I get my ideas from a magic 8-ball.
The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing was the focus of my eyeballs today, mainly because it was sitting on my scanner with a bookmark in and I needed to clear stuff off my desk.
Filled with articles, interviews and anecdotes by writers, editors, and publishers, it's a fairly entertaining, if rough, multipoint view of the whole business of writing. Worth having a bit of a flick through. (Try to ignore the fact that there are spelling errors in a book about writing. Sigh.)
For me, I took away the germ of a viewpoint about what makes my own writing so utterly dry. It's the depersonalisation that I learned in ten years of government desk jobs - the facts and nothing but the facts. It's the emotional responses of the characters which breathe life into a story; without those it may as well be a police blotter.
Side note: Practically every author interview/article about writing in general which mentions specific book examples will, without fail, refer to the author's own works. Editors and publishers will compare and contrast different authors' styles, but authors themselves will inevitably drag out lines like "In my book _Gates of Night at the End of Dragon Hell Volume 5_, my character Fred the Ludicrous blah blah blah... and then in my book of poetry _My Lawn So Emo_ I mention in the preface that it got rejected 472 times blah blah... and there's a good example of that in my book _The Subtle Anvil to the Face_...". Marketing is all very well, but it'd be nice to hear an author offer examples of other works which appealed to them or exemplified some aspect of the creative process.
And does every book on writing have to mention Stephen King? Multiple times?
Filled with articles, interviews and anecdotes by writers, editors, and publishers, it's a fairly entertaining, if rough, multipoint view of the whole business of writing. Worth having a bit of a flick through. (Try to ignore the fact that there are spelling errors in a book about writing. Sigh.)
For me, I took away the germ of a viewpoint about what makes my own writing so utterly dry. It's the depersonalisation that I learned in ten years of government desk jobs - the facts and nothing but the facts. It's the emotional responses of the characters which breathe life into a story; without those it may as well be a police blotter.
Side note: Practically every author interview/article about writing in general which mentions specific book examples will, without fail, refer to the author's own works. Editors and publishers will compare and contrast different authors' styles, but authors themselves will inevitably drag out lines like "In my book _Gates of Night at the End of Dragon Hell Volume 5_, my character Fred the Ludicrous blah blah blah... and then in my book of poetry _My Lawn So Emo_ I mention in the preface that it got rejected 472 times blah blah... and there's a good example of that in my book _The Subtle Anvil to the Face_...". Marketing is all very well, but it'd be nice to hear an author offer examples of other works which appealed to them or exemplified some aspect of the creative process.
And does every book on writing have to mention Stephen King? Multiple times?