There must be a thousand books on "How to Write." If you read them all you wouldn't have time to write.So what are a few really good ones? How do you know if a book on writing is good? How do you know this author's advice is right or wrong? That's easy. Read a bit of it and if you are having a hard time putting it down--the author knows what he's doing. This topic, after all, is dry as dirt. It's right up there with "How to change the duvet cover," or "How to clean a bathroom," or "Filling out your 1040 form."
The best book on writing I have ever read is Stephen King's "On Writing" which, by now, has probably gone through a dozen editions. I couldn't put it down. I've read it more than once and not because I didn't remember his advice. It's wonderfully entertaining. I can't forget his description of pretending to be a circus strong man when he was two years old.
I've been looking at a website called Master Class and I see a lot of today's top writers are contributing their best suggestions.One click gives you samples of their advice and I have clicked on a bunch of them. I would tend to favor the words of authors that are my personal favorites. If I enjoy them, I think, so would others. My taste in stories is not unusual. I'm pretty typical. It's not free, but at $120/year, it's cheap for what you can get if you really use it.
This may sound stupid, but I learn a lot from listening to a favorite author on audio. It doesn't matter if the author is doing the reading or not. Some writers are not good readers, and some are. Listening frees your mind to think only about the story. When you aren't thinking about the words on the page or how many pages are left in this chapter, you become more aware of the structure. Why is the writer giving you all these details in one chapter but not in another one? Where is the viewpoint character and what are his eyes seeing? If she parks her car, does she immediately open the door? Does she remember to pick up her purse? Why does the writer skip over all the details sometimes with a brief, "Next morning, he flew to Chicago?" Details are tedious if they don't move the story forward.
Sometimes I can just lie in bed with my eyes closed and realize that I'm working!
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