Five books for aspiring writers
If you’re dreaming of being an author someday, these are the books I’d recommend reading to get you started.
I’m still relatively new to the whole author-as-career thing, so the question I get asked most by people is what advice I have for actually writing a book and getting it traditionally published. Reading is, of course, the first step. Read books around your genre, because when you have written your novel and want to start sending it to agents, they’re going to want to know what comparative titles there are to yours. How does your book fit in the industry, and where does it fit? But reading around your genre is, hopefully, the obvious first step. That’s why you’re fired up and ready to go. What’s next?
Some more reading, of course! But this time reading around writing as a craft, and how to structure your story. Thinking about editing, and then thinking about book deals. The practicalities of it all. The following are five books I read (in the order I read, and recommend reading them, in) that helped me along the way to getting my first book published. I still dip into them plenty of times.
To Feel Inspired and Want to Begin: ON WRITING by Stephen King
This is half an autobiography, half writing advice, but it works beautifully. I read this knowing very little about Stephen King’s life beyond his books, so knowing all these details with the knowledge of what he became was great. The part where he finds out that Carrie’s paperback rights are going to be sold for four hundred thousand dollars, that his life was going to change forever and he could really, truly do this, stirred up my own longing to be an author. Not for the money (though who is going to say no to four hundred thousand dollars?) but for the idea that someone out there could say: yes, you’re good at this, and you’re going to be able to do it as a job. I read this for the first time in January 2021, a couple of weeks after I had left teaching to try and pursue writing. It made me want to try even harder. But beyond King’s life, there is some really good practical advice around writing in here. Not all of it will work for you—for me, writing every day isn’t a possibility, for example—but with anything there are parts you can utilise and parts you can appreciate. I finished this book raring to go, so it’s absolutely the one I recommend any aspiring author reads first to have that feeling of I can do this.
To Structure a Book: SAVE THE CAT! WRITES A NOVEL by Jessica Brody
As a kid, I wrote stories through the method of what I later learned was called pantsing. Fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of writing, where there isn’t a plan laid out. Younger me didn’t know there was any other way, I had an idea and rolled with it, and what tended to happen was I’d peter out after a short amount of pages and move on to another one. Pantsers do exist in publishing (and I am scarily impressed by them), but if you’re just starting out and want to actually finish writing a novel for the first time, Save The Cat! Writes a Novel is the book for you. Brody details out a great, simple way to understand your protagonist from the start, and then the most helpful part of all is the length of a novel split into ‘beats’, with rough indicators on where exactly each section should take place and how they work. Different novels are just to explain genre standards, with their plots mapped out to the same ‘beat sheet’ you’re using. I used this to map out She Started It and I Did Warn Her, and it really helped. If you’re only going to get one book out of this list, make it this one.
To Understand Character: STORY GENIUS by Lisa Cron
For anyone who needs help digging deep into their character’s motivations, this book is fantastic. It focuses on a lot of the before details that shape your character into who they are when readers meet them on page one, which is so helpful for then feeling like they are a fully fleshed out person instead of two-dimensional. I tend to use this book before I’ve written a word and instead just have my characters as a way of getting to know them, especially my main points of view characters but also key side characters as well. There is also a good couple of chapters on the opening and endings to a book as a way to roadmap where you hope to end up, even if it changes later. Where this book doesn’t work for me is page 187 onwards, where I find the amount of planning and preparation for the actual plot becomes too heavy and detailed. This might work for you, but it hinders my inspiration and the freedom to be able to shift where the characters want to ultimately go. But the first two parts and the beginning of the third are excellent. I do not have a visual brain (when I read there are no pictures in my head), so this method really helps in being able to see my characters in a different way, and understanding and knowing them enough to then recreate them in my manuscript without lore dumps, too much backstory, or miscellaneous details I feel have to be thrown in. I get them, and I can show that rather than tell it so my readers will too.
Editing to the Best of Your Ability: INTUITIVE EDITING by Tiffany Yates Martin
I don’t think I’ve ever seen this book recommended anywhere else before, but I find its advice absolutely integral to editing a book successfully. It opens with a general understanding about how to approach an edit, and then the book is divided into sections: Macro Edits (Characters, Stakes, Plot); Micro Edits (Suspense and Tension, Point of View, Showing and Telling, Structure, Momentum and Pace, Voice); and Line Edits. Each part has practical advice and actions to take to tackle a manuscript, in order. It is written in a simple, easy to understand style and for anyone ranging from beginner to established I think can benefit from the way every facet of editing is laid out. Martin has subheadings on how to find the problem, and then how to fix it. Whether you adopt the techniques or not, it also works as a great checklist on whether you have covered things yourself. There is a final section around how to approach getting feedback, which is also useful, particularly around finding a writing community. Theres also a part about hiring an editor, which I should make clear isn’t necessary for anyone looking to be traditionally published (I didn’t hire one). For anyone that needs things absolutely broken down to the bare bones and laid out in an organised fashion, with clear tasks and goalposts, this book worked wonders for me. When I finished my first draft of She Started It (then called Here Comes The Bride, fun fact), it was this book that opened my eyes to 1) what editing actually entails, 2) that it is a lot of work, and 3) how much better my writing has become because of it.
Preparing for the Real Thing: BEFORE AND AFTER THE BOOK DEAL by Courtney Maum
I used this book in the lead-up to my debut’s publication for all of it’s brilliant advice in the “After” section of getting a book deal, but actually there’s fantastic advice in the “Before” section too. This includes advice around writing itself, but also getting it out there, the querying process, and questions around advances. Maum structures the book as a series of common questions, and they really are questions you will undoubtedly have or have had about everything. I’ve actually recently reread it for the section around post-publication, and the stressful time that is the second book. There are some parts that are US-centric, but on the whole it is advice that will fit with anyone trying and succeeding in getting their book published. It ends with a series of advice from published authors, and it definitely cheers you up and keeps you believing that you will succeed, above all odds, thanks to your own hard work and the hard work of other people who believe in you too.