creative writing famous authors

Places on our 2024 summer school are filling fast. Don’t miss out. Enrol now to avoid disappointment

• 8 Creative Writing Tips from Famous Authors and How to Incorporate Them Into Your Own Work

You should also read…

• A Guide to Britain’s Most Famous Writers Through History
• 9 Famous Opening Lines of Novels – and Why We Love Them

And many writers simply love giving interviews where they throw out pithy and quotable lines about the nature of their genius. Think of Ernest Hemingway’s “There is nothing to writing. All you do is just sit at a typewriter and bleed.” It would look great on a mug or a t-shirt. But does this actually give you any insight into how to become a better or more successful writer? Probably not, unless you want to study its construction when working on your epigrams. Still more writers provide advice that works beautifully for their own particular style of writing (such as Kurt Vonnegut’s stern words against semicolons, or Stephen King’s against adverbs) but may not be as generally applicable as they think it is. As a result, we’ve compiled this list of 8 popular and pithy quotes from famous writers – and looked at what you can actually learn from them for use in your own writing.

1. “I took a master class with Billy Wilder once and he said that in the first act of a story you put your character up in a tree and the second act you set the tree on fire and then in the third you get him down.” – Gary Kurtz, producer of Star Wars Episode IV and V.

Has a more elegant summary of the three-act structure ever been produced? These are the principles at the heart of most storytelling, whether it’s around a campfire or on a cinema screen. You get your protagonist into trouble – then the trouble gets worse – then it gets resolved. Note that this structure doesn’t demand a happy ending. Your character could depart the tree in as unpleasant a manner as you like; what this structure requires is plot progression followed by resolution, as well as tying you into a storyline that, at heart, can be summarised in a couple of sentences. Even if you’re writing a madly complicated epic fantasy series, it can be a good maxim to come back to. Which event constitutes putting the character up a tree? Are you just letting him hang around there, or are you keeping the tension going by setting the tree on fire? Do you just leave him up there getting toasty, or have you been sure to take him down?

2. “Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” – Mark Twain, author of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn

Authors being critical of particular words or even types of word (we return to Stephen King and his adverbs) is a commonplace of writing advice. Often, they simply represent the writing fashion of their own time; Stephen King’s crisp, clear writing style (“She was a grown up now, and she discovered that being a grown up was not quite what she had suspected it would be when she was a child”) would sound as wrong in the 18th century as the more adverb-laden style of two or three hundred years ago does now. Mark Twain’s advice still stands over a hundred years later – writing littered with the word ‘very’ is seldom any good – even though this is perhaps not a trap into which that many novelists fall, and few editors would systematically delete the word ‘damn’ any more either. The best message to take from this is to keep an eye on words you overuse, particularly if they are as weak as ‘very’, and delete them whenever they appear.

3. “If you have other things in your life – family, friends, good productive day work – these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the richer.” – David Brin, Hugo-award winning author

An important message that many writers forget, this quotation from David Brin reminds us that locking yourself away in a garret isn’t a great move unless you want to write the twenty-first century’s Great Garret Novel. It reminds us that the greatest source of inspiration isn’t usually spending time navel-gazing, but going out and interacting with the world, and then seeing how easily an overheard conversation slides into your novel and becomes a plot point, or spotting a woman at the bus stop who looks exactly like the villain you couldn’t quite picture. This doesn’t just apply to realist fiction; David Brin is a science fiction author, and still takes inspiration from everyday human interactions and brings that into his work.

4. “My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.” – Anton Chekhov, playwright and author

This is the kind of zippy quote that Waterstone’s like to put on their bags, but what exactly does it mean and what can we learn from it? The former half of that question is probably best left to Chekhov scholars. The latter half is easier; this advice is excellent and straightforward if we simply ignore Chekhov’s justification. The beginning and end are less at risk of being full of lies than full of waffle. It’s best to resist the temptation to open like a medieval saga with a multi-chapter genealogy and family history of all of your characters, and similarly to resist the temptation, like Tolkien didn’t in The Return of the King, to come to a logical ending to your story and then end it three more times. But if you can’t resist that temptation in your first draft, get it all out of your system and then simply delete those sections from draft 2 onwards.

5. “First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him!” – Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451

Like many other creative writing tips, this can feel a little bit like magical thinking. See also: “I let my characters decide the plot” or even “I had this bit all worked out, but then my characters decided to do something different” – as if the story you were writing was some kind of hyperactive game of the Sims, rather than something born from and guided entirely by your own imagination. If you are a more practically-minded writer, this might seem entirely baffling. (If it makes complete, instinctive sense to you, you might wish to skip ahead to the next point). Don’t read this advice and proceed to treat the process of writing as a particularly lonely roleplaying game. Remember instead that when you have lovingly crafted a character who is so realistic that they could practically walk off the page, if their planned actions conflict with their character, then you need to change one or the other, rather than shoehorning a character into actions that they clearly would not perform.

6. “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” – Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

This comment is an impressive demonstration of what not to do. Adams’ first bestseller – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – ends very abruptly because he had missed so many deadlines that his publisher simply told him to finish the page he was on and sent a courier to collect the book as it was. Subsequent deadlines have a remarkable theme – the Doctor Who producer who locked Adams in his study and gave him coffee and whiskey for two days until it was finished; the girlfriend who locked Adams in her house until he finished The Restaurant at the End of the Universe ; and the editor who locked him in a hotel suite for three weeks until he wrote So Long and Thanks for All the Fish . It appears that, having found a solution to making Adams write to a deadline, his collaborators stuck to it, whether or not that meant committing the crime of false imprisonment. There are two messages for aspiring writers here. One is that you should make an attempt to control your procrastination before it reaches such legendary heights. The other, I suppose, is that if you find an odd technique that helps you write, you should go ahead and make the most of it – at least other people will get a good anecdote out of it.

7. “I can’t write five words but that I change seven.” – Dorothy Parker, poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Dorothy Parker was a writer now best known for a huge number of highly quoted phrases, such as, “the two most beautiful words in the English language are ‘cheque enclosed.’” The sharp, concise elegance of her writing is – as this quotation suggests – the result of a colossal amount of editing. Parker phrases this as if it were an unfortunate condition, but it’s a very rare writer who gets everything right first time. (To skip back to point 6, the book that Douglas Adams edited the most – Last Chance to See – was also the one of which he was the most proud). There are arguments to be had about when editing is appropriate. Should you write a first draft in full before you go back to tweak anything, or should you edit as you go along? This will depend on temperament and ability to cope with imperfections. What is crucial is that by the time you’re ready to submit anything for publication, at least seven words have been changed for every five you initially wrote.

8. “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” – Toni Morrison, Nobel prize-winning novelist

This is good advice for writers of fiction and nonfiction alike. In nonfiction the barrier to entry is higher (for instance, if you desperately want to read a first-person account of the writing of epic poetry in Anglo-Saxon times, you’ll be waiting a while) but in fiction the ground is open to everyone. If you’re fed up with whatever the prevailing literary trend is (whether that’s dystopian young adult fiction or yummy-mummy novels), you can be the change you wish to see in the world. Don’t be sanctimonious about writing the novel that you think the world needs – that’s a sure-fire way to lose friends – but it can be deeply motivational to remember that there is a space in the world where your novel should be. Aside from anything else, filling a gap in the market makes excellent business sense. Do you have any creative writing tips that you think should be more widely known? Share them in the comments!

25 Great Writers and Thinkers Weigh In on Books That Matter

To celebrate the Book Review’s 125th anniversary, we’re dipping into the archives to revisit our most thrilling, memorable and thought-provoking coverage.

Damon Winter/The New York Times (Toni Morrison); Henry Clarke/Conde Nast, via Getty Images (Joan Didion); Ulf Andersen/Getty Images (Patricia Highsmith); Andre D. Wagner for The New York Times (Patti Smith); Oliver Morris/Getty Images (Kurt Vonnegut); Ulf Andersen/Getty Images (James Baldwin) Credit...

Supported by

• Share full article

By Tina Jordan ,  Noor Qasim and John Williams

• Published Jan. 25, 2021 Updated Oct. 26, 2021

On Oct. 10, 1896, after years of robust literary coverage at The New York Times, the paper published the first issue of the Book Review.

In the 125 years since, that coverage has broadened and deepened. The Book Review has become a lens through which to view not just literature but the world at large, with scholars and thinkers weighing in on all of the people and issues and subjects covered in books on philosophy, art, science, economics, history and more.

In many ways, the Book Review’s history is that of American letters, and we’ll be using our 125th anniversary this year to celebrate and examine that history over the coming months. In essays, photo stories, timelines and other formats, we’ll highlight the books and authors that made it all possible.

Because, really, writers are at the heart of everything we do. Pairing a book with the right reviewer is a challenge, one that we relish. And we’ve been fortunate to feature the writing of so many illustrious figures in our pages — novelists, musicians, presidents, Nobel winners, CEOs, poets, playwrights — all offering their insights with wit and flair. Here are 25 of them.

H.G. Wells | Vladimir Nabokov | Tennessee Williams | Patricia Highsmith | Shirley Jackson | Eudora Welty | Langston Hughes | Dorothy Parker | John F. Kennedy | Nora Ephron | Toni Morrison | John Kenneth Galbraith | Nikki Giovanni | James Baldwin | Kurt Vonnegut Jr. | Joan Didion | Derek Walcott | Margaret Atwood | Ursula K. Le Guin | Stephen King | Jhumpa Lahiri | Mario Vargas Llosa | Colson Whitehead | Patti Smith | Bill Gates

Tell us: Who are the writers who have inspired you?

On Morley Roberts’s “The Private Life of Henry Maitland”

H.G. Wells, the author of science fiction classics like “The Time Machine” and “The War of the Worlds,” admitted that he had a personal interest in this work about his fellow author George Gissing (who was oddly given the pseudonym Henry Maitland in a book that was clearly about him). “In so far that I have on several occasions encouraged Mr. Roberts to write it,” Wells wrote, “I feel myself a little involved in the responsibility for it.” He must have left Roberts feeling a bit less than grateful for the encouragement when he judged: “It is no use pretending that Mr. Roberts’s book is not downright bad, careless in statement, squalid in effect, poor as criticism, weakly planned and entirely without any literary distinction.”

Vladimir Nabokov

On jean-paul sartre’s “nausea”.

Nabokov was not yet a household name in the United States (that would come about a decade later, with the publication here of “Lolita”) when he reviewed Sartre’s philosophical novel about Antoine Roquentin, a French historian troubled by the very fact of existence. “Sartre’s name, I understand, is associated with a fashionable brand of cafe philosophy, and since for every so-called ‘existentialist’ one finds quite a few ‘suctorialists’ (if I may coin a polite term), this made-in-England translation of Sartre’s first novel, ‘La Nausée,’ should enjoy some success.”

Tennessee Williams

On paul bowles’s “the sheltering sky”.

Williams, who had won a Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for his play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” reviewed this debut novel by Bowles, which went on to be acclaimed as one of the best of the 20th century. The story mercilessly follows a young married couple from New York adrift in the North African desert. “I suspect that a good many people will read this book,” Williams wrote, “without once suspecting that it contains a mirror of what is most terrifying and cryptic within the Sahara of moral nihilism, into which the race of man now seems to be wandering blindly.”

Patricia Highsmith

On r. frison-roche’s “first on the rope”.

When she wrote this brief review, Patricia Highsmith was the author of one novel, “Strangers on a Train.” She would go on to worldwide fame for that and other thrillers, including the ones that feature Tom Ripley. The author she reviewed, the French mountaineer R. Frison-Roche, is now relatively obscure. “This is exactly the kind of novel one would expect a Chamonix guide to write — blunt in style and treatment, unevenly paced, about mountain climbing, of course, and authentic down to the last piton, the last breathtaking moment before the summit.” More tantalizingly, Highsmith added: “There is a delightful and unexpected chapter about a cow battle that is fully as dramatic as the mountain scaling.”

Shirley Jackson

On red smith’s “out of the red”.

One of the stranger matchups of big names in our archives is this review of the sports columnist Red Smith’s work by Shirley Jackson, the author of “The Lottery” and “The Haunting of Hill House.” Jackson wrote about her enjoyment of watching sports on TV. Though she had “limited knowledge” of sportswriters at the time, Smith’s book won her over. “There are some otherwise modest, sensitive females — I am among them — who are become brazen snatchers of the sports page from the morning paper, and only a book like Red Smith’s shows me what I have been missing by not getting into this field sooner. Reading ‘Out of the Red’ has been, actually, an educational experience unlike almost anything I have known since first looking into Chapman’s Homer.”

Eudora Welty

On e.b. white’s “charlotte’s web”.

Eudora Welty’s review of this timeless tale is a sheer delight, starting from its headline (“Life in the Barn Was Very Good”) and its first sentence (“E.B. White has written his book for children, which is nice for us older ones as it calls for big type”). Unlike contemporary reviews that get future classics “wrong,” Welty — who worked briefly as an editor at the Book Review during World War II — saw this accomplishment clear in the moment. “What the book is about is friendship on earth, affection and protection, adventure and miracle, life and death, trust and treachery, pleasure and pain, and the passing of time,” she wrote. “As a piece of work it is just about perfect, and just about magical in the way it is done.”

Langston Hughes

On james baldwin’s “notes of a native son”.

In this review, Langston Hughes, an eminent literary figure and chronicler of the Black experience in the United States, took the measure of this first collection of essays by Baldwin. He was impressed: “He uses words as the sea uses waves, to flow and beat, advance and retreat, rise and take a bow in disappearing.” He suggested that Baldwin still had room to grow, but that “America and the world might well have a major contemporary commentator.”

Dorothy Parker

On s.j. perelman’s “the road to miltown”.

To no one’s surprise, Dorothy Parker, a member of the Algonquin Round Table, was funny in this review of work by her fellow humor writer. She begins it: “It is a strange force that compels a writer to be a humorist. It is a strange force, if you care to go back farther, that compels anyone to be a writer at all, but this is neither the time nor the place to bring up that matter. The writer’s way is rough and lonely, and who would choose it while there are vacancies in more gracious professions, such as, say, cleaning out ferryboats?” But while Parker was part of a “vicious circle,” and known for her piercing barbs, she happily praised Perelman, who, she wrote, “stands alone” in his field.

