Need recommendations for books about writing fiction

I'm a published writer of nonfiction who has never tried fiction. I'm primarily a historian and that's what I've written in the past. Since Coup2K, I've been too involved with politics and activism to do the research I need to do for my previously intended project. Now, facing another 4 years of *, I know I won't be able to do it for another 4 years. But I miss writing.

And that has taken me back to a long-considered project. I've researched the 1970 Kent State shootings since the early 1970s. I've developed my own theory about what transpired and, in my head, I've crafted a way to tell the story through fiction -- woven around the known facts & my theories presented as facts about Kent State.

I'm relatively fearless when it comes to taking on seemingly impossible writing projects. My first book is a dual biography of a 19th century fur trader and his Kainah (Blackfeet) wife. When I started, I knew virtually nothing about the fur trade or the Blackfeet. Ten years later, Frontier Diplomats: Alexander Culbertson and Natoyist-siksina' Among the Blackfeet was published by University of Oklahoma Press and has received excellent reviews from some very stuffy academic historians. :-) So I know I can write, I know I can learn and, since my first book was narrative history, this project seems very do-able.

But since I don't even read fiction -- tending exclusively to politics & western history -- I don't even know what I don't know (thank you, Donald Rumsfeld). Considering the above, does anyone have suggestions for fiction writing books that I should read? I'm going to look into Iowa Writers' Workshops this summer but don't want to wait until then to begin. Are there exercises I should play with? Are there special considerations I should know about for writing (controversial) historical fiction?

Or.... Should I just start writing it?

I'd love to hear any suggestions, advice, commentary from any of you. Thanks!

with all kinds writing craft books, fiction and non-fiction.

I'm pretty sure the website is www.writersdigestbookclub.com

Good luck.

what genre of fiction do you want to write. There are general books out there about writing fiction and then there is genre specific books. Many of the genre specific book were written by successful writers of that genre.

it would be historical fiction, centered around the 1970 Kent State shootings. I would approach it much as I approach the narrative history I write, in terms of style.

My brain has been seizing up like that all day. Things aren't registering today. That does make it harder I know books for various genres written by authors but none specifically in the historical fiction. As another poster advised it may be a good idea to pick up some historical fiction and sample it.

but I got alot from these two books:

"Writing Down the Bones" by NATALIE GOLDBERG

"Bird by Bird: Some Instructions of Writing & Life" by ANNE LAMOTT

on edit:

I have one of those 'what successful authors advise to new wanna-be authors' type of books. The BEST advice was from Stephen King. He said: (& I paraphrase here) 'When your manuscript is complete, give it to 10 different people to read & critique. If 4-5 or more of the critiques mention the same thing that needs working (character, plot), listen to that & re-work that part of the story. If, however, you get a diversity of comments -- one person says they don't like this character, another says they don't think the plot holds together well in this part of the story, another thinks the story falls short at the end, -- but over all, the critiques are unique, go with what you've got. You've got a solid story.

He has good suggestions in that book, and his description of the accident when he was hit by the truck, is some awesome writing.

Cujo meets Christine meets Misery

How do you expect to understand the development of character, pacing and word rhythms without reading it? It's like music - you need to develop your literary "ear."

You are on to something there. He should probably read some fiction first. At the very least a sampling from various genres and some of the classics.

But I have to admit that it's not what I want to hear. I write narrative nonfiction & I am also a storyteller/public speaker. So I do have a good sense of character, pacing and word rhythms. Those are essential in good narrative nonfiction, too. I don't write dry academic history; I tell the stories of the people involved. So I have to understand who they are, how they react, what events influence them and how, etc. Plot development is also key in narrative nonfiction.

Since I really don't enjoy fiction, I don't see how reading more of it will help me that much. I enjoy historical fiction & have read enough of that to help me see how people can weave the real into the fictional. And I would appreciate recommendations of good historical fiction that people have. But, I'm afraid if the best advice I can get is to read more novels, I won't do that & I won't write either. It's just not the way I want to approach this project.

halfway there. (You remind me of my girlfriend's grandfather. He is a voracious reader but hasn't touched nonfiction since HS)

I did read all the classics in high school -- and had some excellent teachers then -- but that was 30+ years ago. And, yeah, your girlfriend's grandfather sounds like a good comparison because I usually read a book a week or so. I read good compelling stories, but I like them based in fact. (As my novel would be....)

then he retired and usually pulls down about three or four a week now. The rate a which he reads is astounding. I think I am doing good now at two or three. ( I have a great job at the moment. When I am not taking care of customers on the phone. I just sit at my desk and read and that is fine by management.) I catching up with all those books I had bought but never had a chance to read now.

