the book Save the Cat). She believes the electricity that drives a story is this: How the protagonist makes sense of what’s happening, struggles, evaluates, and decides his/her actions. Stated/assumed wants get sabotaged by the internal misbeliefs, and overcoming that is the real point of the story.
Every scene synopsis card should ask both the External, plot-centric questions: What-lead-to-this? And What-consequences-arise? But just as importantly the Internal flaw-centric changes: what-belief-forced-this-choice? And How-has-the-belief-changed/worsened/improved? Scenes should not be “and then” but rather “therefore” or “but”. Causal links are crucial.
A handy heuristic: If you could plop anyone into the scene instead of the character, then you’ve got random noise, not an actual story arc.
She advises you create vivid backstories for the main characters (protagonist, villain, etc.) focused on where their motivations and (mis-)beliefs spring from. Not a list of accomplishments or vignettes, but the source of their ‘Whys’. It’s this history that forces the unavoidable problem the novel starts grappling with on page 1, in medias res. The character turns to these past events (or the evolution thereof) in decoding the present. (The backstory is also a good source for events/people that are balls-in-the-air or Karmic time-bombs later in the story). Supporting character backstories can also explain their own agenda (subplots) and why they challenge or re-affirm the character’s misbelief/flaw.
Lots of other good advice in this book. Every writer will better see (and craft) the cohesive forest from the trees after Cron’s advice.
Meta-Style
Archer & Jockers ‘The Bestseller Code‘
What happens if you run a bunch of best-selling books through linguistic analysis algorithms? Probably not a formula for guaranteed literary success, but something a bit insightful nonetheless.
For instance, here we’re told to hook your reader within the first 40 pages, … “by her gut or her heart or the back or her neck. Not a whispering beckon, but a steel fish-hook.”
Statistics make an appearance. Scenes showing human-closeness, connecting, communicating, shared intimacy, tend to occupy > 3% of a best-seller. Major themes occupy 30% (e.g. Daniel Steele devotes 1/3 of her book showing domestic life, John Grisham to the legal system). Characters tend to ask more questions in best-sellers.
The algorithms also affirm classic advice, e.g. the choice of powerful verbs. “Tells, likes, sees, smiles, reaches, … this is someone with energy. Someone who pulls, who arrives… They have agency.” The word “do” appears twice as often in best-sellers. Contractions (e.g. “didn’t”) appear 5-12x more frequently as realistic dialog is favored. Adjectives and adverbs much less frequently.
This book also graphs the progression of the character’s emotion / (mis-)fortune / prognosis. Different kinds of story make the protagonist (and reader) ride differently shaped and bumpy roller-coasters, but there are a set of classic families of curves. Generally, you need some despair and some happiness.
For instance, here’s the roller-coaster for The DaVinci Code.
(YouTube’s got Kurt Vonnegut’s playful lecture on the Shape of Stories roller-coaster. Fun to watch.)
honorable mention: Pugglisi & Ackerman “The Emotion Thesaurus“
No doubt you have a thesaurus within reach of the keyboard and find it never gathers dust. (Aren’t there online thesauri? Yes, except they suck.) I use JJ Rodale’s The Synonym Finder (cue an angels’ chorus). As you might expect from the title, Pugglisi and Ackerman focus on what one feels. Where The Emotion Thesaurus amps up the game, though, is giving examples of the physical reactions and sensations, the facial and body expressions, and the trajectories an emotion takes as it mounts or abates. All handy as you chase “show, don’t tell”.
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Voila, a short list of resources I’ve found insightful. Hope something there might strike a chord with you, too.
Happy writing.
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