John F. Kennedy

On arthur larson’s “what we are for”.

John F. Kennedy was the author of three books and still a Massachusetts senator when he reviewed this book, an attempt to define for the world what America believed in beyond simply opposition to the Soviet Union and Communism. Larson was a Republican who had worked with labor issues and had been a top speechwriter for President Dwight D. Eisenhower. “Though the book’s style is somewhat discursive and here and there perhaps a trifle condescending,” Kennedy wrote, “Mr. Larson does succeed very well in portraying the dangers of analyzing American society in terms of class distinctions or rigid economic interests. Though it is not a new theme, he is very successful in reminding us of the ‘kaleidoscope of apparently inexplicable mixtures of political coloration across the landscape.’”

Nora Ephron

On rex reed’s “do you sleep in the nude”.

In this review, the filmmaker, director and writer Nora Ephron marveled at how the young Reed got his show-business subjects to say the things they said to him. Those subjects included Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty and Lucille Ball. Ephron’s opening is a classic: “Rex Reed is a saucy, snoopy, bitchy man who sees with sharp eyes and writes with a mean pen and succeeds in making voyeurs of us all. If any of this sounds like I don’t like Rex Reed, let me correct that impression. I love Rex Reed.”

Toni Morrison

On toni cade bambara’s “tales and stories for black folks”.

Toni Morrison had just one novel under her belt when this review was published in 1971. One of the joys in our archives is to see — in retrospect — the understated descriptions of those who wrote for us. Morrison’s read: “Toni Morrison, an editor in a New York publishing house, is the author of ‘The Bluest Eye.’” “It is a most remarkable collection,” she wrote of Bambara’s work. “Joy aches and pain chuckles in these pages, and the entire book leaves you with the impression of silk — which is so nice because it was made by a living thing that had something on its mind, its survival no doubt.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

On chester bowles’s “my years in public life”.

“Truth, not unconvincing humility, is the grandest virtue and accordingly I may observe that I am better qualified than any man alive to review a book on the public life of Chester Bowles.” The iconoclastic economist and prolific author John Kenneth Galbraith began his review this way because he and Bowles had held some of the same positions of power and had worked together on presidential campaigns. In so doing, they had become friends, which, Galbraith wrote, “is a disadvantage only if the book in question is bad. Only then do you have to consider whether the author should get the truth from you or someone else. This, fortunately, is an extremely good book.”

Nikki Giovanni

On virginia hamilton’s “m.c. higgins, the great”.

The acclaimed poet Nikki Giovanni has written verse for children as well as adults, so she was the ideal reviewer for this novel, which was written for young readers but dealt with difficult, mature subjects. Hamilton’s novel, which won a Newbery Medal and a National Book Award, concerns a young boy hoping to save a local mountain from the ravages of strip mining. “‘M.C. Higgins, the Great’ is not an adorable book, not a lived‐happily‐ever‐after kind of story. It is warm, humane and hopeful and does what every book should do — creates characters with whom we can identify and for whom we care. … We’re glad Miss Hamilton is a writer. It makes the world just a little bit richer and our lives just a little bit warmer.”

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

On tom wicker’s “a time to die”.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. reviewed this account of the 1971 uprising at Attica prison written by Tom Wicker, who was a reporter, columnist and editor for The Times. The book mixed its reportage about the dramatic events at the prison with passages of autobiography. Leave it to Vonnegut to come up with a memorable comparison for what resulted: “The book is designed like a shish kebab, with novelistic scenes from ‘Wicker’s’ childhood and youth alternating with hard‐edged episodes from Attica, and with Tom Wicker himself as the skewer. The materials placed shoulder‐to‐shoulder on the skewer are as unlike as ripe peaches and hand grenades.”

James Baldwin

On alex haley’s “roots”.

The Book Review has always taken pride in finding the right reviewers for the right books, and that is only heightened when a book is a true event, like Alex Haley’s “Roots,” which spent months at No. 1 on The Times’s best-seller list. The great James Baldwin’s piece is something still worth reading and considering today. He wrote of “Roots”: “It suggests with great power, how each of us, however unconsciously, can’t but be the vehicle of the history which has produced us. Well, we can perish in this vehicle, children, or we can move on up the road.”

Joan Didion

On norman mailer’s “the executioner’s song”.

Talk about two heavyweights. On the cover of our Oct. 7, 1979, issue, Didion reviewed Mailer’s epic, genre-defying novel about the infamous Gary Gilmore, who murdered two people in Utah and later demanded that the state follow through with his execution for the crime. Much more than just the story of a crime and a very public death penalty debate, Mailer’s book captured the desperate side of life in the American West. “I think no one but Mailer could have dared this book,” Didion wrote. “The authentic Western voice, the voice heard in ‘The Executioner’s Song,’ is one heard often in life but only rarely in literature, the reason being that to truly know the West is to lack all will to write it down.”

Derek Walcott

On “the glorious flight: across the channel with louis blériot, july 25, 1909” by alice and martin provensen.

The poet Derek Walcott, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992, reviewed this book about the French aviator Louis Blériot and his flight across the English Channel, 18 years before Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic. “Gaiety and true bravery are close in legend, and this spaciously crafted and modestly presented book is very much in the spirit of its subject,” Walcott wrote. “Fact is turned into magic, very quietly. The return to innocence requires gay and brave strides; the light on the way there is direct, the flight natural and simple, and ‘The Glorious Flight’ has made it.”

Margaret Atwood

On toni morrison’s “beloved”.

Sometimes a book that will become an undisputed classic is met at the moment of its publication with appropriate awe. Such was the case with Morrison’s “Beloved,” a remarkable ghost story set in the years after the Civil War. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and in 2006 was named the best novel of the previous 25 years by a group of prominent writers, critics and editors polled by the Book Review. In her original review of the book in 1987, Margaret Atwood — the author of her own classics, like “The Handmaid’s Tale” — wrote: “‘Beloved’ is Toni Morrison’s fifth novel, and another triumph. Indeed, Morrison’s versatility and technical and emotional range appear to know no bounds. If there were any doubts about her stature as a pre-eminent American novelist, of her own or any other generation, ‘Beloved’ will put them to rest. In three words or less, it’s a hair-raiser.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

On j.g. ballard’s “war fever”.

The critic Harold Bloom once said that Ursula K. Le Guin had “raised fantasy into high literature for our time.” In this review of another iconic writer of literary science fiction, Le Guin captured the scope and relevance of Ballard’s themes. “The brilliant, obsessive fictions of J.G. Ballard circle through a round of almost canonical topics of modernist literature and film: the Conradian jungle and its white folk, consumerist America and the ugly American, popular cult figures such as astronauts and film stars, T.S. Eliot’s ‘waste land’ and ‘unreal city.’ Through these and other landscapes of alienation, stock figures move in meticulous patterns toward a predictably shocking conclusion. The voltage is high, but it’s all in the mind.”

Stephen King

On thomas harris’s “hannibal”.

Dark imaginations collide in this review. (If Thomas Harris hadn’t invented Hannibal Lecter, perhaps eventually Stephen King would have?) This was Lecter’s first appearance in a novel in 11 years — and the first since the film adaptation of “The Silence of the Lambs” had made him a household name. “I don’t think many of the Danielle Steel crowd will be rushing out to buy a book in which one character is eaten from the inside out by a ravenous moray eel — but for those who like what Harris can do so brilliantly, no book report is required.”

Jhumpa Lahiri

On mohsin hamid’s “moth smoke”.

We like to keep our eyes peeled for the newest talents here at the Book Review, and here is a vintage example. About a month after this review was published, Jhumpa Lahiri would win a Pulitzer Prize for her debut collection of stories, “Interpreter of Maladies.” And here she was reviewing the debut novel by Mohsin Hamid, who was embarking on his own award-winning career. “Like Fitzgerald, Hamid writes about the slippery ties between the extremely wealthy and those who hover, and generally stumble, in money’s glare,” Lahiri wrote. “Hamid also sets the action over a single, degenerate summer, when passions run high and moral lassitude prevails. And like Fitzgerald, Hamid probes the vulgarity and violence that lurk beneath a surface of affluence and ease.”

Mario Vargas Llosa

On suzanne jill levine’s “manuel puig and the spider woman”.

The Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, delivered a sweeping review of this biography of the Argentine writer Manuel Puig. In it, Vargas Llosa considered everything from the influence of the movies on Puig to what made his work so original to whether that work has the “revolutionary transcendence attributed to it by Levine and other critics.” He praised Levine’s own work: “This fascinating book is indispensable for anyone interested in Puig’s work (which Levine, the translator of several of his novels into English, knows to perfection) and in the close connection between film and literature, a defining characteristic of cultural life in the late 20th century; both are described with intelligence and an abundance of information. I found occasional errors, but these in no way diminish the virtues of a book in which rigor and readability walk arm in arm.”

Colson Whitehead

On richard powers’s “the echo maker”.

As we celebrate 125 years of the Book Review, we’ll spend time not just in the distant past but in the vibrant present. Few writers this century are as acclaimed as Colson Whitehead, the author of several novels and the winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for “The Underground Railroad” (2016). In 2019, Richard Powers joined the list of Pulitzer winners as well, for “The Overstory.” But back in 2006, when both were simply very acclaimed authors, Whitehead reviewed this novel about a man who suffers from a rare cognitive disorder after a near-fatal car accident. “Part of the joy of reading Powers over the years has been his capacity for revelation,” Whitehead wrote. “His scientific discourses point to how the world works, but the struggles of his characters … help us understand how we work.”

Patti Smith

On haruki murakami’s “colorless tsukuru tazaki and his years of pilgrimage”.

A longtime rock star and poet, Patti Smith became an award-winning memoirist with the publication of “Just Kids” in 2010. We also think she’s a fine reviewer. She brought her deep knowledge of the work of Haruki Murakami to this assessment of his 13th novel. “This is a book for both the new and experienced reader. It has a strange casualness, as if it unfolded as Murakami wrote it; at times, it seems like a prequel to a whole other narrative. The feel is uneven, the dialogue somewhat stilted, either by design or flawed in translation. Yet there are moments of epiphany gracefully expressed, especially in regard to how people affect one another.”

On Yuval Noah Harari’s “21 Lessons for the 21st Century”

Yes, we love to publish work by prominent novelists, essayists, poets, journalists, historians. But sometimes it’s a thrill to have someone weigh in who is (very, very well) known for something other than books. And who better to review a look at the 21st century than Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, who did so much to shape the world we live in? “Harari is such a stimulating writer that even when I disagreed, I wanted to keep reading and thinking. All three of his books wrestle with some version of the same question: What will give our lives meaning in the decades and centuries ahead? … It’s no criticism to say that Harari hasn’t produced a satisfying answer yet. Neither has anyone else. So I hope he turns more fully to this question in the future.”

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

James McBride’s novel sold a million copies, and he isn’t sure how he feels about that, as he considers the critical and commercial success  of “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.”

How did gender become a scary word? Judith Butler, the theorist who got us talking about the subject , has answers.

You never know what’s going to go wrong in these graphic novels, where Circus tigers, giant spiders, shifting borders and motherhood all threaten to end life as we know it .

When the author Tommy Orange received an impassioned email from a teacher in the Bronx, he dropped everything to visit the students  who inspired it.

Do you want to be a better reader?   Here’s some helpful advice to show you how to get the most out of your literary endeavor .

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

Advertisement

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Buy a cat, stay up late, don't drink: top 10 writers’ tips on writing

Made a New Year resolution to start writing that novel? Take some writing tips from Leo Tolstoy, Muriel Spark, John Steinbeck and other famous authors

O ver the past year, Helen Gordon and I have been putting together Being a Writer, a collection of musings, tips and essays from some of our favourite authors about the business of writing, ranging from the time of Samuel Johnson and Grub Street, to the age of Silicon Roundabout and Lorrie Moore .

Researching the book, it quickly became obvious that there isn’t a correct way to set about writing creatively, which is a liberating thought. For every novelist who needs to isolate themselves in a quiet office ( Jonathan Franzen ), there’s another who works best at the local coffee shop (Rivka Galchen) or who struggles to snatch an hour between chores and children (a young Alice Munro ).

Conversely, it also became apparent that alongside all this variety of approach, there are certain ideas and pieces of advice that many writers hold in common. In an 1866 letter to Mrs Brookfield, Charles Dickens suggests that: “You constantly hurry your narrative ... by telling it, in a sort of impetuous breathless way, in your own person, when the people [characters] should tell it and act it for themselves.” Basically: SHOW DON’T TELL. Three words that will be familiar to anyone who has sat in a 21st-century creative writing class.

Our book therefore contains a lot of writing advice, ranging from the sternly practical to the gloriously idiosyncratic. We have writers talking about what went wrong, as well as what went right. They discuss failing to finish a manuscript, failing to find a publisher, badly realised characters and tortuous, unwieldy plots. Here are a just few of our favourite tips, which we believe any aspiring writer should take to heart.

1. Hilary Mantel – a little arrogance can be a great help “The most helpful quality a writer can cultivate is self-confidence – arrogance, if you can manage it. You write to impose yourself on the world, and you have to believe in your own ability when the world shows no sign of agreeing with you.”

2. Leo Tolstoy and HP Lovecraft – pick the hours that work best for you Tolstoy believed in starting first thing: “I always write in the morning. I was pleased to hear lately that Rousseau, too, after he got up in the morning, went for a short walk and sat down to work. In the morning one’s head is particularly fresh. The best thoughts most often come in the morning after waking while still in bed or during the walk.”

Or stay up late as HP Lovecraft did: “At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour. No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night.”

3. William Faulkner – read to write “Read, read, read everything – trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.”

4. Katherine Mansfield – writing anything is better than nothing “Looking back I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.”

5. Ernest Hemingway – stop while the going is good “Always stop while you are going good and don’t worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry bout it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.”

6. John Steinbeck – take it a page at a time “Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day. It helps.”

7. Miranda July – don’t worry about the bad drafts “I was a lot dumber when I was writing the novel. I felt like worse of a writer … would come home every day from my office and say, ‘Well, I still really like the story, I just wish it was better written.’ At that point, I didn’t realise I was writing a first draft. And the first draft was the hardest part. From there, it was comparatively easy. It was like I had some Play-Doh to work with and could just keep working with it – doing a million drafts and things changing radically and characters appearing and disappearing and solving mysteries: Why is this thing here? Should I just take that away? And then realising, no, that is there, in fact, because that is the key to this. I love that sort of detective work, keeping the faith alive until all the questions have been sleuthed out.”