Robert Harris? He write historical fiction. He has written "Fatherland," "Enigma," "Archangel," and now "Pompeii." (?) Not great literature but enjoyable reads.

Thanks!

That also reminds me of the guy who wrote "Follow the River." I forget his name but I think he has written several others that were highly acclaimed & I really enjoyed "Follow the River."

Edited to add his name -- James Alexander Thom -- and he does have a couple other books, including something on Drouillard of the Lewis & Clark expedition which should be interesting to me since I did a storytelling program on L&C the last two years.

Thanks again for jogging my memory on this.

him. His books are could also be filed under mysteries but his stories even when not in the past always have their beginings there. I will have to check your title also. (My girlfriend couldn't find anything spectacular this year for Christmas for me. So this weekend she is unleashing me at Borders to shop to my hearts content. Mostly history and other nonfiction will be bought. With a smattering of novels.) Right now I am in what you may call a pseudo-fiction mode. Been reading some books that lean towards nonfiction. Bascially they are "what ifs" written by historians looking at various events and how they could have been changed and how history would have been changed.

Joseph Gravelines in your L & C research? He's an indirect ancestor of mine! :-) (Different branch of an extremely large family)

Supposedly, he and another guy named Charbonneau helped as guides and translators with the Indians, and kept them from being harmed during their trek through hostile territory. Charbonneau gets most of the press, though.

There's a place in Montreal named after Urbain Baudreau de Gravelines, one of our grandfathers (an early syndic of Montreal), and a highway marker near Biloxi for one of the other Gravelines. A very prolific family.

FSC

why would you want to write it?

Try this for a first pass on how to write a novel:

http://www.mirror.org/terry.hickman/Novel101.html

I majored in English, with an emphasis on creative writing, and they didn't teach me anything in college that helped me write. Living life so you can write about it is the first step. Then read everything you can get your hands on to learn about various author's styles. Then pick and choose what feels right for the way you express yourself with a pen. Once you have your own style, the words should flow without a lot of effort from you. You are more like a ship's captain than an oarsman, guiding the action, but not necessarily in complete control. The story will take you where you need to go!!

I think you're right, gater. I suspect I'm letting myself get blocked by the "but you don't know how to write fiction" element. I know I can write and I know I know what the story is that I want to tell -- or at least most of it -- and, as you say, the story will take me where I need to go.

Narrative Design: Working with Imagination, Craft, and Form

by Madison Smartt Bell

"TO TEACH CREATIVE WRITING, or to be taught it, is a paradox..."

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0393320219/104-9069201-4239142?%5Fencoding=UTF8&n=507846

Book Info
Discusses how to analyze the use of time, plot, character, and other elements of fiction and guides the reader to see each story's flaws and strengths. Softcover. DLC: College readers.

About the Author
Madison Smartt Bell, author of eight novels and two story collections, teaches at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland.

Product Description:
With clarity, verve, and the sure instincts of a good teacher, Madison Smartt Bell offers a roll-up-your-sleeves approach to writing in this much-needed book. Focusing on the big picture as well as the crucial details, Bell examines twelve stories by both established writers (including Peter Taylor, Mary Gaitskill, and Carolyn Chute) and his own former students. A story's use of time, plot, character, and other elements of fiction are analyzed, and readers are challenged to see each story's flaws and strengths. Careful endnotes bring attention to the ways in which various writers use language. Bell urges writers to develop the habit of thinking about form and finding the form that best suits their subject matter and style. His direct and practical advice allows writers to find their own voice and imagination.

If you don't already read it, you simply have no sense of the conventions of fiction. Yeah, I realize that as an experienced non-fiction writer you have control of narrative and so on, but there's a great deal of subtle stuff going on that you'll have no clue about if you aren't familiar with fiction from reading it in the first place.

I see it all the time when someone decides that science fiction is easy to write, and they invariably have no idea their brilliant idea is something that's been done so often the editors won't even finish reading the manuscript.

Until long after you no longer need them. Even then, read them for amusement, not instruction.

Read lots of commercial fiction, reread the novels you really liked, and write a lot. Reread what you've written in as detached and analytical way as you can. Critiques from experienced writers can help, but the most important critique still has to come from you.

