Writing Advice, Part 3: Resources

Today we’re going to talk about helpful tools and resources. Stuff that will help you become a better writer, and understand writing better. This might be a shorter page, as a lot of this stuff should be pretty self-explanatory.

Helpful Texts
— Stephen King’s On Writing, a memoir mixed with a lot of solid writing advice.
— James Scott Bell’s Plot & Structure, which discusses those two very important ways and is filled with useful examples. Also has helpful writing exercises at the end of every chapter. This shit is my Bible.
— John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story, which goes through literary elements involved in storytelling using films as examples, is a fantastic book that will have you looking at your fiction in a different way.
— The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing by the editors of Writer’s Digest is absolutely fantastic and incredibly thorough at the same time. Exactly what it says on the tin.
— How Not to Write A Novel by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman is a really good, often humorous book that will help new writers prevent mistakes. It’s also a pretty good read by itself.

Helpful Websites
I’m gonna be honest here: I have so many writing bookmarks that I honestly think your best bet is just Google, which is how I find this stuff. But I’ll still link some things that are helpful for me.

Here’s a helpful list of important questions to figure out your story.

Jerry Jenkins may be the idiot who co-wrote Left Behind, but his character development advice is actually pretty good.

A very solid guide to writing a rough draft.

A list of core values that you can use to develop your characters.

A list of hobbies you can use to develop characters.

A list of 500+ character traits and quirks for developing your characters.

Lara Willard’s The 8 Cs of Plotting series is a fantastic resource for writers.

A guide on how to write a novel.

More from Jerry Jenkins, who I still insist should be an idiot but isn’t: how to write a short story.

A fantastic series of “rants” that will help you understand writing better (especially fantasy writing).

Writing Prompts
Another time for honesty: I don’t use writing prompt websites, because I either find them either too vague or too specific. I have my own list of writing prompts myself, which I’d share except they really only work for me. My recommendation here is to use an app like Google Keep (it’s free, guys), and write down your writing ideas as you get them; then, once a week, you can make them into writing prompts. I find I can usually get at least 3 prompts out of one idea.

That being said, there are still some prompt related resources you can make use of if you are so inclined; especially if you haven’t made your own list yet.

First off, there’s always r/writingprompts, which is just full of them even if they didn’t like the one I posted that one time. I recommend looking a the top upvoted stuff first, then looking at more recent stuff.

Here is a list of scene-writing prompts to get you started with shit.

This is certainly one of the more solid writing prompt generators.

If you’re having trouble starting a story, I recommend Googling “best first lines to novels” and just going down different articles until you get ideas. This is a pretty standard go-to for me.

Brainstorming Tools
Some people write without any brainstorming — these monsters, known as pantsers, just sit down and write with little or no planning whatsoever. For everyone else, sitting down for a few minutes (or a few hours, depending on the size and scope of your story and how specific you’re getting) can be super helpful to the integrity and success of a story.

That being said, too much brainstorming is bad, too. You don’t want to do it so often that it gets in the way of actually writing. Keep it to a minimum when possible, and make sure you’re not using it as a procrastinating tool.

Using A Fucking Notebook
The first thing I do when I’m ready to work on an idea is I put on some kind of relevant music. It helps me think better and more creatively when the right stuff is on, but it can change from week to week — I have about 50 Spotify playlists dedicated to writing stuff right now, and it’s only getting bigger.

Then you pop open a handy notebook with the writing utensil of your choice. This is going to help you because your brain is an irritating fucker, and gets more involved with writing using a pen or pencil than it will with a keyboard — you use less brainpower with that typity-type. You also take more time to compose what you’re going to say in your head, because you have the time; writing is a significantly slower process. In my opinion, this opens you up for more thought and creativity, and will help you develop your story better.

What I usually do is start with what happens to a character and go from there. Answer questions like “who, what, where, why,” and “how?”. After that, I follow down the major points of the story’s structure (the journal on this to be forthcoming) and try to fill out all the details I need in order to get started writing.

So for example with a three-act story, I would go through the beginning, the first-to-second act transition, the midpoint, the second-to-third act transition, the finale and the conclusion.

Mind Mapping for Fiction
Mind mapping is a tool to help you use conscious associations to write your story; it organizes your thoughts while helping you develop ideas. Here is an excellent article on how to mind map from Lifehacker.

I don’t have any examples on mind mapping, because I just got a new notebook. But it’s pretty easy to figure out what it is and how to use it. I often use mind mapping to figure out problems with my story — for instance, “If everyone thinks he’s a murderer then how can he investigate the murder without looking suspicious?”.

That’s all my advice today, guys. Stay tuned for Handling Common Problems!

Part 1: Ground Rules
Part 2: Good Habits
Part 3: Resources
Part 4: Common Problems
Part 5: Writing Mood/Writer’s Block
Part 6: Developing A Story & Story Structure