8. F Scott Fitzgerald – don’t write and drink “It has become increasingly plain to me that the very excellent organisation of a long book or the finest perceptions and judgment in time of revision do not go well with liquor. A short story can be written on the bottle, but for a novel you need the mental speed that enables you to keep the whole pattern inside your head and ruthlessly sacrifice the sideshows … I would give anything if I hadn’t written Part III of Tender Is the Night entirely on stimulant.”

9. Zadie Smith – get offline “Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.”

10. Muriel Spark* – get a cat “If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially on some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work … the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle under the desk lamp. The light from a lamp … gives the cat great satisfaction. The cat will settle down and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding. And the tranquillity of the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impeded your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost. You need not watch the cat all the time. Its presence alone is enough. The effect of a cat on your concentration is remarkable, and very mysterious.’ *(or rather, the character of Mrs Hawkins in A Far Cry from Kensington.)

• Being a Writer by Travis Elborough and Helen Gordon is published by Frances Lincoln, priced £15. It is available from the Guardian bookshop for £12.75, including free UK p&p .
• Creative writing
• Hilary Mantel
• Leo Tolstoy
• HP Lovecraft
• William Faulkner
• Ernest Hemingway
• John Steinbeck

Comments (…)

Most viewed.

Looking to publish? Meet your dream editor, designer and marketer on Reedsy.

Find the perfect editor for your next book

1 million authors trust the professionals on Reedsy. Come meet them.

Blog • Perfecting your Craft

Last updated on May 31, 2022

The 40 Best Books About Writing: A Reading List for Authors

For this post, we’ve scoured the web (so you don’t have to) and asked our community of writers for recommendations on some indispensable books about writing. We've filled this list with dozens of amazing titles, all of which are great — but this list might seem intimidating. So for starters, here are our top 10 books about writing:

• On Writing by Stephen King
• The Kick-Ass Writer by Chuck Wendig
• Dreyer’s Englis h by Benjamin Dreyer
• The Elements of Style by Strunk, White, and Kalman
• The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne
• A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
• Mouth Full of Blood by Toni Morrison
• How to Market a Book by Ricardo Fayet
• On Writing Well by William Zinsser

But if you're ready to get into the weeds, here are 40 of our favorite writing books.

Books about becoming a writer

1. on writing by stephen king.

Perhaps the most-cited book on this list, On Writing is part-memoir, part-masterclass from one of America’s leading authors. Come for the vivid accounts of his childhood and youth — including his extended "lost weekend" spent on alcohol and drugs in the 1980s. Stay for the actionable advice on how to use your emotions and experiences to kickstart your writing, hone your skills, and become an author. Among the many craft-based tips are King’s expert takes on plot, story, character, and more.

From the book: “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” 

2. The Kick-Ass Writer by Chuck Wendig

If you haven’t checked out Wendig’s personal blog, head over there now and bookmark it. Unfiltered, profane, and almost always right, Wendig’s become a leading voice among online writing communities in the past few years. In The Kick-Ass Writer , he offers over 1,000 pearls of wisdom for authors, ranging from express writing tips to guidance on getting published. Written to be read in short bursts, we’re sure he’d agree that this is the perfect bathroom book for writers.

From the book: “I have been writing professionally for a lucky-despite-the-number 13 years. Not once — seriously, not once ever — has anyone ever asked me where I got my writing degree… Nobody gives two ferrets fornicating in a filth-caked gym sock whether or not you have a degree… The only thing that matters is, Can you write well? ” 

3. Find Your Voice by Angie Thomas

Taking advice from famous authors is not about imitation, but about finding your own voice . Take it from someone who knows: Thomas is the New York Times #1 Bestselling author of The Hate U Give , On the Come Up , and Concrete Rose . While she’s found her calling in YA literature , she has plenty of insight into finding your own voice in your genre of choice. Written in the form of a guided journal, this volume comes with step-by-step instructions, writing prompts, and exercises especially aimed at helping younger creatives develop the strength and skills to realize their vision.

From the book: “Write fearlessly. Write what is true and real to you.” 

4. The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner

Since its publication in 2000, The Forest for the Trees has remained an essential resource for authors at various stages in their careers. As an editor, Lerner gives advice not only on producing quality content, but also on how to build your career as an author and develop a winning routine — like how writers can be more productive in their creative process, how to get published , and how to publish well . 

From the book: “The world doesn't fully make sense until the writer has secured his version of it on the page. And the act of writing is strangely more lifelike than life.”

Perfect your book with professional help

Meet the top book editors, designers, and marketers on Reedsy

Learn how Reedsy can help you craft a beautiful book.

5. How to Write Like Tolstoy by Richard Cohen

From the book: “Great writers can be inhibiting, and maybe after one has read a Scott Fitzgerald or Henry James one can’t escape imitat­ing them; but more often such writers are inspiring.”

6. Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith

Smith is well-known for her fiction, but she is also a prolific essay writer. In Feel Free , she has gathered several essays on recent cultural and political developments and combined them with experiences from her own life and career. In “The I Who Is Not Me”, she explores how her own lived experience comes into play in her fiction writing, and how she manages to extrapolate that to comment on contemporary social contexts, discussing race, class, and ethnicity.

From the book: “Writing exists (for me) at the intersection of three precarious, uncertain elements: language, the world, the self. The first is never wholly mine; the second I can only ever know in a partial sense; the third is a malleable and improvised response to the previous two.”

Books about language and style 

7. dreyer’s english by benjamin dreyer.

A staple book about writing well, Dreyer’s English serves as a one-stop guide to proper English, based on the knowledge that Dreyer — a senior copy editor at Random House — has accumulated throughout his career. From punctuation to tricky homophones, passive voice, and commas, the goal of these tools should be to facilitate effective communication of ideas and thoughts. Dreyer delivers this and then some, but not without its due dosage of humor and informative examples. 

From the book: “A good sentence, I find myself saying frequently, is one that the reader can follow from beginning to end, no matter how long it is, without having to double back in confusion because the writer misused or omitted a key piece of punctuation, chose a vague or misleading pronoun, or in some other way engaged in inadvertent misdirection.”

8. The Elements of Style (Illustrated) by William Strunk, Jr., E. B. White, and Maira Kalman

A perfect resource for visual learners, this illustrated edition of The Elements of Style has taken the classic style manual to a new, more accessible level but kept its main tenet intact: make every word tell. The written content by Strunk and White has long been referred to as an outline of the basic principles of style. Maira Kalman’s illustrations elevate the experience and make it a feast for both the mind and the eye. 

From the book: “A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”

9. Sin and Syntax by Constance Hale

If you’re looking to bring a bit of spunk into your writing, copy editor Constance Hale may hold the key . Whether you’re writing a work-related email or the next rap anthem, she has one goal: to make creative communication available to everyone by dispelling old writing myths and making every word count. Peppered with writing prompts and challenges, this book will have you itching to put pen to paper.

From the book: “Verbose is not a synonym for literary.”

10. The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker

Combining entertainment with intellectual pursuit, Pinker, a cognitive scientist and dictionary consultant, explores and rethinks language usage in the 21st century . With illustrative examples of both great and not-so-great linguistic constructions, Pinker breaks down the art of writing and gives a gentle but firm nudge in the right direction, towards coherent yet stylish prose. This is not a polemic on the decay of the English language, nor a recitation of pet peeves, but a thoughtful, challenging, and practical take on the science of communication. 

From the book: “Why is so much writing so bad, and how can we make it better? Is the English language being corrupted by texting and social media? Do the kids today even care about good writing—and why should we care?”

11. Eats, Shoots, & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss

From the book: “A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air. "Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife annual and tosses it over his shoulder. "I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up." The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation. Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

Books about story structure

12. save the cat by blake snyder.

Best known as a screenwriting manual, Save the Cat! is just as often named by authors as one of their most influential books about writing. The title comes from the tried-and-true trope of the protagonist doing something heroic in the first act (such as saving a cat) in order to win over the audience. Yes, it might sound trite to some — but others swear by its bulletproof beat sheet. More recently, there has been Save the Cat! Writes a Novel , which tailors its principles specifically to the literary crowd. (For a concise breakdown of the beat sheet, check this post out!)

From the book: “Because liking the person we go on a journey with is the single most important element in drawing us into the story.” 

13. The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne

Shawn Coyne is a veteran editor with over 25 years of publishing experience, and he knows exactly what works and what doesn’t in a story — indeed, he’s pretty much got it down to a science. The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know outlines Coyne’s original “Story Grid” evaluation technique, which both writers and editors can use to appraise, revise, and ultimately improve their writing (in order to get it ready for publication). Coyne and his friend Tim Grahl also co-host the acclaimed Story Grid podcast , another great resource for aspiring writers.

From the book: “The Story Grid is a tool with many applications. It pinpoints problems but does not emotionally abuse the writer… it is a tool to re-envision and resuscitate a seemingly irredeemable pile of paper stuck in an attack drawer, and it can inspire an original creation.”

14. Story Structure Architect by Victoria Schmidt

For those who find the idea of improvising utterly terrifying and prefer the security of structures, this book breaks down just about every kind of story structure you’ve ever heard of. Victoria Schmidt offers no less than fifty-five different creative paths for your story to follow — some of which are more unconventional, or outright outlandish than others. The level of detail here is pretty staggering: Schmidt goes into the various conflicts, subplots, and resolutions these different story structures entail — with plenty of concrete examples! Suffice to say that no matter what kind of story you’re writing, you’ll find a blueprint for it in Story Structure Architect .

From the book: “When you grow up in a Westernized culture, the traditional plot structure becomes so embedded in your subconscious that you may have to work hard to create a plot structure that deviates from it… Understand this and keep your mind open when reading [this book]. Just because a piece doesn’t conform to the model you are used to, does not make it bad or wrong.”

15. The Writer's Journey  by Christopher Vogler

Moving on, we hone in on the mythic structure. Vogler’s book, originally published in 1992, is now a modern classic of writing advice; though intended as a screenwriting textbook, its contents apply to any story of mythic proportions. In The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers , Vogler takes a page (literally) from Joseph Campbell’s Hero of a Thousand Faces to ruminate upon the most essential narrative structures and character archetypes of the writing craft. So if you’re thinking of drawing up an epic fantasy series full of those tropes we all know and love, this guide should be right up your alley.

From the book: “The Hero’s Journey is not an invention, but an observation. It is a recognition of a beautiful design… It’s difficult to avoid the sensation that the Hero’s Journey exists somewhere, somehow, as an external reality, a Platonic ideal form, a divine model. From this model, infinite and highly varied copies can be produced, each resonating with the essential spirit of the form.”

16. Story Genius by Lisa Cron

From the book: “We don't turn to story to escape reality. We turn to story to navigate reality.”

17. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders

More than just a New York Times bestseller and the winner of the Booker Prize, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a distillation of the MFA class on Russian short stories that Saunders has been teaching. Breaking down narrative functions and why we become immersed in a story, this is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand and nurture our continued need for fiction.

From the book: “We’re going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn’t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?”

Books about overcoming obstacles as a writer

18. bird by bird by anne lamott .

Like Stephen King’s book about writing craft, this work from acclaimed novelist and nonfiction writer Anne Lamott also fuses elements of a memoir with invaluable advice on the writer’s journey. Particularly known for popularizing the concept of “shitty first drafts”, Bird by Bird was recently recommended by editor Jennifer Hartmann in her Reedsy Live webinar for its outlook take on book writing. She said, “This book does exactly what it says it will do: it teaches you to become a better writer. [Lamott] is funny and witty and very knowledgeable.”

From the book: “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft.”

19. Take Off Your Pants by Libbie Hawker 

From the book: “When it comes to the eternal quandary of pantsing or plotting, you can keep a foot in each camp. But if your goals will require you to write with speed and confidence, an effective outline will be your best friend.”

20. Writing into the Dark by Dean Wesley Smith 

And for those who eschew structure altogether, we’ll now refer you to this title from profile science fiction author Dean Wesley Smith . Having authored a number of official Star Trek novels, he definitely knows what he’s talking about when he encourages writers to go boldly into the unknown with an approach to writing books that doesn’t necessarily involve an elaborate plan. It might not be your action plan, but it can be a fresh perspective to get out of the occasional writer’s block .

From the book: “Imagine if every novel you picked up had a detailed outline of the entire plot… Would you read the novel after reading the outline? Chances are, no. What would be the point? You already know the journey the writer is going to take you on. So, as a writer, why do an outline and then have to spend all that time creating a book you already know?”

21. No Plot, No Problem by Chris Baty

If you’re procrastinating to the point where you haven’t even started your novel yet, NaNo founder Chris Baty is your guy! No Plot, No Problem is a “low-stress, high-velocity” guide to writing a novel in just 30 days (yup, it’s great prep for the NaNoWriMo challenge ). You’ll get tons of tips on how to survive this rigorous process, from taking advantage of your initial momentum to persisting through moments of doubt . Whether you’re participating in everyone’s favorite November write-a-thon or you just want to bang out a novel that’s been in your head forever, Baty will help you cross that elusive finish line.

From the book: “A rough draft is best written in the steam-cooker of an already busy life. If you have a million things to do, adding item number 1,000,001 is not such a big deal.”

22. The 90-Day Novel by Alan Watt

And for those who think 30 days is a bit too steam cooker-esque, there’s always Alan Watt’s more laid-back option. In The 90-Day Novel , Watt provides a unique three-part process to assist you with your writing. The first part provides assistance in developing your story’s premise, the second part helps you work through obstacles to execute it, and the third part is full of writing exercises to unlock the “primal forces” of your story — aka the energy that will invigorate your work and incite readers to devour it like popcorn at the movies.

From the book: “Why we write is as important as what we write. Grammar, punctuation, and syntax are fairly irrelevant in the first draft. Get the story down… fast. Get out of your head, so you can surprise yourself on the page.”

23. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

If you feel like you’re constantly in the trenches of your “inner creative battle,” The War of Art is the book for you. Pressfield emphasizes the importance of breaking down creative barriers — what he calls “Resistance” — in order to defeat your demons (i.e. procrastination, self-doubt, etc.) and fulfill your potential. Though some of his opinions are no doubt controversial (he makes repeated claims that almost anything can be procrastination, including going to the doctor), this book is the perfect remedy for prevaricating writers who need a little bit of tough love.

From the book: “Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.”

Free course: Create a Solid Writing Routine

Learn to banish your procrastination gremlins and finish writing your book. Get started now.

Books about writing as a lifestyle and career

24. steal like an artist by austin kleon.

As Kleon notes in the first section of Steal Like an Artist , this title obviously doesn’t refer to plagiarism. Rather, it acknowledges that art cannot be created in a vacuum, and encourages writers (and all other artists) to be open and receptive to all sources of inspiration. By “stealing like an artist,” writers can construct stories that already have a baseline of familiarity for readers, but with new twists that keep them fresh and exciting .

From the book: “If we’re free from the burden of trying to be completely original, we can stop trying to make something out of nothing, and we can embrace influence instead of running away from it.”

25. Mouth Full of Blood by Toni Morrison

From the book: “A writer's life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity.”

26. Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

No matter what stage you’re at in your writing career, Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones will help you write more skillfully and creatively. With suggestions, encouragement, and valuable advice on the many aspects of the writing craft, Goldberg doesn’t shy away from making the crucial connection between writing and adding value to your life. Covering a range of topics including taking notes of your initial thoughts, listening, overcoming doubt, choosing where to write, and the selection of your verbs, this guide has plenty to say about the minute details of writing, but excels at exploring the author life.

From the book: “Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.”

27. Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury

What does it take to become a great author? According to the beloved writer Ray Bradbury , it takes zest, gusto, curiosity, as well as a spirit of adventure. Sharing his wisdom and experiences as one of the most prolific writers in America, Bradbury gives plenty of practical tips and tricks on how to develop ideas, find your voice, and create your own style in this thoughtful volume. In addition to that, this is also an insight into the life and mind of this prolific writer, and a celebration of the act of writing. 

From the book: “Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a land mine. The land mine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces back together. Now, it's your turn. Jump!”

28. The Kite and the String by Alice Mattison

One of the most common dilemmas an author faces is the struggle between spontaneity and control. Literary endeavors need those unexpected light-bulb moments, but a book will never be finished if you rely solely on inspiration. In The Kite and the String , Mattison has heard your cry for help and developed a guide for balancing these elements throughout the different stages of writing a novel or a memoir. Sure, there may be language and grammar rules that govern the way you write, but letting a bit of playfulness breathe life into your writing will see it take off to a whole new level. On the other hand, your writing routine, solitude, audience, and goal-setting will act as the strings that keep you from floating too far away. 

From the book: "Don’t make yourself miserable wishing for a kind of success that you wouldn’t enjoy if you had it."

29. How to Become a Successful Indie Author by Craig Martelle

This one’s for all the indie authors out there! Even if you’ve already self-published a book , you can still learn a lot from this guide by Craig Martelle , who has dozens of indie books — “over two and a half million words,” as he puts it — under his belt. With patience and expertise, Martelle walks you through everything you need to know: from developing your premise to perfecting your writing routine, to finally getting your work to the top of the Amazon charts.

From the book: “No matter where you are on your author journey, there’s always a new level you can reach. Roll up your sleeves, because it’s time to get to work.”

Free course: Amazon Algorithms

Send your book to the top of its category by using Amazon's recommendation system to your advantage. Get started now.

30. How to Market a Book by Ricardo Fayet 

From the book: “Here’s the thing: authors don’t find readers; readers find books . [...] Marketing is not about selling your book to readers. It’s about getting readers to find it.”

31. Everybody Writes by Ann Handley

The full title of Handley’s all-inclusive book on writing is actually Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content — which should tell you something about its broad appeal. Not only does Handley have some great ideas on how to plan and produce a great story, but she also provides tips on general content writing, which comes in handy when it’s time to build your author platform or a mailing list to promote your book. As such, Everybody Writes is nothing like your other books on novel writing — it’ll make you see writing in a whole new light.

From the book: “In our world, many hold a notion that the ability to write, or write well, is a gift bestowed on a chosen few. That leaves us thinking there are two kinds of people: the writing haves — and the hapless, for whom writing well is a hopeless struggle, like trying to carve marble with a butter knife. But I don’t believe that, and neither should you.” 

Free course: Author Mailing Lists

Acquire more readers, sell more books, and make more money with the only indispensable tool in the book marketer's arsenal. Get started now.

Books on writing poetry 

32. madness, rack, and honey by mary ruefle.

With a long history of crafting and lecturing about poetry, Ruefle invites the reader of Madness, Rack, and Honey to immerse themselves into its beauty and magic. In a powerful combination of lectures and musings, she expertly explores the mind and craft of writers while excavating the magical potential of poetry. Often a struggle between giving and taking, poetry is, according to Ruefle, a unique art form that reveals the innermost workings of the human heart.

From the book: “In one sense, reading is a great waste of time. In another sense, it is a great extension of time, a way for one person to live a thousand and one lives in a single lifespan, to watch the great impersonal universe at work again and again”

33. Threads by Sandeep Parmar, Nisha Ramayya, and Bhanu Kapil

If you’re looking for something that explores the philosophical aspects of writing, Threads asks big questions about writing and the position of the writer in an industry that has largely excluded marginalized voices. Where does the writer exist in relation to its text and, particularly in the case of poetry, who is the “I”? Examining the common white, British, male lens, this collection of short essays will make it hard for you not to critically consider your own perceptions and how they affect your writing process.

From the book: “It is impossible to consider the lyric without fully interrogating its inherent promise of universality, its coded whiteness.”

34. The Hatred of Poetry by Ben Lerner

Despite its eye-catching title, this short essay is actually a defense of poetry . Lerner begins with his own hatred of the art form, and then moves on to explore this love-hate dichotomy that actually doesn’t seem to be contradictory. Rather, such a multitude of emotions might be one of the reasons that writers and readers alike turn to it. With its ability to evoke feelings and responses through word-play and meter, poetry has often been misconceived as inaccessible and elitist; this is a call to change that perception. 

From the book: “All I ask the haters — and I, too, am one — is that they strive to perfect their contempt, even consider bringing it to bear on poems, where it will be deepened, not dispelled, and where, by creating a place for possibility and present absences (like unheard melodies), it might come to resemble love.”

35. Poemcrazy by Susan G. Wooldridge

If you’ve ever felt that the mysterious workings of poetry are out of your reach and expressly not for you, Wooldridge is here to tell you that anyone who wants to can write poetry . An experienced workshop leader, she will help you find your inner voice and to express it through the written word. Giving you advice on how to think, use your senses, and practice your writing, Wooldrige will have you putting down rhyme schemes before you know it. 

From the book: “Writing a poem is a form of listening, helping me discover what's wrong or frightening in my world as well as what delights me.”

36. Writing Better Lyrics by Pat Pattison

From the book: “Don't be afraid to write crap — it makes the best fertilizer. The more of it you write, the better your chances are of growing something wonderful.”

Books about writing nonfiction

37. on writing well by william zinsser.

Going strong with its 30th-anniversary edition, On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction is an evergreen resource for nonfiction writers which breaks down the fundamental principles of written communication. As a bonus, the insights and guidelines in this book can certainly be applied to most forms of writing, from interviewing to camp-fire storytelling. Beyond giving tips on how to stay consistent in your writing and voice, how to edit, and how to avoid common pitfalls, Zinsser can also help you grow as a professional writer, strengthening your career and taking steps in a new direction. 

From the book: “Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.”

38. Essays by Lydia Davis

Ironically enough, this rather lengthy book is a celebration of brevity. As one of the leading American voices in flash-fiction and short-form writing, Davis traces her literary roots and inspirations in essays on everything, ranging from the mastodonic work of Proust to minimalism. In both her translations and her own writing, she celebrates experimental writing that stretches the boundaries of language. Playing with the contrast between what is said and what is not, this collection of essays is another tool to the writing shed to help you feel and use the power of every word you write.

From the book: “Free yourself of your device, for at least certain hours of the day — or at the very least one hour. Learn to be alone, all alone, without people, and without a device that is turned on. Learn to experience the purity of that kind of concentration. Develop focus, learn to focus intently on one thing, uninterrupted, for a long time.”

39. Essayism by Brian Dillon

In this volume, Dillon explores the often overlooked genre of essay writing and its place in literature’s past, present, and future. He argues that essays are an “experiment in attention” but also highlights how and why certain essays have directly impacted the development of the cultural and political landscape, from the end of the Middle Ages until the present day. At its heart, despite its many forms, subject areas, and purposes, essayism has its root in self-exploration. Dip in and out of Dillon’s short texts to find inspiration for your own nonfiction writing.

From the book: “What exactly do I mean, even, by 'style'? Perhaps it is nothing but an urge, an aspiration, a clumsy access of admiration, a crush.”

40. Naked, Drunk, and Writing by Adair Lara

From the book: “Write it down. Whatever it is, write it down. Chip it into marble. Type it into Microsoft Word. Spell it out in seaweeds on the shore. We are each of us an endangered species, delicate as unicorns.”

With a few of these books in your arsenal, you’ll be penning perfect plots in no time! And if you’re interested in learning more about the editing process, check these books on editing out as well!

ZUrlocker says:

11/03/2019 – 19:46

I'm familiar with several of these books. But for new authors, I urge you caution. It is very tempting to read so many books about writing that you never get around to writing. (I did this successfully for many years!) So I will suggest paring it down to just two books: Stephen King on Writing and Blake Snyder Save the Cat. Snyder's book is mostly about screenwriting, so you could also consider Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody. Best of luck!

Comments are currently closed.

Continue reading

Recommended posts from the Reedsy Blog

How Many Sentences Are in a Paragraph?

From fiction to nonfiction works, the length of a paragraph varies depending on its purpose. Here's everything you need to know.

Narrative Structure: Definition, Examples, and Writing Tips

What's the difference between story structure and narrative structure? And how do you choose the right narrative structure for you novel?

What is the Proust Questionnaire? 22 Questions to Write Better Characters

Inspired by Marcel Proust, check out the questionnaire that will help your characters remember things past.

What is Pathos? Definition and Examples in Literature

Pathos is a literary device that uses language to evoke an emotional response, typically to connect readers with the characters in a story.

How to Start a Children’s Book: Coming Up with Your Big Idea

If you've ever dreamed of writing a children's book but aren't sure where to start, check out this post to learn more about how you can create the perfect story for kids.

How to Become a Travel Writer in 5 Steps: A Guide for Travel Bugs

If you want to get paid to share your adventures, learn how to become a travel writer with these five tips.

Join a community of over 1 million authors

Reedsy is more than just a blog. Become a member today to discover how we can help you publish a beautiful book.

We have an app for that

Build a writing routine with our free writing app.

1 million authors trust the professionals on Reedsy. Come meet them.

Enter your email or get started with a social account:

• Features for Creative Writers
• Features for Work
• Features for Higher Education
• Features for Teachers
• Features for Non-Native Speakers
• Learn Blog Grammar Guide Community Events FAQ
• Grammar Guide

Daily Habits & Writing Routines of 21 Famous Authors

Alex Simmonds

Anyone who wants to be a writer knows the depressing feeling of planning a whole day’s writing only to end up staring at a blank page, browsing online for "research," taking endless trips out for coffee, before finally giving up by about lunchtime.

At that point, it’s normally time to speculate (a) that you need new fancy stationery, or (b) that you need to change your productivity software .

Procrastination isn’t unique to writers, but what is unique is the idea that you can’t just knuckle down and get on with it. Instead, many of us feel you need to find a way of grasping that elusive muse before you can start to write.

But is this true, or is it just a myth to avoid putting in the hard yards? In this article, we’ll explore that myth by looking at the writing routines of famous authors and the old argument of inspiration vs. perspiration.

Is It Best to Write in the Morning?

Do you need a writing routine, what tools do you need for writing, is it best to write alone, how many words should i write in a day, does exercise make you a better writer, can i be a writer part-time, is it better to write in the day or at night, technique 1: start early.

Unfortunately—and there’s no getting around this—a brief survey of the routines of great writers indicates that getting up early is often essential to success. Many believe that there is something magical in that first hour or two, and they go directly from their beds to their writing.

Salman Rushdie, for example, believes that he has a little package of creative energy that he has nourished through sleep and that should be used instantly on waking—so he walks to his office in his pajamas to write. Meanwhile Steven Kotler, bestselling author and expert on human performance, has noted that his ideal morning routine is to:

"Go from bed to desk before my brain even kicks out of its Alpha wave state."

It is a view that has been shared by some of the greatest writers of the twentieth century .

Ernest Hemingway

You’ve probably heard of Ernest Hemingway’s technique of writing right up until a point where you know what will happen next, and then stopping. Theoretically, this means that you’ll always know when to write next when you sit down at your desk the next day.

"I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there… You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.”

Toni Morrison

Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison spoke in a 1993 interview with The Paris Review on realizing that she was more clear headed and open to writing before the sun rise:

"I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark—it must be dark—and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come… And I realized that for me this ritual comprises my preparation to enter a space that I can only call non-secular."

Technique 2: Eat, Sleep, Write, Repeat

For most successful writers, getting up early is an essential part of a larger necessity—a fixed daily routine. As the following authors will show, most see the routine as essential to provoking creative output.

Auden, one of the greatest (and most prolific) poets of the twentieth century certainly believed that "routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition" and followed a strict routine himself his entire working life.

Auden saw a strict schedule as a way of controlling the muse and wrote solidly from 7am to 11.30am every day without fail. He allowed himself a brief lunch before working into the late afternoon and then stopping every day at 6.30pm for cocktails and guests.

Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov, bestselling author of over 500 works of science fiction, followed a similarly regimented routine which he called his "candy-store hours" after the candy store that his father opened. That store opened at 6am and closed at 1am every day, year-round and Asimov worked the same hours:

Derek Walcott

Speaking with The Paris Review , the writer Derek Walcott described his routine on his home island of St Lucia of waking up at 3:30am, having coffee and a cigarette, watching the sun rise, and then working through to 10am or 11am, as ritualistic:

"All artists and all writers in that moment before they begin their working day or working night have that area between beginning and preparation, and however brief it is, there is something about it votive and humble and in a sense ritualistic."

