Craft of Writing Special: Pam's Top Ten Writing Craft Books

 Welcome to Writes4Women. This episode is a little bit different. It's actually just me talking to you. And this might be one that if you do ever watch on YouTube or if you haven't yet, but have been thinking about catching the podcast on YouTube, this might be one that you do watch, because I'm going to actually share with you this episode my ten, plus a couple of bonus favourite writing books.

So of course it's absolutely perfect to listen to this on a normal audio podcast because you'll be hearing everything. But if you want to see the books you can actually watch it and the video will also be available on the same page on the Writes4Women podcast as the audio.

I'm now linking the Writes4Women YouTube channel with the website, so it's a fully integrated system. Very exciting! Shout out to Michelle Barraclough who designed the Writes4Women website a couple of years ago and has been helping me do some updates on that just this week.

And if anybody's in the market for a fantastic author website, check out Michelle's work, she's done the Writes4Women website, she's done Laura Boon's recent website, he's done a whole lot, including Jodi Gibson, who's got a fabulous new website, courtesy of Fresh Web Design too.

So check out Michelle's work if you're in the market for a reasonable priced, professional, gorgeous looking website.

To start with today, I thought I would just share a little bit of a personal writing update with you, what I'm up to, and then give you a little bit of podcasts news, and then launch straight into the info on writing craft books.

So personally with my writing, I've actually completed my, it's kind of a first draft of my manuscript Because You're Mine, but it's also not a first draft because it's actually had quite a lot of revision along the way. It's in the process of resting, before I go back and do an overall revision of it again which I'll be doing probably numerous times, but I'm really, really happy with where the story ended up. And as anybody that's been listening to my journey along the way with this book will know it's been a bit of a long one. This one's taken me probably over two years. It's definitely more than three years since the idea came to me, and the writing of it has taken a while for various reasons, including working on the podcast. I'm really, really happy with where the story has gone. And I'm actually looking forward to going back and reading the whole thing through. Not sure I'll be saying the same thing after I've read it, but you know what it's like if you're a writer and you have to read back over your own work, it can be quite excruciating.

I'm actually in that process of just letting that rest so I can go back to it with some objectivity, so I can actually try and read it as a reader and not a writer which is always really hard when you've actually put your heart and soul into something, but that's the objective in letting it rest.

So that's where I'm at with that.

I'm actually nutting out some ideas for my next novel, which I'm hoping to start in November and Nano. For anybody who hasn't heard of nano it's national novel writing month. And I'm pretty sure most people in the writing world now know about nano. It's a challenge with no particular prize at the end, other than reaching your own personal finish line, wherever you happen to set that. The original challenge is to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. I've managed to do that once with Blackwattle Lake, which actually became my first published book. So that was a really interesting process after having spent seven years probably writing and revising my very first novel and then writing Blackwattle Lake straight out without a plan, with no plotting just straight out of my head and continuing to make things worse for my character and pushing the story forward by writing probably about 1700 to 2000 words in one month.

So I'm actually at the planning stage. I am doing some more planning this time with this novel. It'll be another women's fiction title, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to at least get some bones down for that in November and push through and write the 50,000 words. And then, you know, obviously expand on that.

What else has been happening? Anybody who's read my recent newsletter will know that I've got a new horse. I won't give you all the details for that, but you can sign up for my newsletter if you'd like to hear more. I might actually put that up on the Facebook page too, because I haven't shared that on Facebook yet.

You can sign up for the Writes4Women newsletter via the Wtrites4Women website, or you can go to my pamelacook.com.au page to sign up. It's the same newsletter. I put all my writing and podcasting news into one newsletter, and I also do book recommendations and share any news that I've got on writing and also have a book giveaway each month.

I also want to give a shout out to people who have been putting reviews up for Writes4Women. With reviews, it pushes the book, or in this case, the podcast up the rankings. The more people see it, the more people are exposed to it. And so it's just really a great thing for the podcast to have reviews. If you are someone who has been enjoying the podcast and has never actually had a chance or time to do the review wherever you listen, if you listen on apple or Spotify or Google, wherever you, you do listen that would be great if you could go and pop a review up.

And shout out to Maya Linnell who wrote a fabulous review just recently for Writes4Women. Thanks so much. And to all the other people who have got those fabulous reviews up there, I really, really appreciate it.

