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5 Books on Writing and Science Fiction That Made Me a Better Writer

Filed Under: My Writing, Speculative Fiction, Top Post, Writing Advice

In the spirit of other posts this week, I thought I would share with you five books that I keep handy still when I’m trying to write fiction. Some of these books have imparted their lessons already, and some still have a lot to teach me. Each one of them has been useful for different reasons, but I recommend all of them if you’re serious about fiction. Some of them I recommend even to established writers. Read on for the details.

Creating Short Fiction by Damon Knight

Strong stories are made from things inside you wanting to get out.

This was one of the very first books on writing science fiction that was recommended to me. Damon Knight and his wife founded the Clarion Workshop. If anyone knows about critiquing writers stories and teaching people to write, it’s this man.

I love the tone of this book. It’s encouraging while being realistic. It’s written in a very relaxed style. One notion from this book that I found particularly valuable was the concept of "Fred." Fred is where Damon Knight’s ideas come from. What he means is the subconcious. I’ve found that writing for me is very much about the struggle and cooperation between my concious and subconcious minds. Damon puts it in simple terms that made it clear to me that the little back-of-the-mind feelings were important to the process, and how important it is to listen to Fred, to feed Fred, and generally keep him entertained.

I’ve had problems with my Fred lately, and I think that’s because I let my Fred become preoccupied with other matters. But I’m working on getting him fed up again, and listening to his whispers.

Another area that really helped me was the section on structure. Damon explains some diagramming techniques that can be very helpful. But there’s something great on nearly every page, and I found it incredibly helpful early on.

Science Fiction: 101 edited by Robert Silverberg

Mastery of craft is a matter of process, not of a single blinding moment of attainment: you go on working toward it all your life.

I am not one to advocate that new writers have to read the classics of the genre before they get started. Frankly, I find a lot of the so called "Golden Age" to be boring and very outdated. However, There is something to be said for reading the great stories of the past, and this book does a pretty good job of finding generally good stories, but also stories that teach a particular lesson. Through it all you also get to learn about Robert Silverberg’s early career. It doesn’t work like that anymore, but it’s still interesting if you like science fiction.

The book’s an anthology, a how-to, and a memoir rolled into one tome. And if you think the rejection letters you get today are bad, wait until you read the notes that Horace Gold sent Silverberg. Silverberg’s dissection of the stories contained within are quite fantastic to me, and that he was able to find a technical flaw in Bester’s "Fondly Fahrenheit" is damned impressive. It’s a minor one, but he uses it to illustrate an important notion about paragraphs being connected to one another.

The Science of Science-Fiction Writing by James Gunn

Honore de Balzac discovered that a character did not exist in fiction until that character had interacted with another character, and Gustave Flaubert discovered that nothing exists in fiction until it has been located in time and place with an appeal to at least three senses.

I spoke about James Gunn as a teacher earlier this week. He’s not nearly as faux-discouraging in this text, and it’s quite nice. There’s a bit of an old-fashioned feel to this book, and I even disagree with some of the things that Gunn says, such as the notion that mainstream fiction discounts Darwin entirely. I think this may have been true in the past, but maybe not so much these days. A lot of the notions of SF have been coopted by the mainstream since he wrote the book, I think.

This is a good middle-level text, I think. He approaches concepts like character and plot in a very sensical way, and some of the history of science fiction is very interesting from an enthusiast’s standpoint, even if it won’t tell you how to write a better story.

Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maas

A great fictional world is a sum of details that to most readers are unknown.

This is an odd one for me to include because I haven’t finished the book yet, but Even half-way through, and it’s already had an impact on the way I am thinking about my novel projects. I don’t feel that this book will help that much if you’re just starting out, because it paints a fairly broad brush. I think Maas assumes a certain level of experience here, even talking about his book in terms of established novelists looking to take their work up to the next level.

It’s really his discussion of raising the stakes that has sunk its teeth into me. He even says that if there’s one thing that will make a story more powerful, it’s to raise the stakes. Now in science fiction, I think it’s easier to take this too far. You can put the entire planet or universe at stake in the right situations, and it’s hard t dramatize those very well in my experience. But through the simple act of contemplating the stakes, I’ve pushed several recent bits of writing into a much more interesting place. I’ll report back on more of this one when I’ve managed to finish it.

Story by Robert McKee

In life, experiences become meaningful with reflection in time. In art, they are meaningful now, at the instant they happen.

For understanding storycraft, and the structure of stories and plot, there’s no better book than this. I return to this book time and tmie again. It is so rich with understanding of the nature of story that my mind cannot contain its full implications in a single read. I pick this up from time to time and flip to random pages, always learning some new lesson. Robert McKee uses a lot of screenwriting examples here, and ostensibly it’s oriented towards that, but don’t let that disuade you from purchasing this one. It’s beyond fantastic. I don’t use this term often, but if you are just starting out with writing, this is a must-read.

Buy The Books

So those are the books that I have sitting next to me as we speak. I have to buy a copy of the If any of these sound interesting to you, and you’re not boycotting Amazon, please consider buying the books through the links I’ve provided here. It will help support me writing more posts like this one (although less obviously commercially crass). I’ve applied for an Indie Books affiliate but haven’t been approved yet, and will use that affiliate in the future for this kind of thing in addition to Amazon.

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POSTED: 1:40 pm Fri May 01 2009 |