Stephen King

Stephen King, one of the most prolific and successful writers of all time, writes 1,000 words a day and sees his routine as a way of entering a "writing state":

"I have a glass of water or a cup of tea. There’s a certain time I sit down, from 8:00 to 8:30, somewhere within that half hour every morning. I have my vitamin pill and my music, sit in the same seat, and the papers are all arranged in the same places. The cumulative purpose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind, you’re going to be dreaming soon."

Technique 3: Use Props

If you don’t believe in a dream state or a muse, just look on the use of repetition as an illusion or prompt to get you working.

Natalie Goldberg

In Writing Down the Bones , author Natalie Goldberg advocates the use of "props" to trick your consciousness into an altered state:

"When I sit down to write, often I have a cigarette hanging out of my mouth… I don't actually smoke anyway… The cigarette is a prop to help me dream into another world."

Other writers have props all around their office.

When interviewed in The Guardian in 2007, author Will Self referred to the writing props he relies on:

"Rituals. Smoking—pipes, cigars, special brands, accessories, the whole bollocks. Coffee, tea, strange infusions—I have a stove on my desk. Fetishising typewriters, pens, etc."

(Just as a side-note, we’re not advocating taking up smoking here. Many of these twentieth-century literary giants didn’t know quite how bad it is for you—or else they didn’t care!)

Don DeLillo

Acclaimed novelist Don DeLillo uses a photo of another writer to force himself back to work:

"The face of Borges against a dark background… he’s like a shaman painted for visions… the photograph shows us a writer who did not waste time at the window or anywhere else. So I’ve tried to make him my guide out of lethargy and drift, into the otherworld of magic, art, and divination."

Technique 4: Peace and Quiet

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf famously wrote about the literal and figurative need for a space for women to write, and for many writers the best prop or routine is still the ability to go somewhere else to bring their ideas to life.

Maya Angelou

Writer and playwright Angelou rented a hotel room away from her house and all the noise, for months at a time as part of her routine:

"I keep a hotel room in which I do my work—a tiny, mean room with just a bed, and sometimes, if I can find it, a face basin. I keep a dictionary, a Bible, a deck of cards and a bottle of sherry in the room. I try to get there around 7, and I work until 2 in the afternoon. If the work is going badly, I stay until 12:30. If it’s going well, I’ll stay as long as it’s going well. It’s lonely, and it’s marvelous."

Joan Didion

Joan Didion told The Paris Review in 1968 how she had to return home when a book was near completion:

"Another thing I need to do, when I’m near the end of the book, is sleep in the same room with it. That’s one reason I go home to Sacramento to finish things. Somehow the book doesn’t leave you when you’re asleep right next to it. In Sacramento nobody cares if I appear or not. I can just get up and start typing.”

Technique 5: Set a Word Quota

For some writers the rigors of a schedule are not enough—they go further and set themselves a word quota!

Anthony Trollope

Trollope was an extremely prolific Victorian novelist who worked to an unbelievable level of discipline, waking at 5am and writing through to 8:30am with a watch on his desk and making sure that he wrote 250 words every 15 minutes without fail.

So dedicated was he that if he finished a novel in that time he would immediately start on the next one, sticking to the same, extraordinary schedule!

Alice Munro

In a 1994 Paris Review interview, Munro admitted to following a similarly compulsive schedule:

"I write every morning, seven days a week. I write starting about eight o’clock and finish around eleven. … I am so compulsive that I have a quota of pages. I’m also compulsive now about walking three miles a day, every day."

Compare Your Writing to Your Favorite Authors’

Your writing routine probably isn’t as extreme as some of the rituals we’ve seen so far, but how does your actual writing compare?

ProWritingAid’s Summary Report allows you to compare your writing to over 30 authors in several key areas like dialogue tags , emotional tells, sentence length variety, bad adverbs, and more.

You don’t need to match the best authors in your genre in these areas to find success, but it’s useful to see how their writing breaks down technically to get a sense of the conventions of your genre.

See how your writing compares by signing up for a free ProWritingAid account.

Technique 6: Exercise

Munro’s compulsion to walk highlights another extremely common factor in the successful routines of writers: exercise. Many authors express the desire to match mental and physical strength.

Charles Dickens

Dickens had a rigid writing routine and would be in his study by 8:30am every day. He would work through until midday for a brief lunch, after which he would work on till 2pm. Then, however, he would head out into the streets of London (or sometimes further afield into the countryside) trying to find what he described as "some pictures I wanted to build upon."

Kurt Vonnegut

In Kurt Vonnegut: Letters , the author wrote of the importance of exercise in his routine:

"I awake at 5:30, work until 8:00, eat breakfast at home, work until 10:00, walk a few blocks into town, do errands, go to the nearby municipal swimming pool, which I have all to myself, and swim for half an hour, return home at 11:45, read the mail, eat lunch at noon… I do push-ups and sit-ups all the time."

Haruki Murakami

Japanese author Haruki Murakami told The Paris Review of the importance of exercise in writing a novel:

"When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long—six months to a year—requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity."

Technique 7: Write on the Side

Of course, many people reading these routines will wonder how to fit that much writing into a day when you still need to pay the bills.

Franz Kafka

Anthony Trollope (mentioned above) once again puts us all to shame. That 250 words every fifteen minutes that he wrote between 5:30 and 8:30 in the morning? It was before he went off for the day and worked for the postal service! And Franz Kafka famously didn’t start work until 23:00 when he had finished a long day working for an insurance company. So no excuses on that front!

Technique 8: Write at Night

Thankfully, not every writer in history has stuck to disciplined early-morning routines! The history of literature is packed with gifted authors and playwrights burning the midnight oil.

And for some, particularly horror or fantasy writers, night is the only time to write.

H. P. Lovecraft

Technique 9: Get Comfortable

Lastly, just to counter all those spartan fixed daily routines, here are some writers who could only write under certain, rather more comfortable conditions.

Truman Capote

Speaking to The Paris Review in 1957, Capote noted that he could not think or write unless he was lying down:

“Either in bed or stretched out on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I’ve got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis.”

Patricia Highsmith

Meanwhile, Patricia Highsmith did manage to work in the mornings, but as her biographer noted, did so in a very particular way:

“Sitting on her bed surrounded by cigarettes, ashtray, matches, a mug of coffee, a doughnut, and an accompanying saucer of sugar. She had to avoid any sense of discipline and make the act of writing as pleasurable as possible."—(Mason Currey, Daily Rituals )

The Importance of a Daily Writing Routine

In the end, it’s not very romantic, but the main conclusion seems to be that you just have to do the work. Plumbers and accountants don’t get to sit around waiting for the plumbing or accountancy "muses" to arrive. And neither do writers.

Setting a routine and turning up seems to be the most important bit—you don’t need to be knocking out Shakespeare every time, just make sure you get some words down on the page.

These days, we may have the internet for research and ProWritingAid for editing, but for the writing itself, we still need to put in the hard yards ourselves. Do that, and eventually, all that perspiration should lead to inspiration!

Are you ready to write your novel? Download this free book now :

This guide helps you work out your narrative arc, plan out your key plot points, flesh out your characters, and begin to build your world.

Be confident about grammar

Check every email, essay, or story for grammar mistakes. Fix them before you press send.

Alex Simmonds is a freelance copywriter based in the UK and has been using words to help people sell things for over 20 years. He has an MA in English Lit and has been struggling to write a novel for most of the last decade. He can be found at alexsimmonds.co.uk.

Get started with ProWritingAid

Drop us a line or let's stay in touch via :

• Writing Tips

15 Writing Tips From Famous Authors That You Need To Know

Every famous author who made it in the writing world was asked this one burning question – ‘ do you have any writing tips for aspiring authors? ’ We have compiled 15 best writing tips that were shared by famous authors over the years.

Write the story inside of you, bursting to come out

The best advice that an author has given to aspiring writers is this. Often times, we are discouraged from writing our stories because we are terrified of doing a bad job. But if there is a story that you really, really want to read and no one has written it yet – you will be the best person to write it.

Tell your stories

Neil Gaiman’s advice follows on the heels of Toni Morrison’s advice. There is only one person who can tell the story brewing in your head. That is you. The worlds you create in your head, the little details, the quirks of the characters – no one knows it better than you do. Why would you deny the world of knowing the delicious tale brewing inside your head?

And tell the version that belongs to you

If you want to tell a deeply personal story, go right ahead. Nothing should get in the way of you wanting to speak your truth. When you are writing, do not second guess. It shows up in the way you write your stories. Thus, Anne Lamott’s advice is important. If you are writing an unpleasant character who gave you a hard time in fiction, it is okay to paint them as the villain. J.K. Rowling admitted Gilderoy Lockheart was inspired by someone truly unpleasant in her life – and we completely understand that!

Writing anything is better than a blank page

One of the most common pieces of advice that have come our way is that you should try to write something every day. After all, you can edit a poorly written piece and make it better. But you cannot edit a blank page.

Plot your novel first – especially if it’s a crime thriller

Modern writers have abandoned plot in favor of craft, it seems. However, if you are writing a crime thriller or a murder mystery – you need to know where your story is headed in order to avoid writing yourself into a plothole. While a lot of writers have adopted a ‘go-with-the-flow’ approach, having the plot mapped out does decrease a lot of the rework.

Protect your writing time

Most people do not seem to understand how serious writing might be for someone aspiring to become an author. The days that you have set aside for writing, ensure that those days are well-protected. Do not give in if people insist on meeting you by saying you can reschedule your writing time. You wouldn’t ask someone to reschedule a ‘work thing’ – so why should they ask the same from you?

Set aside a time for writing. Everyday.

Once he has the inspiration, Haruki Murakami’s “writing mode for a novel” translates to waking up at 4 am, working 5-6 hours, running 10 kilometers or swimming 1500 meters (or both), reading or listening to music for the rest of the day, and going to bed promptly at 9 pm.

This goes to show he treats writing as a full-time job. Honestly, we need to accept that writing is a serious business. And if you are a writer, let the people in your life know how serious this is for you.

Remember to be ruthless towards your writing too

It is hard. Perhaps a lot harder than you originally imagined it to be. But you have to let go of of a few lines that might not add up in your story. Even if they are the most perfect sentences in the world to you. Save it in another file, and use it for another story.

Creativity exists even when you think it doesn’t

You might convince yourself that you are tapped out and that there are no good ideas. But as Maya Angelou believed, creativity is a constant thing. It is a magical well and it does not run dry. In fact, the more you use it, the more of it you have.

You don’t know the difference you can make

As our young friend had once said, that only in silence does one realize the power of their voices. If there is a story that needs to be told, tell it. You have no idea the impact your story could have on even one person. If your words could help even one soul – isn’t the story worth telling then?

Are there any rules? No one can confirm or deny the claim.

No one really knows what works when it comes to writing a novel. What is a good writing tip for one writer, could be terrible advice for another. Find out what works best for you and eventually, little by little, one page after another, a new story will be born into the world.

At some point, you will have to shoot your shot. It will be time to take a step back and see what people think of your writing.

It’s not necessary to write what you know

A popular belief is that one should write what they know. However, Lisa Kleypas has a point. Instead, focus your energy on writing what you would love to read. If you enjoy the content that you are creating, chances are so would other people.

Write complicated characters

While we tend to view the world as black and white, the truth is that the world is shades of grey. Therefore, characters in books need to be the same way. People relate to villains more than the heroes because in reality none are larger than life. Marlon James rightly advices that the characters in stories need to be believable first of all to inspire any kind of emotion.

Please go offline!

Finally, we live in modern times. Our attention spans have only decreased over the years. So, it is easy to be distracted and check our social media, get engrossed in pointless conversations, etc. when we are supposed to be writing. Once your research is done for the piece of your writing, Zadie Smith’s advice comes in handy. Turn off the internet and as William Wordsworth had said – fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

Tags: creative writing tips write more writing tips

• Next story 6 Practical Ways To Cultivate A Daily Reading Habit
• Previous story 10 Ways To Write Better Characters

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

World Building in Your Book or Screenplay: An In-Depth Guide on How to Create Believable Worlds

How to Edit Your Own Writing

5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Give Up Your Reading Habit

Common Mistakes To Avoid While Self-Publishing for the First Time

How to Publish Your Book Worldwide for Free Using Pencil

10 Ways To Write Better Characters

5 Ways You Can Get Book Typography Right

How To Nail The Perfect Ending

Writing An Anthology

The Right Way to Start Writing a Book

Book Recommendations for Each Personality Type

• Craft and Criticism
• Fiction and Poetry
• News and Culture
• Lit Hub Radio
• Reading Lists

• Literary Criticism
• Craft and Advice
• In Conversation
• On Translation
• Short Story
• From the Novel
• Bookstores and Libraries
• Film and TV
• Art and Photography
• Freeman’s
• The Virtual Book Channel
• Behind the Mic
• Beyond the Page
• The Cosmic Library
• The Critic and Her Publics
• Emergence Magazine
• Fiction/Non/Fiction
• First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing
• Future Fables
• The History of Literature
• I’m a Writer But
• Just the Right Book
• Lit Century
• The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan
• New Books Network
• Tor Presents: Voyage Into Genre
• Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast
• Write-minded
• The Best of the Decade
• Best Reviewed Books
• BookMarks Daily Giveaway
• The Daily Thrill
• CrimeReads Daily Giveaway

Great Advice From 25 Writing Manuals by Famous Authors

Q: What’s the key to suspense? A: I’ll tell you later.

There are countless books that purport to teach you how to write. Many of them are good. Some of them are not quite as good. This is the usual way of things. However, I am always most excited to come across a book about writing by an author whose work I already admire. That is, it’s one thing to get advice from a professor or a critic or an editor, but quite another to hear it from someone who has been in the mines and come up with gold—those who can teach and  do. To that end, I’ve put together a list of 25 writing manuals and book-length musings on craft from famous authors, along with a bit of advice drawn from each book. An amuse-bouche , you might say. NB that I have excluded anthologies of essays from multiple authors, even if one or more of them (and/or the book’s editor) are famous writers, as well as how-to books by famous authors who are primarily known for their how-to books, like Natalie Goldberg and John Gardner. This list, of course, is ever expanding and incomplete (I see that Dean Koontz published a book on how to write best-sellers, but it’s out of print!), so add on as you see fit below.

Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction , Patricia Highsmith

To have the necessary momentum, that steady flow that is going to finish the book, you should wait until you feel the story welling up. This comes slowly during the development and plotting period, and you cannot rush it, because it is an emotional process, a sense of emotional completion, as if you felt like saying to yourself one day, “This is really a great story, and I can’t wait to tell it!” Then you start writing.

Writing , Marguerite Duras

The person who writes books must always be enveloped by a separation from others. That is one kind of solitude. It is the solitude of the author, of writing. To begin with, one must ask oneself what the silence surrounding one is—with practically every step one takes in a house, at every moment of the day, in every kind of light, whether light from outside or from lamps lit in daytime. This real, coporeal solitude becomes the inviolable silence of writing. I’ve never spoken of this to anyone. By the time of my first solitude, I had already discovered that what I had to do was write. I’d already gotten confirmation of this from Raymond Queneau. The only judgement Raymond Queneau every pronounced was this sentence: “Do nothing but write.”

About Writing , Samuel R. Delany

The rules for good writing are largely a set of things not to do. Basically good writing is a matter of avoiding unnecessary clutter. (Again, this is not the same as avoiding complexity.)

You can program many of these rules into a computer. Applied to pretty much any first draft, these rules will point out where you’re slipping. If you revise accordingly, clarity, readability, and liveliness will improve.

Either in content or in style, in subject matter or in rhetorical approach, fiction that is too much like other fiction is bad by definition. However paradoxical it sounds, good writing as a set of strictures (that is, when the writing is good and nothing more) produces most bad fiction. On one level or another, the realization of this is finally what turns most writers away from writing.

Talented writing is, however, something else. You need talent to write fiction.

Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic.

Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader’s mind—vividly, forcefully—that good writing, which stops with clarity and logic, doesn’t.

The Art of Memoir , Mary Karr

Each great memoir lives or dies based 100 percent on voice. It’s the delivery system for the author’s experience—the big bandwidth cable that carries in lustrous clarity every pixel of someone’s inner and outer experiences. Each voice is cleverly fashioned to highlight a writer’s individual talent or way of viewing the world. A memoirist starts off fumbling—jotting down facts, recounting anecdotes. It may take a writer hundreds of rough trial pages for a way of speaking to start to emerge unique to himself and his experience, but when he does, both carnal and interior experiences come back with clarity, and the work gains an electrical charge. For the reader, the voice has to exist from the first sentence.

Zen in the Art of Writing , Ray Bradbury

You have been working, haven’t you?

Or do you plan some sort of schedule for yourself starting as soon as you put down this article?

What kind of schedule?

Something like this. One-thousand or two-thousand words every day for the next twenty years. At the start, you might shoot for one short story a week, fifty-two stories a year, for five years. You will have to write and put away or burn a lot of material before you are comfortable in the medium. You might as well start now and get the necessary work done.

For I believe that eventually quantity will make for quality.

Michelangelo’s, da Vinci’s, Tintoretto’s billion sketches, the quantitative, prepared them for the qualitative, single sketches further down the line, single portraits, single landscapes of incredible control and beauty.

A great surgeon dissects and re-dissects a thousand, ten thousand bodies, tissues, organs, preparing thus by quantity the time when quality will count—with a living creature under his knife.

An athlete may run ten thousand miles in order to prepare for one hundred yards.

Quantity gives experience. From experience alone can quality come.

From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction , Robert Olen Butler

Please get out of the habit of saying that you’ve got an idea for a short story. Art does not come from ideas. Art does not come from the mind. Art comes from the place where you dream. Art comes from your unconscious; it comes from the white-hot center of you.

Does this make sense? Do you understand what I’m saying? If you want to think your way into your fiction, if you think you can analyze your way into a work of art, we’re going to be totally at odds philosophically about what art is and where it comes from. But if you have this aspiration and an open sensibility, and if what I’m saying makes sense, then you have to tell your mind to back the hell off. It’s another place in yourself entirely where you must look to create a work of art.

Aspects of the Novel , E.M. Forster

Memory and intelligence are closely connected, for unless we remember we cannot understand. if by the time the queen dies we have forgotten the existence of the king we shall never make out what killed her. The plot-maker expects us to remember, we expect him to leave no loose ends. Every action or word ought to count; it ought to be economical and spare; even when complicated it should be organic and free from dead matter. It may be difficult or easy, it may and should contain mysteries, but it ought not to mislead. And over it, as it unfolds, will hover the memory of the reader (that dull glow of the mind of which intelligence is the bright advancing edge) and will constantly rearrange and reconsider, seeing new clues, new chains of cause and effect, and the final sense (if the plot has been a fine one) will not be of clues or chains, but of something aesthetically compact, something which might have been shown by the novelist straight away, only if he had shown it straight away it would never have become beautiful.

Steering the Craft: A 21st-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story , Ursula K. Le Guin

The sound of the language is where it all begins. The test of a sentence is, Does it sound right? The basic elements of language are physical: the noise words make, the sounds and silences that make the rhythms marking their relationships. Both the meaning and the beauty of the writing depend on these sounds and rhythms. This is just as true of prose as it is of poetry, though the sound effects of prose are usually subtle and always irregular.

Most children enjoy the sound of language for its own sake. They wallow in repetitions and luscious word-sounds and the crunch and slither of onomatopoeia; they fall in love with the musical or impressive words and use them in all the wrong places. Some writers keep this primal interest in and love for the sounds of language. Others “outgrow” their oral/aural sense of what they’re reading or writing. That’s a dead loss. An awareness of what your own writing sounds like is an essential skill for a writer. Fortunately it’s quite easy to cultivate, to learn or reawaken.

The Writing of Fiction , Edith Wharton

True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision. That new, that personal, vision is attained only by looking long enough at the object represented to make it the writers own; and the mind which would bring this secret germ to fruition must be able to nourish it with an accumulated wealth of knowledge and experience. To know any one thing one must not only know something of a great many others, but also, as Matthew Arnold long since pointed out, a great deal more of one’s immediate subject than any partial presentation of it visibly includes; and Mr. Kipling’s “What should they know of England who only England know?” might be taken as the symbolic watchword of the creative artist.

This Year You Write Your Novel , Walter Mosley

The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do every day—every morning or every night, whatever time it is that you have. Ideally, the time you decide on is also the time when you do your best work.

There are two reasons for this rule: getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind.

If you want to finish this novel of yours within a year, you have to get to work! There’s not a moment to lose. There’s no time to wait for inspiration. getting your words down on the page takes time. how much? I write three hours every morning. It’s the first thing I do, Monday through Sunday, fifty-two weeks a year. Some days I miss but rarely does this happen more than once a month. Writing is a serious enterprise that takes a certain amount of constancy and rigor.

But will and regularity are only the beginnings of the discipline and rewards that daily writing will mean for you.

The most important thing I’ve found about writing is that it is primarily an unconscious activity. What do I mean by this? I mean that a novel is larger than your head (or conscious mind). The connections, moods, metaphors, and experiences that you call up while writing will come from a place deep inside you. Sometimes you will wonder who wrote those words. Sometimes you will be swept up by a fevered passion relating a convoluted journey through your protagonist’s ragged heart. These moments are when you have connected to some deep place within you, a place that harbors the zeal that made you want to write to begin with.

The way you get to this unconscious place is by writing every day.

Letters to a Young Writer , Colum McCann

Don’t write what you know, write toward what you  want to know .

Step out of your skin. Risk yourself. This opens up the world. Go to another place. Investigate what lies beyond your curtains, beyond the wall, beyond the corner, beyond your town, beyond the edges of your own known country.

A writer is an explorer. She knows she wants to get somewhere, but she doesn’t know if the somewhere even exists yet. It is still to be created. A Galápagos of the imagination. A whole new theory of who we are.

Don’t sit around looking inward. That’s boring. In the end, your navel contains only lint. You have to propel yourself outward, young wrier. Think about others, think about elsewhere, think about a distance that will bring you, eventually, back home.

What It Is , Lynda Barry

It’s a good place to start, memory, because once you know what real images feel like, it’s easier to recognize that sensation when writing fiction. It will work for anyone who has any kind of curiosity about writing or remembering, especially people who always wanted to write but were too confused about how to even start.

What is it? The ordinary is extraordinary. The ordinary is extraordinary. The ordinary is the thing we want back when someone we love dies. When someone dies or leaves or falls out of love with us. We call it “little things”. We say, “it’s the little things I miss most.” The ordinary things. It’s the little thing that brings them back to us unexpectedly. We say “reminds us” but it is more than reminding-it’s a conflagration-it’s an inundation-Both fire and flood is memory. It’s spark and breach so ordinary we do not question it. The atom split. The little thing.

The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art , Joyce Carol Oates

What advice can an older writer presume to offer to a younger? Only what he or she might wish to have been told years ago. Don’t be discouraged! Don’t cast sidelong glances, and compare yourself to others among your peers! (Writing is not a race. No one really “wins.” The satisfaction is in the effort, and rarely in the consequent rewards, if there are any.) And again,  write your heart out .

Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life , Dani Shapiro

Ann Sexton once remarked in an interview, when asked why she wrote such dark and painful poems, that pain engraves a deeper memory.  Pain engraves a deeper memory . Think of a time in your own life when you have experienced a sudden shock, a betrayal, terrible news. Perhaps you remember the weather, the quality of the breeze, a half-full ashtray, a scratch on the wooden floor, the moth-eaten sweater you were wearing, the siren in the distance. Pain carves details into us, yes. I would wager, though, that great joy does as well. Strong emotion, Virginia Woolf said, must leave its trace. Start writing, grow still and quiet, press toward that strong emotion and you will discover it anew.

Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse , Mary Oliver

Revision is absolutely necessary. If something is easily too good to alter, thank the gods, but don’t expect it to happen again. Expect, rather, that you will need to improve upon the given, to continue the imperfect formation that your initial work has produced. Which is, after all, what making the poem is all about—to take the passion and, without cooling it, to put it into a form. For such work all the usual assets will help: energy, honesty, patience. But nothing is so helpful as an interest in language that amounts almost to a mania. Indeed, it is essential. For emotion does not elicit feeling. Style elicits feeling.

Ron Carlson Writes a Story , Ron Carlson

Writers are told to write what they know, which on the surface is good advice. It’s good in that teachers started saying it to warn their students off rehashed, paper-thin science fiction (the time warp on Planet Dwindgore had us all confused) and television stories (Come on out, Rocky, we’ve got the place surrounded!), from which no one learned anything. They wanted their students to come closer to home, to begin to use language to grapple with challenging stories from their lives. And I’ll stand with Write what you know, but I’ll add: How can you know what you know until you write it? What can the process of the story teach you? Do you know everything at the moment before commencing a story? “Writing what you know” too often becomes controlling the elements of your story, and that prevents the writer from reaching beyond the facts, and those things closely related to the facts, to a place closer to the truth of her story. I want to put the advice this way: write  toward  what you know, building an inventory, and carefully using the imagination as the powerful sensing instrument it can be.

Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction , Jeff VanderMeer

As noted, your imagination feeds on almost anything, like the most greedy of omnivores, and anything can become narrative. The act of becoming a writer—of committing to learning the craft or art of writing—is largely about providing structure to what your imagination creates and is an ongoing process of attaining an elusive mastery (there is always another door). But generating these initial sparks is one of the few parts of writing that becomes easier as you gain more experience—as long as you don’t suppress the impulse. Which is to say, if you reward your imagination by writing down your ideas and exploring them, even the slightest little fragment, your imagination will reward you with a more or less continuous stream of ideas. If you turn off or blunt the enthusiasm of your subconscious for engaging in creative play, the stream can dry up.

On Writing , Stephen King

Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.

On Writing , Eudora Welty

To me as a story writer, generalizations about writing come tardily and uneasily, and I would limit them, if I were wise, by saying that any conclusions I feel confidence in are stuck to the particular story, part of the animal. The most trustworthy lesson I’ve learned from work so far is the simple one that the writing of each story is sure to open up a different prospect and pose a new prblem; and that no past story bears recognizably on a new one or gives any promise of help, even if the writing mind had room for help and the wish that it would come. Help offered from outside the frame of the story would be itself an intrusion.

Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction , Benjamin Percy

Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them , Francine Prose

For any writer, the ability to look at a sentence and see what’s superfluous, what can be altered, revised, expanded, and, especially, cut, is essential. It’s satisfying to see that sentence shrink, snap into place, and ultimately emerge in a more polished form: clear, economical, sharp.

The Writing Life , Annie Dillard

It is the beginning of a work that the writer throws away.

A painting covers its tracks. Painters work from the ground up. The latest version of a painting overlays earlier versions, and obliterates them. Writers, on the other hand, work from left to right. The discardable chapters are on the left. The latest version of a literary work begins somewhere in the work’s middle, and hardens toward the end. The earlier version remains lumpishly on the left; the work’s beginning greets the reader with the wrong hand. In those early pages and chapters anyone may find bold leaps to nowhere, read the brave beginnings of dropped themes, hear a tone since abandoned, discover blind alleys, track red herrings, and laboriously learn a setting now false.

Several delusions weaken the writer’s resolve to throw away work. If he has read his pages too often, those pages will have a necessary quality, the ring of the inevitable, like poetry known by heart; they will perfectly answer their own familiar rhythms. He will retain them. He may retain those pages if they possess some virtues, such as power in themselves, though they lack the cardinal virtue, which is pertinence to, and unity with, the book’s thrust. Sometimes the writer leaves his early chapters in place from gratitude; he cannot contemplate them or read them without feeling again the blessed relief that exalted him when the words first appeared—relief that he was writing anything at all. That beginning served to get him where he was going, after all; surely the reader needs it, too, as groundwork. But no.