I also want to shout out to the people who are supporting the podcast on Patreon. I'm starting to get more interest in the Patreon subscription process. And at the end of the year, I'm going to be collating all the transcripts from the heart of writing into one e-book, the craft of writing into another e-book, the business of writing into another ebook.

There's different tiers of Patreon, depending on what you feel that you can support the podcast with financially each month. And it's really just a sign to me that you are enjoying the podcast, that you want to continue hearing the episodes, hearing my chats with the authors on The Convo Couch.

And it makes my day when I see that people are supporting the podcast on Patreon. So thank you very much to everybody who is doing that. Everybody who is a Patreon supporter gets a Wisdom From the Convo Couch newsletter each month, which contains three or four really great quotes that I pull out from each interview over that month and comes into your inbox each month. And sometimes it's just a little snippet of inspiration or just one thing that can really trigger an idea or trigger you to do something, to help your author career. So yeah, I really enjoy pulling those little nuggets out and sending them off and hopefully the people who are receiving those Wisdom from the Convo Couch newsletters are enjoying them too.

Shout out for Patreon supporters who have joined the gang this month to Renea Black, Linda Joannides, and Em Schumack. Thank you to those people and thank you to everybody else who is out there supporting the podcast. I do really, really appreciate it. It's a passion project for me, but it's lovely to see all the people who are getting behind the podcast becoming part of the Writes4Women community. And that's really my goal with this podcast is, you know, the tagline is celebrating women's voices supporting women writers. And part of that for me, is creating a fantastic community of women, writers and readers who are just really supportive of each other. And that's happening and it's making me very happy.

So thank you everyone.

In upcoming podcasts news, I'm going to be talking to Natasha Lester with a special Ask Natasha episode. Natasha had a fantastic post up a little while ago about enduring as a writer and being in it for the long haul. She is someone who's been on the podcast a couple of times before, but I really want to talk to her about this idea of enduring, also about how she's finding her new or not new, but building international success and, maybe some reflections on looking back to when she started writing and maybe some advice and wisdom that she can give to other writers out there now. People have been sending questions in. If you have any other questions do send them in and I will pose them to Natasha and see what we can come up with. Some really looking forward to that. We're getting closer to the end of the year. I hate to say that because I still got so much to do!

There's some really fabulous guests coming up. I've got Sarah Foster coming up. We're going to talk about her new book The Hush I've got Lyn Yewoart, talking about her book, The Silent Listener, I have Nikki Gemmell. Nikki has a fabulous book, it's a memoir actually, about her life as a woman writer and her life as a woman, so I'm going to be talking to Nikki about that. And I've got a few other great guests coming up as well before Christmas but I didn't write them down so I can't think of them off the top of my head. And I also have Mary-Lou Stephens doing a fantastic guest hosting spot where she's going to be talking to Emily Madden about her new release, The Buchanan Girls.

So that's something that I'm planning for next year as well so once a month, I'm going to have a guest host talking to another writer and you know, and that whole Convo Couch tradition of just chewing the fat talking about their, their respective books. And it will be great for us to listen in and eavesdrop on that.

Another thing I am going to be doing in early December is a little Christmas special where I'm going to be talking to a number of authors about their reading recommendations for the holiday period and the books that they're hoping to give and receive at Christmas.

So look out for that one in early December.

Okay. Now I did mention at the beginning of this episode that I will be talking today about my top 10 writing craft books. Anybody who knows me knows I'm a writing craft book junkie. I’m in awe of anybody who can just write a whole novel without ever having read a craft book. I'm a junkie of them and I don't even know how many I've got on my shelf, probably 30-ish and I have others in ebook form as well. And I'm sure there's more out there that I can collect.

So today I've selected 10 and then I thought of another two, so I'll add those in at the end. And there are others, of course, but these are just ones that I keep going back to. Books that inspire me in many different ways and also books that I use as resources and to check on something if I'm not sure about you know, getting the turning points of the story in the right spot, there's a particular book I’ll check. So anyway, we'll talk about how I use them as I go through and I'll be reading just a little snippet of the books as well.

Some of you may not have heard of some of them. And I'm hoping that I'll be able to introduce something new to you, at least out of this pile.

1.    Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. Creative Living Beyond Fear. So I really love this book in terms of the inspiration and practical inspiration that Elizabeth Gilbert has.

She's actually someone who interestingly says, don't give up your day job to write. Don't make a career out of writing until you actually are at the point where you can sustain that. And she's really concerned about people turning their writing into a way of making money rather than as an outlet for their creativity and that sort of inspirational creativity that we have.

It's an interesting concept, but there's lots of other great advice in here too. And one of the little tips that Elizabeth says that I really love is this idea of thinking about your inner critic as a passenger in the car that you're driving along with. And you can say to that passenger okay, you know, I know that you're here on the journey. I know you're coming along with me, but I'm not going to be listening to you what you say to me and I'm certainly not going to be taking directions from you. I just love that visualization and I think it's a really lovely way to think about this whole idea of the inner critic.

And I just wanted to read a little snippet from the book, which is on Originality versus Authenticity.This is what Elizabeth says…

 "So what if we repeat the same themes? So what if we circle around the same ideas again? Generation after generation. So what if every new generation feels the same urges and asks the same questions that humans have been feeling and asking for years. We're all related after all. So there's going to be some repetition of creative instinct. Everything reminds us of something, but once you put your own expression and passion behind an idea, that idea becomes yours."

I really love that because we often think, ‘oh, but I can't write that story because it's been written before’. But nobody has written it in the way that you will write it. And I love the way that Elizabeth phrases that. So Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert for general writing inspiration.

2. This is another really interesting one that you may or may not have come across The Kick-Ass Writer by Chuck Wendig, 1001 Ways to Write Great Fiction, Get Published and Earn Your Audience. So it literally is 1001 ways, pretty much. He goes through and each chapter is numbered. And he has a particular style, Chuck, which is quite humorous.

And if anybody follows him particularly on Twitter you'll be able to pick up what that style is. And this little snippet might give you an idea as well...

"25 Things You Should Know About Queries, Synopses and Treatments. One, everyone hates it. And nobody's great at it. Writing a summary of any creative endeavor makes every writer feel like he's wearing a tuxedo made of bumblebees. It's a very uncomfortable process. And any writer who tells you how much she enjoys writing synopses should be immediately shoved in a bag and burned because she is a robot from the future sent here to destroy all writers self-esteem. Why would we enjoy the process? We just wrote a whole screenplay or an entire novel, and now we're supposed to compress it down until it fits in the palms of our hands. God damn it. It blows. It's difficult. Nobody does it 100%, but you've got to suck it up and do the work."

I fully agree with Chuck's assessment there of synopsis writing. Most of us hate it. Very few of us are good at it. But it's a necessary evil for authors who want to be published, particularly in traditional publishing and it is actually a really good way of condensing your ideas down and actually getting down to the spine of your story. So even though I do hate that process it's one that, by the end, I'm kind of glad I've done.

This is a great book. It's a book that you can dip in and out of. As I said, the chapters are numbered and then within each chapter, there's little snippets that you can read and he covers a whole range of topics about writing.

3. Another favourite of mine is Julia Cameron and her book The Artist's Way, which I know many listeners will be familiar with was one that really started me off on my journey of writing. And this is a fantastic book from Julia, The Right to Write. She's super inspirational. She's very, very big on following your instincts, listening to your gut, believing in yourself, believing in your creativity. And she has lots of little exercises that you can do. And I think sometimes it's good just to break out and break away from the novel that you're writing or the screenplay or whatever it is that you're working on, and just do a

I just happened to open this book, looking for a snippet, and this was the one that I found. So it's a little woo-woo. But that's okay. I'm good with that. And I do believe in that sort of synchronicity. So here's what she has to say in this chapter on Making It.

“When we commit, then the universe commits. We are the cause, the universe delivers the effect. We act internally and the universe acts externally. Again, this is where so many of us fall into a false sense of powerlessness. If I were published, then I'd be a real writer, we tell ourselves. What are the odds of my being published?"

Listen to this bit, "Your odds of being published become 100% the minute you are willing to self publish. My book, The Artist's Way, which has now sold well over a million books, began life as a self published manuscript. So did my book, The Money Drunk so did my short story collection, Popcorn. I am perhaps more stubborn than most, or maybe more uppity or maybe just more convinced of the essential democracy of the Arts.

I believe that if one of us cares enough to write something, someone else will care enough to read it. We are all in this together, I believe, and our writing and reading one another is a powerful comfort to us all."