Well, that's how I did it, anyway. And it's how the people I know who write well seem to have done it.

and don't stop. I did that a few weeks ago and haven't stopped yet.Then read the books. I read hundreds of books on writing that seemed to go in my eyes and out the top of my head, but once I had started writing in ernest, I read "The complete Guide to Writing Fiction" by Barnaby Conrad, and found it quite helpful.
My favorite fiction writer right now is Neal Stephenson who is classified as a fantasy writer, but whose handling of history is incredible and will open your mind to possibilities beyond the dull ordinary.
Problem with writing about "true facts" as fiction, especially if one has a strong opinion about them, is that one has to be careful not to end up with a political tract disguised as fiction.
good luck to you.

Well, John Irving in "World According to Garp" wrote, "A writer never reads for fun."

Hm. Maybe that should be my signature...

Dwight Swain -- Techniques of the Selling Writer

King's book is excellent, too.

Also, as others have said, the most important thing is to write the book.

(these are not in any order; the first 3 are "must own" books; I own all of these)

1. The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler
This one is a must. The subtitle: Mythic Structure for Storytellers & Screenwriters. But don't concern yourself with the "screenwriters" part if you want to write fiction. This book is invaluable for understanding character arc and plot. I promise.

2. Story by Robert McKee
Okay, this one is "the bible" for most screenwriters, but again, the movement of the story is key and McKee has some great insights. He's rather famous and does workshops, but I hear he follows his book religiously so you're getting your money's worth buying this one. I found a used copy at Amazon. I have a dear friend who has taken his workshop two times. I am enjoying the book and yes, it's very helpful.

3. The Art of Fiction by John Gardner
Gardner was amazing. I met him once and that one encounter, eating breakfast in a friend's garden in Del Mar, CA (just the 3 of us), changed my life. Really. I cried when he perished. He was the master and he taught serious writing -- not the easy way by any means.

4. What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter
I use these when I teach writing. Excellent. Use them myself, too. All the time, especially when I feel "stuck."

5. Stein on Writing by Sol Stein
A friend recommended this and I really like it. Stein is an editor of some major books. He's full of invaluable advice. I have not read his other book: How to Grow a Novel. But... maybe later?

6. The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman
Interesting. I'll be rewriting the opening to my novel at least more times and this will be one of the next rewrites. I also own his book: The Plot Thickens - 8 Ways to Bring Fiction to Life. Gave me a lot to think about with my characters.

7. Beyond Style by Gary Provost
Bought it used, but I've highlighted and underlined and marked it up but good! Very helpful.

8. Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott
Funny, inspirational, lovely.


Others I own:
The Literary Enneagram by Judith Searle
If you know anything about the Enneagram, this is very cool stuff. If you don't know about the Enneagram, maybe you should find out.

Master Plots by Tobias
20 basic plots -- not what you think -- great fundamentals book

Write Away by Elizabeth George (she is a very successful writer of mysteries, and although that's not my genre of choice, I do enjoy reading about a successful writer's process)

A Writer's Time: A Guide to the Creative Process from Vision Through Revision, by Kenneth Atchity
Old, hard to find, love it. Islands of the mind is my favorite concept.

On Writing, by Stephen King
The second part, about his process, is interesting. I assign this to my students every semester, and they always mention how much they enjoy it.

OF COURSE, everyone MUST own:

Elements of Style, by Strunk and White
On Writing Well, by William Zinsser

all of these sound sound like great recommendations. Luckily, I live near a university and I should be able to find most, if not all, of these there. I can then preview before buying my own stock of "must haves." Thanks, again.

and see if it flows, or if you get stuck. If you get stuck, do a simple outline for the plot.

All the things I have had published are essay or journalism pieces....

So, I picked up this book at the Half Price Book Store

Fiction Writer's Workshop....
Josip Novalovich....

It's gotta be good, it was writen by a Russian writer.....

All joking aside, there are little exercises in there that get you thinking along the lines of fiction instead of non, which I believe is your dilema....

It was only 6 bucks so I'm not out too much.....

Pick it up if you can but I think the advice of reading reading and then jumping right in is just the right advice for someone starting to write fiction.....

:)

yet you're planning to write it?

I'd urge you to take a few years and read the classics. That's a start.

Then, work your way into the late nineteenth-century fiction group - British and American.

After that, you'll be ready to jump into the ones I think of as the American Heroes - Fitzgerald, Hemingway, O'Hara, et al.