The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling , Charles R. Johnson

If I don’t control myself, my sentences in literary fiction naturally tend to run long, with image and idea building upon image and idea, rolling and ribboning out, sometimes twisting and torquing dialectically, from thesis to antithesis, and spiced with colons and semi-colons and parenthetical asides (such as this) until I simply can’t pack any more into them. I’ve always seen the sentence and paragraph as units of energy to be released. So yes, I use long sentences for rhythm and music. I most certainly would always follow one with a short sentence. As I used to teach my students, the technique here is take the simple sentence, then “complicate” ( i.e ., extend) the subject, the verb, then the object.

To be frank, I think the elegant, long sentence is a thing of beauty. A self-contained entity worthy of study all by itself.

Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life , Anne Lamott

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.

Draft No.4: On the Writing Process , John McPhee

In the search for words, thesauruses are useful things, but they don’t talk about the words they list. They are also dangerous. They can lead you to choose a polysyllabic and fuzzy word when a simple and clear one is better. The value of a thesaurus is not to make a writer seem to have a vast vocabulary of recondite words. The value of a thesaurus is in the assistance it can give you in finding the best possible word for the mission that the word is supposed to fulfill. Writing teachers and journalism courses have been known to compare them to crutches and to imply that no writer of any character or competence would use them. At best, thesauruses are mere rest stops in the search for the mot juste. Your destination is the dictionary. Suppose you sense an opportunity beyond the word “intention.” You read the dictionary’s thesaurian list of synonyms: “intention, intent, purpose, design, aim, end, object, objective, goal.” But the dictionary doesn’t let it go at that. It goes on to tell you the differences all the way down the line—how each listed word differs from all the others. Some dictionaries keep themselves trim by just listing synonyms and not going on to make distinctions. You want the first kind, in which you are not just getting a list of words; you are being told the differences in their hues, as if you were looking at the stripes in an awning, each of a subtly different green. Look up “vertical.” It tells you—believe it or not—that “vertical,” “perpendicular,” and “plumb” differ each from the two others. Ditto “plastic, pliable, pliant, ductile, malleable, adaptable.” Ditto “fidelity, allegiance, fealty, loyalty, devotion, piety.”

• Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)

Emily Temple

Previous article, next article, support lit hub..

Join our community of readers.

to the Lithub Daily

Popular posts.

Follow us on Twitter

Are Children of Queer Families More Than Allies?

• RSS - Posts

Literary Hub

Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature

Sign Up For Our Newsletters

How to Pitch Lit Hub

Advertisers: Contact Us

Privacy Policy

Support Lit Hub - Become A Member

Become a Lit Hub Supporting Member : Because Books Matter

For the past decade, Literary Hub has brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall. But our future relies on you. In return for a donation, you’ll get an ad-free reading experience , exclusive editors’ picks, book giveaways, and our coveted Joan Didion Lit Hub tote bag . Most importantly, you’ll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving on the internet.

Become a member for as low as $5/month

• 23 Writing Tips by Famous Authors

Table of Contents 

• Key Takeaways 
• Conclusion 

If you want pointers for becoming a stronger writer, it is only intrinsic to look at those who could attain a great deal of success before you in literature. We can say with assurance that the work of the initial authors has brought to light many newer authors. 

Jane Austen, an outstanding author from the 19th century, was a contemporary feminist and motivated thousands of women of more recent generations to come out and write about their lives. Mary Shelley, the pioneer of early science fiction, paved the way with Frankenstein–The Modern Prometheus . The Lord of the Rings series by JRR Tolkien has been a source of inspiration to JK Rowling for her famous Harry Potter series! So, it’s clear that excellent writing inspires good writing. So, here are some great creative writing tips from some of our favorite authors to help you become a fantastic writer!

23 Writing Tips given by Famous Authors

Jane Austen is an outstanding example for budding writers. Her stories give us innumerable and valuable tips. 

• Create human characters: Even if you’re not writing about humans, keep in mind that your characters should be complex.
• Use subplots and use them well: Readers adore Jane Austen’s use of numerous themes throughout her novels. We witness characters dealing with similar problems and issues and responding differently.
• Strengthen your story continuously: You have a tale to tell, and each page of your work should advance the storyline.
• Tiny details may make a great difference in a tale: When they’re utilized correctly – which is, unsurprisingly, another skill Austen possessed – they add subtlety to the characters.
• Ensure that your dialogue is sharp: Natural dialogue is essential. Austen’s speech does seem a little strange to 21st-century ears, but it works!
• Now and again, we all need someone to give us a good nudge! As you begin or continue on your writing journey – a path that you will not abandon – there may be moments where you will require someone to motivate you in some manner. The following quote is by Paul Laurence Dunbar. 

“What Joe Hamilton was missing, more than anything else in the world, was someone to kick him. Many men who may have lived decently and become fairly respectable citizens have gone to the dogs for someone to administer a good resounding kick at the right time. It is corrective and clarifying.” – Paul Laurence Dunbar.

• MJ McGrath is the Pan Macmillan-published author whose most recent book is The Bone Seeker . Create a motive, she advises! Hear it in her own words: 

“Because the wants of its characters drive every story, the first question to ask when creating a character isn’t what they do or where they live, but what they want.’ Knowledge? Power? Forgiveness? Often, the character doesn’t realize what they want, making it more difficult for them to achieve it and drive the plot. The writer, on the other hand, is constantly aware. The writer continually keeps the characters’ deepest goals in mind and creates internal and external roadblocks.” – McGrath, MJ.

• In 1993, the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Toni Morrison. Morrison compares “dead language,” which “thwarts the intellect, delays conscience, and inhibits human potential,” with the language used with knowledge and care in her Nobel talk. Morrison implies that it is preferable to approach great themes without attempting to make a definite statement without expressing “everything.” Tell the one genuine tale that has a significant impact on you or A story that delves into the topics and concepts vital to you. Later in the same lecture, Morrison says something that reminds us not to use dead language in our writing:

“Language can not live up to life once and for all. It shouldn’t, either. Language can never pin down slavery, genocide, and war. It should not yearn for arrogance to be able to do so. Its power, its joy, lies in its grasp for the ineffable.”- Toni Morrison.

• Wislawa Szymborska, a Polish poet who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996, wrote a column for the Polish Journal, Literary Life, in which she offered guidance to aspiring authors. Szymborska gave an aspiring poet the following piece of writing advice (which also applies to fiction writers):

“You’ve crammed more high words into three short poems than most poets accomplish in a lifetime: ‘Fatherland,’ ‘truth,’ ‘freedom,’ ‘justice,’ such words don’t come cheap.’ They have real blood flowing through them, which ink cannot mimic.” – Wislawa Szymborska

• Gabriel Garcia Márquez, a Colombian novelist, is known for works like One Hundred Years of Solitude , full of fascinating characters. Márquez offered some writing tips. “My grandmother’s storytelling style inspired the tone I finally employed in One Hundred Years of Solitude . She spoke things that seemed otherworldly and wonderful, yet she did it in an entirely normal way. When I eventually figured out what tone I needed to employ, I got down and worked every day for eighteen months. I learned that I needed to believe in them myself and write them down with the same attitude that my grandmother had when she recounted them: a brick face.” – Gabriel Garcia Márquez.
• A chat with the Paris Review in 1994 revealed that the late Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe spoke powerfully about the importance of representation and stating your truth via your writing:

“When I started school and learned to read, I came across stories about other people and places. I recall the kinds of things that intrigued me in the beginning. Strange things fascinated me since they were far away and somewhat ethereal. When I grew up, I learned about the dangers of not having your tales. There’s an adage that says- The history of the hunt will always praise the hunter until the lions have their own Historians” – Chinua Achebe.

• If you think about when your manuscript will be done, it’s easy to become impatient or overwhelmed. Instead, concentrate on the work at hand. According to John Steinbeck’s counsel, write just one page today: it’s one more page than you had yesterday. In the 1975 issue of the Paris Review , Steinbeck wrote (excerpted by The Atlantic here):

“Abandon the idea that you’ll ever finish. It helps to lose track of the 400 pages and write one page every day. Then you’re always surprised when it’s completed.” – John Steinbeck.

• Arundhati Roy is an Indian novelist well recognized for her poetry books and bold activism on environmental and social concerns. So, it was all the more fascinating when she responded to the somber interview question, “When did you know your childhood was over?”

“It’s not yet over! For authors, it should never be over. The folks I dread the most are those I can’t picture what type of child they were as a youngster. I had to be a fairly grownup child in certain respects because of the conditions in which I was raised and how I lived, and I’d prefer at least some part of me to be a quite childlike adult.” – Arundhati Roy.

• Putting one foot in front of the other, as Neil Gaiman says, “How do you complete them?” Gaiman advised a young writer when he was asked how to take the last steps toward finishing his works. “You’re the one who finishes them.” Many prizes have been bestowed onto Gaiman’s work, including the Newbury and Carnegie Medals.

“This is how you do it, you take a seat at the keyboard, and you put word after word until it is done. It is that easy, and that hard.” – Nei Gaiman 

• As writers, we must safeguard our personal space from the numerous distractions we experience daily, says Zaidie Smith. Roommates, friends, family, and jobs may all make producing your best work challenging. You will feel depleted and exhausted if you are open to everyone and everything. When it comes to your job, protecting your personal space is not a bad idea.

“Preserve the time and place in which you write. Keep everyone away from it, even the people who are most important to you” – Zaidie Smith.

• Hundreds of writers choose to communicate their ideas using more precise language. We often believe that having a more extensive vocabulary equates better writing, but this is not the case. Hear it from Leonardo da Vinci- 

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

• Similarly, Ernest Hemingway talks about finding the state of flow and staying there. He says: 

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is take a seat at a typewriter and bleed.”

• Another example of keeping it simple is from George Orwell. He talks about simplicity in writing by saying.

“Never use a lengthy word where you can use a short one!”

• Stephen King talks about the significance of reading. After all, writers read; writers read all the time!

“If you don’t have a time period in which you read, you don’t have the time or the device to become a writer”- Stephen King. 

• Writers often stop writing because they are afraid of going wrong or being unsuccessful. For this exact reason, it’s essential to keep in mind Nora Roberts’ saying, 

“You can repair anything but a blank page.”

• Jhumpa Lahiri, the author of The Namesake , has given plenty of quotes to inspire writers. About books, she wrote,

“That’s the thing about books, and they let you travel without moving your feet.”

• A solid motivation to create a novel, play, or short story is to improve your talent — to learn how to write better and more efficiently. In an open letter to NaNoWriMo dreamers, Australian author Peter Carey offered the following advice:

“You don’t need inspiration; all you need is a consistent practice of writing daily, even when you’re ill, depressed, or bored. Nothing, not even your precious children, can stop you. You should write in the hours before they wake up if you have children, as Toni Morrison did. You’ll need exceptional willpower if you want to be like the champion who swims for four hours every day of the year. You either possess it, or you do not, but the only way to find out is to try.”

• And lastly, let us hear from James Patterson, “Don’t think about articles; think about the story. Write the story down.”

Key Takeaways

• If you want pointers for becoming a stronger writer, it is only intrinsic to look at those who could attain a great deal of success before you in literature. 
• Late Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe spoke powerfully about the importance of representation and stating your truth via your writing.
• Ernest Hemingway talks about finding the state of flow and staying there. 

In this blog, we have dived the inspiring words of several famous authors. These writers overcame prejudice, stereotypes, and more to reach the places their works came from. The Bronte sisters wrote under pseudonyms of men, and JK Rowling went with her initials to not be identified as a woman! We have made considerable strides to achieve the heights we have achieved in the writing industry. So get started on yours today and reach new heights!

Listening to the words may inspire you, but paying attention to how people speak can help you create conversation. You could make up a narrative based on an odd conversation or a hilarious line you overhear. Keep your ears to the ground. Being nosy entails paying close attention to what is going on around you.

1. Be direct 2. Choose your words well. 3. Short sentences are more powerful.  4. Write short paragraphs.  5. Always use the active voice.

1. Grammar, spelling, and punctuation. 2. Concise language.  3. Research capabilities 4. Knowing the audience  5. Organization and structure. 

Latest Blogs

In this blog, explore the golden rules of using AI marketing tools so you can leverage the benefits to their maximum potential.

In this blog, you’ll learn how to avoid the pitfalls of SEO over-optimization while enhancing your site’s performance.

In this article, we’ll take a look at what AMP is, its advantages and disadvantages, and how it affects SEO.

Get your hands on the latest news!

Unhinged or genius? Deconstructing Liquid Death’s Marketing Strategy

Data and Studies

5 mins read

Similar Posts

9 mins read

Content Marketing vs Advertising – Which One is More Effective?

11 mins read

Interactive Content vs. Static Content: Which is More Effective?

6 mins read

Unlocking Success: 4 Case Studies of Successful Content Marketing Campaigns Using a Platform

Famous authors and their writing habits

Have you ever wondered how your favourite books came into existence? Writing a book takes much more than a good idea — many popular authors repeatedly practice the same writing habits when coining their creations. Discover the writing rituals of famous writers and adopt some of their unusual routines.

Best known for his Robert Langdon series featuring the famous Da Vinci Code (2003), Dan Brown has one of the more strange habits of famous writers.

In an interview with The Sunday Times , he revealed he often hangs upside down from an exercise frame , wearing a pair of gravity boots to clear his head. He claimed that letting go and relaxing helped fine-tune his ideas — unsurprising, considering his complex plots of cryptography and symbology.

Brown also shared he sets his computer to freeze every hour for 60 seconds and takes a minibreak of sit-ups and push-ups. Combined with an early 4 am start, Brown’s writing routine may sound gruelling, but it certainly works.

Maya Angelou

Early starts were also a favourite of memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist Maya Angelou. Like Brown, she started the day at 4 am too, and began writing within an hour of getting up.

Angelou also adopted Virginia Woolf’s advice of having a ‘room of one’s own’ to write in and rented a hotel room away from home to pen her creations. This distinction between work and home helped cement her as one of the world’s most influential writers.

When she returned home in the afternoon, she would busy herself with household chores and making her family dinner before reading what she’d written that day to her husband. A healthy work/life balance, if we ever did see one.

Barack Obama

Barack Obama may be best known for being the 44 th President of the United States. However, he’s also written three books about his life and time in the political spotlight.

