Are 'how-to write fiction' books full of it?
I built and sold a business during my first decade of adulthood. During that period, I read a lot of business books published by the popular press. However, I didn't begin to succeed until I apprehended that the authors didn't write books to teach people how to successfully manage businesses; they wrote books to sell books (go figure). By definition, a person ignorant of a given topic doesn't know about that topic, and so s/he can't judge whether statements about that topic are true. Consequently, the feelings a given business book elicits seem to affect its sales much more than the efficacy of the methods it propounds affects them. If I could re-live my first decade of adulthood, I'd forgo most of the books that I read during that period, and read case-studies instead.
Moreover, it seems that successful fiction authors don't write books about writing fiction. Presumably, if the methods these books propound worked, their authors would be successful fiction writers. Nevertheless, even if some successful fiction authors do write these books, I can't think of anything, other than altruism, that would motivate them to share their fiction writing methods. Especially given that they're protected from accusations of dishonestly by the fact that we don't know whether they actually use the methods they propound.
In other words, do we know whether the methods propounded in books about writing fiction actually work; if so how do we know that?
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Writing is definitely a craft, and as a craft it definitely has technique, and technique can be described and taught.
Writing is also all surface. There is nothing hidden underneath. All the techniques that an author uses are there on display, and so you can figure them out for yourself by reading with attention. You don't need the classes or the books, but they may help.
But the real question is not whether writing is a craft. It clearly is. The question is, is there an element to successful writing that is not craft? And I think it is pretty clear that there is. That element is seeing. A great writer, in the end, is someone who has seen something that the rest of us have not seen, and has the writing skills to show it to us.
I have read a lot of work by aspiring authors and very few of them lacked adequate writing skills. They simply had not seen anything worth telling. Their stories were not told badly, they just had nothing to tell. This, it seems to me is the limit of writing classes, critique groups, and sites like this. They may improve your writing technique, but they can't teach you to see.
So, the writing books may not be bogus, exactly, though some of them surely are, but they may not be enough, because they can only teach you technique and technique is not enough.
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Not my mother tongue, so bear with me :)
In my eyes, 'writing' consists of (at least) three areas of abilities and knowledge.
- The creative (what does happen in my, for instance, novel?)
- The structural (When/ in what order should it happen for the most effect and to satisfy readers expectations?)
- The craft (how do I physically act to transfer the image from my head into the head of the reader?)
To get better in these areas (from my [limited] experience)
- Read other books (not how-to-books), observe etc.
- Here How-To-Books can help a lot in my opinion.
- Mostly practice, but some advice can help (adjectives etc.)
So (good) how-to-books wont hurt, and I do not agree, that writing alone will make you better at writing. It can work, but some good books, deconstruction of novels and so on can speed up the process.
In my opinion however, knowledge is not the main hurdle (the interwebz are full of tutorials and good and bad advice) for aspiring writers, but motivation and persistence. This is something only few (or no) books can help you with.
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There are some really, really great books and blogs out there. And a lot of mediocre ones. And a lot that are self-help books about motivation and getting over "writer's block" that is really constant editing instead of banging out your chapter.
- For craft, nothing beats K. M. Weiland's Helping Writers Become Authors blog and books. The blog has entire sections on structure, character acts, and scenes.
- Bell's Writing Your Novel From the Middle is fantastic, and Conflict & Suspense, and Plot & Structure are both great.
- Larry Brooks (story physics), Scofield (the scene book), Vogler (on the hero's journey), and Maasss all have great books.
- Cut to the Chase is great for Screenplays. I despise Save the Cat, but many people find it very useful.
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