There's a wealth of American fiction after that, and I'm sure you'll have no trouble finding plenty to read. I'd recommend Walker Percy and Eudora Welty as the prime American Southern fiction writers of the twentieth century, since I was never much for Faulkner.

Intending to write fiction when you "don't even read it" is sort of like planning to drive cross-country without a car.

Techniques of the Selling Writer. My yellow bible.

By Anne LaMotte. It's the best book on writing by a writer that I have have found so far.

Is a GREAT book full of exercises, either for beginners or for seasoned writers. As you grow as a writer, your style changes with each exercise and you challenge yourself more. If you're in a slump, it's a great tool for writing SOMETHING, ANYTHING. And it's an excellent ... well...creative exercise machine, for lack of a better metaphor.

Also, "Telling Stories" edited by Joyce Carol Oates is a good one. And "Creating Fiction" edited by Julie Checkoway.
And "A Fiction Writer's Workshop" by Josip Navakovich.

but it seems to me that since you've already written a book-length story
successfully that happens to be based on facts, you should be qualified
to write a book-length story based on a combination of facts and
inventions. It sounds like an interesting project.

I read an excellent book called "Telling Lies for Fun and Profit". I don't recall the author. But what I learned from that book helped me make the giant leap with my third novel from form rejection letter to personal rejection letter from the editor in chief discussing specifics of why my novel wasn't quite good enough.

That's a good one.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0688132286/002-8227962-8468017?v=glance


Congratulations on your leap; I'm still getting form rejections,
myself. Another one I found insightful was Peter Maas's "Writing the
Breakout Novel".

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/158297182X/qid=1124934873/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-8227962-8468017?v=glance&s=books

My great weakness was plot. I found screenwriting books to be real
helpful in learning how to develop a solid, tight storyline. In
movies they don't like to pay to film anything they don't have to, so
they learn to strip it down. Studying screenwriting and studying lots
of movies, I became very impatient with the kind of book that takes
fifty pages to find its feet and figure out where it's going. I think
the reader has a right to expect that you show you know where you're
going right from the first line. (Which is not to say you necessarily
do know in the first draft, but your last draft shows your command of
the material.)

...is that I get to the point too quickly, or solve the problem too directly. I let my characters off the hook too easily. I can't bear to drag them kicking a screaming through hell. But that's what it takes if you want to drag the reader along as well.

Instead of solving the problem right off the bat, drag it out. Let them almost solve it and then fall down and make things even worse. Give 'em hell.

So Cinderella just goes to findyourprince.com and lives happily ever after?

Maybe if you solve them too easily, your problems are not worthy of you.

"I can't bear to drag them kicking a screaming through hell."

Why not? Maybe they remind you too much of people you know and love?

"Let them almost solve it and then fall down and make things even worse. "

Excellent advice. We don't have a disagreement here; I was just saying
we need to be drawn into the problem from the very beginning.

Thanks for your reply. I'd really like to see this board get more
active because there are some smart and talented people here and I'd
like to hear what they have to say, and have them shred some of my
favorite dogmas.

of the narrative such that identifying the problem is part of the story,
or does the story only begin when the protagonist starts addressing the
actual problem?

(Of course there's always the situation where the protagonist sets out
to solve one problem and during the story it the problem shifts so the
an entirely separate problem is solved. Raymond Chandler's "The Big
Sleep" is an example.)

you may need to read some theory, but what you need to do first is break out of academic writing, which will be the hardest (though useful at times, even in fiction) After that just write, and if you want use this place for critique.

By the by, the hardest to write is short fiction

What do you think of drafting it in academic prose (if that's the OP's
natural writing style) and then trying to edit into something more
conventionally fictional?

Do you think that would necessarily wind up clunky, or involve
unnecessary work?

Also, could you expand on what exactly makes writing short fiction the
hardest? Are you talking real real short like "Pieces of Him" or 5000
words like "About 1961 in Cleveland" or both?

I'm not trying to bust your 'nads or anything; just trying to get some
discussion.

the shorter the harder, is considered to be harder by most I have spoken to.

I do it, and I enjoy it, but it needs to be tighter by rule

Now academic writing versus fiction... it is a different style a very different style. It can even be useful of a character is a profesor... but the problem is that it can be and at times IS dry... and formal. That is why it is just a different style and you truly need to break from it.

It took me a while to break from it, and at times I use the style... even in fiction, but in a measured way.