Unlike the previous early risers on our list, Obama was famously a night owl, retreating to his office after his wife and kids were asleep to write. His 750+ page memoir, A Promised Land (2020), was mostly penned between 10 pm and 2 am. More surprisingly, Obama wrote the entire first draft by hand on yellow legal pads , using a black Uni-ball Vision Elite rollerball pen .

Thankfully, his efforts and late nights weren’t in vain, as the book became the best-selling presidential memoir in modern times .

Susan Sontag

Writing down our resolutions can be an excellent way to manifest change in our daily routines, something novelist and essay writer Susan Sontag understood.

In her 1977 diary , Sontag shared her resolutions that helped form her daily writing habits:

“Starting tomorrow — if not today:

• I will get up every morning no later than eight. (Can break this rule once a week.)
• I will have lunch only with Roger [Straus]. (‘No, I don’t go out for lunch.’ Can break this rule once every two weeks.)
• I will write in the Notebook every day. (Model: Lichtenberg’s Waste Books.)
• I will tell people not to call in the morning, or not answer the phone.
• I will try to confine my reading to the evening. (I read too much — as an escape from writing.)
• I will answer letters once a week. (Friday? — I have to go to the hospital anyway.)”

If her achievements are anything to go by, it appears these are some of the more successful writing habits of famous writers — worth adopting.

Stephen King

The father of modern thrillers, Stephen King has published an astounding 65 novels, 11 collections, four non-fiction books, and over 200 short stories. It’s no wonder people are itching to replicate his writing routine.

His ritual involves four hours of writing followed by an afternoon nap, and he claims his creative sweet spot is between 8:30 am and 12:30 pm . He’s also a big believer in light exercising before writing, doing push-ups and using his treadmill before starting the day.

King’s desk set-up also sounds cosy and inviting — he works with the blinds down to ease distractions, shuts his office door, and writes with his dog at his feet. These small yet impactful changes have a significant impact on his productivity, as he writes around six pages per day.

Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison was a Nobel Prize-winning author whose commitment to the literary community influenced generations of writers. Best known for her groundbreaking works The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1973), and Beloved (1987), Morrison was also a teacher and editor.

Her busy life meant this famous writer’s writing habits were formed out of pockets of snatched time when she learned how to use every spare moment. Morrison would solve literary problems while on the train or in other everyday situations, claiming ‘ there was no blank time. ’

As Morrison’s success grew, she was able to finesse her routine and, like many writing rituals of famous writers, found she was more productive in the morning. Before starting work, she enjoyed watching the sunrise with a cup of coffee and wrote longhand on yellow legal pads with a number two pencil.

This routine served her well — Morrison was writing a novel when she died in 2019 , and her latest essay collection was published that year.

How to form a good writing habit

If we’ve learnt anything from famous writers’ writing habits, establishing and sticking to a routine is essential. Incorporating advice from these popular authors, here are some actions to consider.

• Set up a separate writing space where distractions are minimised
• Set aside a particular time to write every single day, without exception
• Set a word count or page goal for each day
• Keep an orderly daily routine, such as making a hot drink, exercising, or getting dressed by a specific time
• Brainstorm or read during every spare moment you have

Mariah enjoys typing articles for our blog on her laptop but she'd much rather be writing them by hand with a luxury fountain pen!

Leave a Reply Cancel comment reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• Next Post: How to get started with drawing anime →
• ← Previous Post: A beginner’s guide to dip pens

Nicole Bianchi

Writing, Copywriting, & Marketing Strategies

5 Exercises From Famous Authors That Will Sharpen Your Writing Skills

Published February 7, 2020 | Last Updated November 13, 2023 By Nicole Bianchi 10 Comments

Pianists practice scales to strengthen their skills like rhythm and timing. Artists might sketch a hundred human hands until they’ve mastered drawing that body part realistically. Dancers will practice a dance move countless times until their footwork and technique are flawless.

Just like those other artists, writers can sharpen specific skills through deliberate practice.

Are you struggling to write vivid descriptions? Or craft concise sentences?

In today’s post, I’m sharing five powerful creative writing exercises from famous authors that will help you practice those essential skills and many more.

Let’s get started.

1. The C. S. Lewis Exercise for Writing Vivid Description

In 1956, beloved fantasy writer C. S. Lewis replied to a letter from a young fan and shared his five rules for writing well.

You can read more about that letter in my article here and discover all five of Lewis’s writing rules.

The fourth rule in his letter makes for an excellent writing exercise:

Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”

Here’s how to turn this into a writing exercise: Choose a final draft of a recent writing project or a draft you’re currently working on. Look for places where you describe something using only adjectives like “wonderful” or “terrible”. Try to replace them with vivid description.

Additionally, see if there are any places in your writing where you’ve described something with an adjective that is already understood in the noun, for example, “white snow.” Obviously, we all know that snow is white so the adjective is redundant.

Is there a more vivid way you could describe the snow? Perhaps with a metaphor or a simile that makes us feel as if we are seeing the snow for the first time? Or maybe the snow isn’t even white anymore but brown and muddy.

In my article here , I share three descriptive techniques that you can use to replace weak adjectives with more evocative words.

2. The Ernest Hemingway Exercise for Sharpening Your Observational Skills

In the 1930s, a 22-year-old aspiring writer named Arnold Samuelson traveled to Florida to see if he could get some writing advice from the author he idolized: Ernest Hemingway.

Hemingway ended up inviting Samuelson along on a fishing trip and sharing writing advice during their time at sea. In this video , I detailed the three-step writing exercise Hemingway gave Samuelson.

Essentially, Hemingway challenged Samuelson to pick a situation to observe and then try to retell it on the page. For Samuelson, this was fishing. For you, it might be an event that happens when you’re commuting to work or shopping at a store or eating at a restaurant or playing with your kids.

Pretend you’re an artist heading out with your sketchbook to capture what you see and feel. Pay close attention to everything that is happening and the emotions that you experience.

Hemingway said,

Watch what happens today. If we get into a fish see exactly what it is that everyone does. If you get a kick out of it while he is jumping, remember back until you see exactly what the action was that gave you that emotion. Whether it was the rising of the line from the water and the way it tightened like a fiddle string until drops started from it, or the way he smashed and threw water when he jumped. Remember what the noises were and what was said. Find what gave you the emotion, what the action was that gave you the excitement. Then write it down making it clear so the reader will see it too and have the same feeling you had. Thatʼs a five-finger exercise.

This exercise forces you to avoid vagueness in your writing. Don’t just tell us catching a fish is exciting. Be specific. Show us why.

3. The Damon Knight Exercise for Creating a Captivating Setting and Mood

No matter whether you’re writing a novel or you’re working on a story to include in a nonfiction book or in a speech or on a sales page, it’s essential that you set the right mood for your piece.

Establishing a mood will not only make your writing more enjoyable to read, but it will also help your readers connect emotionally with your words.

Usually, when we write, we’re trying to evoke a specific emotion in our audience. Maybe it’s fear or sadness or happiness or awe.

By creating a convincing mood, we give our readers cues for how they should feel. The mood also helps pull our readers right into the story, just like when you find yourself glued to the screen when you’re watching a suspenseful scene in a movie.

Award-winning sci-fi writer Damon Knight filled his book Creating Short Fiction (Amazon affiliate link) with many helpful writing exercises. One of these he designed as a way to practice crafting a strong setting and mood:

Imagine a character who is sitting or standing, alone, in the room you are now in. See the room through his eyes; write a page or so of pure description of the room, without mentioning the character or referring to him in any way, but bearing in mind as you write that he has just had a phone call notifying him of a promotion and a raise. (Assume that the person lives here, if the room you are in is part of a house or apartment; if it isn’t, assume that the job has something to do with this room.) How does his emotional state color his perceptions? Remember that you are not allowed to refer to the character, even by using a pronoun (“I looked at the furniture,” for instance). Tell only what he sees. Now describe the same room as seen by a person who has just had a phone call from a homicidal maniac: “I’m coming to kill you.” Follow the same rules as before.

This exercise is an excellent reminder to always tie your description back to the story or emotions of your character. Don’t just include description for the sake of description. Use it to set the mood.

In this article , I share more tips for how to create a captivating mood in your writing.

Bonus Exercise:  If you enjoyed that exercise from Knight, you might also enjoy his exercise that will help you turn an idea into a story. I share all about it in my video below:

4. The Toni Morrison Exercise for Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone and Practicing Empathy

In an interview with NEA Arts Magazine , Nobel laureate Toni Morrison shared this exercise she gave to her writing students at Princeton,

When I taught creative writing at Princeton, [my students] had been told all of their lives to write what they knew. I always began the course by saying, ‘Don’t pay any attention to that.’ First, because you don’t know anything and second, because I don’t want to hear about your true love and your mama and your papa and your friends. Think of somebody you don’t know. What about a Mexican waitress in the Rio Grande who can barely speak English? … Imagine it, create it. I was always amazed at how effective that was. They were always out of the box when they were given license to imagine something wholly outside their existence. I thought it was a good training for them. Even if they ended up just writing an autobiography, at least they could relate to themselves as strangers.

This exercise is a fantastic method for sharpening your skills at creating well-developed characters, no matter if you are writing fiction or nonfiction. It will also help you practice empathy, the ability to understand and be sensitive to the feelings of others, to be able to see the world through another person’s eyes.

You could use this exercise in conjunction with a list of questions like the Proust Questionnaire . Come up with a character completely unlike you and imagine how they might answer the questions.

Damon Knight has several similar exercises in his book (affiliate link) ,

Write a story about some painful episode in your own life, but transfer it to an invented person distinctly different from yourself. Change the character’s sex, age, occupation, or all three. Adapt the episode to your character’s nature and circumstances… Think of someone in your past for whom you felt only anger and hatred. Write a story from the viewpoint of that person, treated with sympathy… These exercises are designed to break you out of any easy rut you may have got yourself into — writing only about people of one sex, or only about pleasant things, or only about people who resemble you. Unless you force yourself to do difficult things, how will you grow?

5. The Jack Hart Exercise for Crafting Concise and Powerful Sentences

Finally, let’s conclude with a quick little editing exercise that will help you make your writing more precise and your sentences easier to read.

In award-winning journalist Jack Hart’s wonderful book Storycraft (Amazon affiliate link) that I recently reviewed , he shares this editing advice,

Any word that doesn’t advance a story slows it down. Which is reason enough to avoid expletives. Contrary to popular misconception, the term “expletive” refers to a whole class of empty words, not just gratuitous profanities. Most expletives simply fill out the syntax of sentences. The most common are “there are,” “there is,” “there was,” “it is,” “it was,” and so on. Think about a sentence like “there were two airplanes on the runway.” What’s the “there” refer to, anyway? Nada. It just serves to turn “two airplanes on the runway” into a complete sentence. You don’t violate any grammatical rule when you use an expletive, and each expletive is of no great consequence. But they pile up, and eventually they slow your storytelling. Why not introduce a real verb that generates an image by writing, “two airplanes taxied on the runway” or “two airplanes idled on the runway,” or even “two airplanes sat on the runway”? …

Here’s how to turn this into an exercise: Take one of your recent drafts and go on a hunt to see how many empty words you can eliminate from your writing.

Hart observes that even a word like “began” might not be necessary to a sentence when describing action. For example, instead of writing “He began to walk around the room”, you could just write, “He walked around the room.”

You can often find empty words in phrases that use connecting words like at , by , for , in , it , of , to , and with . Here are some more examples .

The Takeaway

Ray Bradbury once observed,

I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before. But it’s true — hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice.

These five exercises are a fantastic way to give your writing skills a workout. Through deliberate practice, you’ll take your writing to the next level, communicating your message more effectively and inspiring your readers.

If you’ve enjoyed this post, you might also like my post that shares four more writing exercises from famous authors .

Do you have another writing exercise from a famous author to add to my list? Let me know in the comments.

And if you enjoyed this post, please share it on social media and with a friend who you think might find it helpful too. Thanks for reading!

Did you enjoy this post? Get the free eBook!

Join the mailing list, and as a special welcome gift, I'll send you a free copy of my eBook "Famous Writers' Productivity Hacks". You will also get my latest posts about how to hone your craft (+ more writing inspiration not shared on the blog) delivered straight to your inbox.

A confirmation email is on its way!

Your data is collected, used, and protected according to the  Privacy Policy . Unsubscribe at any time.

Keep Reading: Top Posts

Lars M says

October 7, 2021 at 3:20 pm

This was a splendid article! Thank you very much

Nicole Bianchi says

October 18, 2021 at 6:28 pm

Thanks so much, Lars!

lyndon says

March 23, 2020 at 11:19 am

My first ‘super hero’ writer was Jack Kerouac. The original manuscript of his book ‘on the road’ was a 30 foot long continuous scroll of paper taped together. The scroll was written stream of consciousness, single spaced without paragraphs and little if any punctuation. His manuscript was written in three weeks!

The scroll was packaged up and shipped to a publisher. The publisher contacted Kerouac asking permission to publish his book. That was that. LOL!

March 24, 2020 at 1:07 pm

Thanks for commenting, Lyndon. I enjoyed reading On the Road a few years back. Such a cool story about how he wrote it.

Eric Nilsson says

March 21, 2020 at 7:14 pm

Hello, Nicole. I’ve looked at the list above. You are missing Dashiell Hammett. I am trying to write of a bygone event using the Hammett style (protagonist is unnamed). Have you any suggestions?

Thanks for your time and consideration.

Eric Nilsson

March 24, 2020 at 1:12 pm

Hi, Eric. I do not think I have heard of that technique. Even if the character is unnamed, maybe you can refer to him by a nickname in the story so the reader has a way to identify him. For example, in “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”, the protagonist is nameless but referred to as “Blondie” by other characters. Just a thought.

Meraki S says

March 3, 2020 at 9:02 am

Thank you for this article. Very helpful.

March 24, 2020 at 1:13 pm

You’re welcome, Meraki! 🙂 Thanks for your comment.

Marv Waschke says

February 10, 2020 at 9:47 pm

Ursula LeGuin put a set of powerful writing exercises in her book “Steering the Craft.” My favorite is “Write a descriptive paragraph without using adjectives or adverbs.” It forces you to think about hard about nouns and verbs.

March 24, 2020 at 1:14 pm

That’s a great exercise. Thanks for sharing, Marv.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .