I put out a call on Twitter for writers’ suggestions of resources for the students I’m teaching this fall in a Mass Communications class at a local university, and you did not let me down, with over 100 responses to the tweet and a few emails as well. I decided after I saw all of your replies to turn it into a post here, so that everyone could see the list more easily.
Twelve books earned at least two votes apiece. The runaway winner, unsurprisingly, was Stephen King’s On Writing, which garnered 25 mentions. In second place, with eight mentions was Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, edging out William Zinsser’s On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by one vote. Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several Short Sentences About Writing, Benjamin Dreyer’s Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, and Roy Peter Clark’s How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times rounded out the top six, all of which earned at least three mentions from you. I have read … none of these. Clearly, I have some work to do. Maybe some day I’ll be a good writer!
Here’s the complete list of books that you mentioned, which I’ve also tried to categorize by subject where possible (going off others’ descriptions, since I haven’t read any of them myself). I have picked up Harold Evans’ Do I Make Myself Clear for my Kindle, since it’s on sale for $3.99 right now, and put in hold requests at my library for several others. I have ranked them within each category by how many of you mentioned each book, with that number in parentheses if it’s greater than one. All links below go to Bookshop.org, from which I receive a commission for any sales through this site. Please don’t feel obligated to buy here – you can and should ask your local independent bookstore, or hit the library instead. If you have other recommendations that didn’t make it into this post, please leave them in the comments below.
General writing
On Writing, by Stephen King (25 mentions)
Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott (8)
Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity, by Ray Bradbury (2)
The Writer’s Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House, various authors
The Lively Art of Writing, by Lucile Payne
Conversations on Writing, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer, by Roy Peter Clark
10 Rules of Writing, Elmore Leonard
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami
Style
Several Short Sentences About Writing, by Verlyn Klinkenborg (4)
How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times, by Roy Peter Clark (3)
Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style, by Virginia Tufte (2)
How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One, by Stanley Fish
The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase, by Mark Forsyth
The Reader Over Your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose, by Robert Graves
Sin & Syntax: How to Craft Wicked Good Prose, by Constance Hale
First You Write a Sentence: The Elements of Reading, Writing … and Life, by Joe Moran
The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, by Steven Pinker
Spunk & Bite: A Writer’s Guide to Bold, Contemporary Style, by Arthur Plotnick
Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them, by Francine Prose
The Elements of Style, by William Strunk & E.B. White
Style: Toward Clarity and Grace, by Joseph Williams
Fiction writing
Save the Cat!, series by Blake Snyder (2)
Writing the Novel, by Lawrence Block
Writing Fiction, by Janet Burroway
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, by Alexander Chee
The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, by John Gardner
Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting, by William Goldman
Danse Macabre, by Stephen King
Method and Madness: The Making of a Story, by Alice LaPlante
Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story, by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Plot Thickens: 8 Ways to Bring Fiction to Life, by Noah Lukeman
Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting, by Robert McKee
Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life after Which Everything Was Different, by Chuck Palahniuk
Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller, by John Truby
The Wonderbook, by John Vandermeer
On Writing, by Eudora Welty
The Kick-ass Writer: 1001 Ways to Write Great Fiction, Get Published, and Earn Your Audience, by Chuck Wendig
How Fiction Works, by James Wood
Nonfiction
On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction, by William Zinsser (4)
Draft #4: On the Writing Process, by John McPhee (2)
Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, by Beth Kephart
Follow the Story: How to Write Successful Nonfiction, by James B. Stewart
Persuasive writing
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip & Dan Heath
They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, by Cathy Birkenstein and Gerald Graff
Writing to Persuade: How to Bring People Over to Your Side, by Trish Hall
Scientific Advertising, by Claude Hopkins
Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us about the Art of Persuasion, by Jay Heinrichs
Goal, Motivation and Conflict, by Debra Dixon
Grammar
It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences, by June Casagrande
Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, by Benjamin Dreyer
The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed, by Karen Gordon
How Language Works, by John McWhorter – out of print
Eats Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, by Lynne Truss
Clarity
Legal Writing in Plain English, by Bryan Garner
Do I Make Myself Clear: Why Writing Well Matters, by Harold Evans
Writing without Bullshit: Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean, by Josh Bernoff
The Reader Over Your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose, by Robert Graves
Creativity
Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, by Natalie Goldberg
The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, by Steven Pressfield
How Writers Journey to Comfort and Fluency: A Psychological Adventure, by Robert Boice (out of print)
Journalism
Associated Press Guide to News Writing, by Rene Cappon
The Art and Craft of Feature Writing: Based on the Wall Street Journal Guide, by William Blundell
The New New Journalism: Conversations with America’s Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft, by Robert Boynton
Poetry
The Real West Marginal Way, by Richard Hugo
Writing Poems, by Robert Wallace
Everything else
The Pyramid Principle, by Barbara Minto (business writing)
Becoming a Writer, Staying a Writer: The Artistry, Joy, and Career of Storytelling, by J. Michael Straczynski (writing as a career)
The Copyeditor’s Handbook, by Amy Einsohn (editing)
My Turf: Horses, Boxers, Blood Money, and the Sporting Life, by William Nack (essays)
Modern English Usage, by Bryan Garner (language)
Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative, by Jane Alison (narrative structure)
Words on Words: A Dictionary for Writers and Others Who Care about Words, by John Bremner (vocabulary)
Congrats on teaching college students! I look forward to the picture of you holding a sign that says “First Day of Teaching” while wearing a leather jacket with tweed patches.
I don’t teach Mass Communication, but I do teach composition at a regional public university. The essay I like best to use as a model is Annie Dillard’s “Living Like Weasels.” It’s brilliant and all in 2 pages. There’s descriptive writing and analytical writing and evidence of research and a sophisticated opening frame that’s echoed at the conclusion. It’s really terrific.
I’m not surprised you haven’t read any of these books. Good writers just write. It’s a craft and skill that needs daily work.
I don’t Twitter much and forgot to respond, but there’s a fantastic book on how to read a play for people interested in staging one called “Backwards and Forwards” by David Ball. It’s a short piece illustrated with a remarkable interpretation of Hamlet, and sufficiently enlightening that I felt it could easily be used reverse engineer great advice on writing stage or screenplays.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/284938.Backwards_and_Forwards
one book I noticed wasn’t mentioned is “If you want to write” by Brenda Euland. I’ve read a few of these books and Brenda’s seemed to be the most clear and jargon free of the bunch. It was written in the early last century.
I will also put in a word for Brenda Ueland’s book. She was remarkable.
I always enjoyed and returned to George Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language”. This gave out the following six pieces of advice for writing…
Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.