/lit/ - Literature

You don't need a book to tell you how to write.

In fact, great literature is generally considered great because the author did what nobody up until that point has done, so reading a book about how to do it is already moot.

Just read a lot of great writers and take what they do into consideration. Then, create your own personalized version of writing.

Otherwise, you're doing a paint-by-numbers, and nobody is impressed with that.

Longinus - On the sublime/Art of writing

>>2264455
Perfect, just ordered it. Thank you !

I know Stephen King has a really good book about it.
I'm not sure what it is called though. I only listen to a part of the audiobook in my creative writing class in high school.

>>2264465
Nice one OP. It's a good read, enjoy!

http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Stephen-King/dp/0743455967

I even looked it up for you. I'm such a nice guy.

>>2264454
>great literature is generally considered great because the author did what nobody up until that point has done
Really, now?

I don't see what's wrong with reading texts on how to write. Sometimes, they offer good advice. The most important thing is to read not one, but a number of them. If you "marry" with a single idea, you're doing a paint-by-numbers. But if you try to take good advice from a number of sources, you'll be fine.

But for starters (as some people have said here) King's "On Writing" is good.

>>2264481
I thought this was just another "How to write for fun and profit" type of book, but I've been told by a bunch of people this is actually a REALLY good book.

>>2264454
I agree with you in principal, I certainly hate the most "how to" book that seem to only teach you how to write pulp. I'm looking for something more about the art of writing and I dont think having a solid foundation of knowledge about how the masters wrote is a bad thing.

>>2264489
It's half auto-biography, half manual, so it's fun.

I don't want to spoiler you with details (read it!), but a good piece of advice is DO NOT WRITE UNDER DRUGS. Not even booze: it's a downward spiral from there.

>>2264489

It is.

Number 1 rule: Read and write every day. No exceptions. No excuses. It's the only way to improve your craft.

Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark works nicely at making you more self-aware of the moves you already make in writing to help you do them better, while highlighting common syntactical preferences authors tend to make. I found the book both useful and readable. Gives good examples to justify the presence of his suggestions in actual literature.

I wouldn't listen too too much to >>2264454 because you have to know what the conventions of writing are before you rebel against them or innovate upon them. But I would agree on reading and reflecting on a lot of authors since a story is going to spark the imagination side of writing in ways a writing handbook will not, while further supplementing the understanding side of composition by seeing the conventions in practice.

>>2264454

There isn't a pre-determined list of what authors can and can't do, which is something most of /lit/ forgets. Every author writes differently. I mean really, I've seen people on /lit/ told that they can't be an author because

>They use a non-standard word processor
>They participate in writing contests
>They read how-to books (e.g. this thread)
>They get writers block

>>2264488
>>2264492
You two use the same logic that it doesn't hurt to know more. But sometimes it does, it could make your head preety confuse, cloudy with possibilities, blocked by contradictions, "marrying" to an idea that is common to many, by statistic, but might not work with you. The principle of writing as an art, as something personal is, at the very core, to be personal, to be unique.

On top of it all, it may confuse you with "do as I say, don't do as I do" type of thing. Who the fuck wants to get tips from Stephen King? He is a man who was already swolen by these type of thinking.

I agree with >>2264454 completely.

>>2264706
>>2264488
What confuses the fuck out of me is why two people have put 'marry' in scare quotes. It's downright retarded, 'marry' is a perfectly common word and the use here is not just an allusion but an accepted definition

3000 out

>>2264724
>What confuses the fuck out of me is why two people have put 'marry' in scare quotes.
Commitment-phobes.

>>2264727
Funny... on MY /lit/?!

Writing fiction - by Janet Burroway

http://www.amazon.com/Craft-Writing-William-Sloane/dp/0393300501

This book saved my life. Find it at your library and skim it for a bit, OP, you'll see.

>>2264486

On Writing is perhaps the most overrated 'style' book there is. He just rehashes a number of shitty anecdotes or lectures that he's stolen from elsewhere for the middle-class housewife who thinks she can write a story about her Breville cake-mixer.

Most of it is shitty autobiography about his boring-ass life as a teacher and teenage plagiarist anyway. It's a waste of time. I'm British, so I can only help you with British style guides, but a few are 'Usage and Abusage' by Eric Partridge, 'Mind the Gaffe' by R.L. Trask, and, of course, Fowler's.

These are technical, but offer good advice on style as well. In addition, they provide you with bibliographies for style books.

Ignore all these people who say you don't need such books. You need to learn the formulaic bullshit before you can break from it, as godsend Stephen King says.

>>2266279
Another one for your list: Elements of Style - William Strunk Jr.

Also:
>I'm British, so I can only help you with British style guides
That's just retarded.
>I'm from Britain so I only read British things hurr durr
And a self-respecting Brit would not call himself British. You're probably a dutty Scotsman, or simpering Welshfag

Nabokov's Lectures on Literature are fantastic.

>Of course, no matter how keenly, how admirably, a story, a piece of music, a picture is discussed and analyzed, there will be minds that remain blank and spines that remain unkindled. “To take upon us the mystery of things”—what King Lear so wistfully says for himself and for Cordelia—this is also my suggestion for everyone who takes art seriously. A poor man is robbed of his overcoat (Gogol’s “The Greatcoat,” or more correctly “The Carrick”); another poor fellow is turned into a beetle (Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis)—so what? There is no rational answer to “so what.” We can take the story apart, we can find out how the bits fit, how one part of the pattern responds to the other; but you have to have in you some cell, some gene, some germ that will vibrate in answer to sensations that you can neither define, nor dismiss. Beauty plus pity—that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual. If Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” strikes anyone as something more than an entomological fantasy, then I congratulate him on having joined the ranks of good and great readers.

Also The Paris Review interviews.

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews