Great Books for the Writer

There are some really terrific books out there for the writer. I wanted to list a few favorites for y’all.

The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi is simply fantastic. Here’s the book description: One of the biggest problem areas for writers is conveying a character’s emotions to the reader in a unique, compelling way. This book comes to the rescue by exploring seventy-five emotions and listing the possible body language cues, thoughts, and visceral responses for each.

Using its easy-to-navigate list format, readers can draw inspiration from character cues that range in intensity to match any emotional moment, including situations where a character is trying to hide their feelings from others. The Emotion Thesaurus also tackles common emotion-related writing problems and provides methods to overcome them.

This writing tool encourages writers to show, not tell emotion and is a creative brainstorming resource for any fiction project.

I love it. It’s not only wonderful for ideas of how to describe emotions pulling readers into the scene, it also gives links to other parts of the book to escalate emotions, such as from impatience to irritation to anger and what that looks like both internally and externally. It gives physical signals, internal sensations, mental responses, and cues of acute or long term ’emotion’. You can get it in both print and kindle format at Amazon.com.

Another terrific book is How to Describe Colors by Amy Pogue.

Here’s the book description: Do you write about products that are colorful? Do your descriptive scenes need a boost? Take your writing to the next level with this indispensable toolkit of color names and similes that will delight and engage your readers.

These are not average color lists that you might find on the web or on Wikipedia. Instead, these lists were carefully crafted by a professional copywriter who spent many years writing about flower bouquets. The color brown, for instance, has over 90 different shades to choose from. Each color name and shade is chosen for its ability to convey to readers an exact tone. You won’t find any ridiculous paint chip names here – only true, beautiful ways to describe color.

Each of the 11 colors in the book also feature unique similes if you want to take your descriptions to the next level.

This one is fantastic too. It’s great being able to be a little more unique in describing various colors. The price isn’t bad either!

You can get it on Amazon.com.

Finally, a great just for fun read is Lady Molly of Scotland Yard by Baroness Orczy. Here’s the book description: Lady Molly of Scotland Yard — the lady detective who out-Sherlocks Sherlock Holmes!

Following twelve Lady Molly adventures and narrated by Lady Molly’s assistant Mary Granard, “Lady Molly of Scotland Yard” was first published in 1910. Orczy’s female detective was a precursor of the lay sleuth who relies on brains rather than brawn, and she most often succeeded because she recognized domestic clues foreign to male experience. The book soon became very popular.

Interestingly, as well as being one of the first novels to feature a female detective as the main character, Orczy’s outstandingly successful police officer preceded her real-life female counterparts by a decade.

Baroness Orczy is one of my favorite authors. She wrote the famous Scarlet Pimpernel series. This book is full of nice, short reads.

You can find this at ManyBooks.net. This website is terrific because all the books there are FREE!

Enjoy!

 

 

2 Simple Secrets to Great Writing

Treasure Map (Photo credit: TobiasMik · WhatWeDo)

Proverbs 25:2 “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.”

Why is it that hunting for some secret treasure is so much fun? Because of the honor of the find! In order to be a great writer, it’s important to spend time hunting for your own ‘gold’.

Here are 2 Secrets:

1. Read great books in the genre you have chosen to write in and other genres. Don’t just read for fun, but take time to notice pacing, description, long and short sentences, details, dialog, etc. Go ahead and summarize each chapter. This can be tremendously instructive. Note what you like and don’t like. Read the blurb, the back cover, the author details. Notice how many words are in the title. Go ahead, read for fun, but get more out of that book than just fun. Those books are great for a reason. As you take the time to analyze why, you can use this in your own writing.

2. Read books about writing. I get a lot out of books on the craft of writing. In my quest to become a better writer, I want to take the time to learn from others. Of course, different writers recommend different things. One says plan everything, another plan nothing, just sit down and write. However, part of the fun of reading books on writing is finding those ‘gold nuggets.’

I discovered a way to get books on writing for free. Unfortunately, they aren’t all great, you have to fish a bit. Anyway, here’s what I found. If you have an Amazon kindle device or the free download kindle app for your computer or i-phone, you can get free books on writing and publishing. Simply go to Amazon.com and click on the part on the upper left corner where it says ‘shop by department’. Click ‘kindle’, then scroll down to ‘kindle books’ and click that. I’m fixing to give you a direct link, but that is how to get you started from scratch. Here’s a direct link.  Once there, scroll down again to ‘education and reference’. It’s on the left. Click that. Once you’re on that page, look to your right and you will see a Bestsellers list, top 100 paid and top 100 free. Click that. Now, simply scroll down, looking to your left, you will see a subcategory for ‘writing’. Click that. On the left are the top 100 paid Writing How To books and on the right are the top 100 free Writing How To Books. You can check it as often as you like. There is usually something different every day–and it’s free!

3. Bonus: This is probably both the simplest and the most difficult secret of all. Simply, Write! However, don’t just write the same way you’ve always written. Take the time to analyze your own work. What is working? What isn’t? Why? What kind of reviews have you gotten? Don’t be afraid of 3, 2, or even 1 star reviews. If there is something you can learn from them, great. If not, don’t worry about it. Reviews do make a difference, but most people are smart enough to recognize what they like regardless of poor reviews. One of the most important things you can ask yourself is: What can you do to make your next book better than your last? and What do you need to be more aware of as you write?

Happy Writing!