So I really like that advice. I think it's really easy, particularly as a beginning writer or even as a mid-career writer or further down the track to think ‘there's no point in me writing this book, no one's going to want to read it, no one's going to want to publish it’. But if we commit to that process and push ourselves and get to the end and continue to revise and to look for ways to get our writing out there, I'm 100% with Julia in that we can get the work out there and that we will find readers.

And a big part of that is believing in yourself, believing that you can do that and believing in the work that you're creating.

4. From Where You Dream. This is one you may not be familiar with it's a little bit more obscure, but it has some fantastic things to say about this whole idea of inspiration and where ideas come from. As I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, I'm in the process of coming up with an idea for my next book, but I'm not really an ideas person. Sadly for me, I'm not one of those writers who has hundreds of ideas and just not enough time to write them. I'm a one idea at a time kind of gal.

And I usually fund something starts to germinate, you know, when I get towards the end of writing a novel, but it can still take some time for that to, to form itself into the shape of a novel, you know what I mean? To have turning points and enough of a storyline to really decide to work on. This book is all about dreaming up ideas and really, really delving into your subconscious and letting your subconscious do the work.

So the quote that I wanted to read from here is in a chapter called Cinema of The Mind. It says, “Pause for a moment and consider what goes on within you when you read a wonderful work of fiction. The experience is in fact, a kind of cinema of inner consciousness. When you read a work of literature, the characters and the setting, and the actions are evoked as images as a kind of dream in your consciousness, are they not? The primary senses sight and sound prevail just as in the cinema. But in addition to seeing and hearing you can experience, taste and smell, you can feel things on your skin as the narrative moves through your consciousness. This is an Omni sensual cinema. Consequently, it makes sense that the techniques of literature are those we understand to be filmic."

There's so much goodness in this book and I was really torn between which bits I should read you, but I love that idea of really tapping into the senses. And this book actually gives you some exercises to do that in that process of creation and coming up with ideas. And it also talks about not forcing the idea too much, you know, coming up with the original nugget of the idea and then just letting it germinate, letting it brew and just seeing how it develops and grows and sort of opening your senses and being attuned to different bits of inspiration that come in, that you can meld together. So, if you are someone like me who does have a little bit of trouble with developing ideas or coming up with new ones From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction it's by Robert Olin Butler.

5. The next one that I had to include, and if anybody's looking at this on video, you'll see, it's a very well-worn book. It's No plot? No problem by Chris Baty. And he's one of the original Nanowrimo guys.

And basically this is ‘a low stress, high velocity guide to writing a novel in 30 days’. So it's a little nanowrimo writing guide, but it has some really great gems in there just in terms of productivity, time management, pacing yourself, all that sort of. And again, it's got a little bit of a witty tone to it.

In Chapter five, this is where he talks about Week One of actually doing nano. Trumpets Blaring, Angels Singing and Triumph on the Wind is the chapter title. “Dear Writer, here it is, day one. We're standing together on the precipice that overlooks the vast unchartered territory of your novel.It's quite a view. Every author you've ever admired started out at the same point, gazed out with the same mix of wonder and trepidation at that small verdant speck on the horizon called The End. You are ready, poised. The sun is shining. The birds are singing and there's an unmistakable smell of victory in the air."

I love that really positive approach to starting off a new novel. And it's always so exciting to start something new, isn't it? It's usually midway or that 20,000 word part, we get bogged down, but that's a whole other story. If you're doing nano I know this is available in an ebook, so it's actually highly recommended for nano reading as well.

6. Another great one that has some really lovely humor in it is How To Be A Writer, that's the main title. And then it goes on Who Smashes Deadlines, Crushes Editors, and Lives in a Solid Gold Hovercraft by John Birmingham. John Birmingham's an Australian author who has managed to straddle the trad indie divide really beautifully. It says on the back of this one, "So you want to be a writer? This book is about to become your tatted, booze, stained Bible. The one you consult as you knockdown deadline, after deadline from the 50 story mansion your drone assembled out of piles of cash and poets tears, just like John Birmingham." He's a really funny guy and I have to say when I bought this book and first read it, I clearly remember following some of the strategies that John has in this and I wrote the most I have ever written. I remember I was working on a novel at the time that I was contracted for, and I actually wrote 14,000 words in a week. Have never done it before, have never done it since. So I'm thinking I better read this again. But here is a little snippet from John's book.

"Punching out massive daily word turtles is not just a matter of typing fast or jabbering at a computer. There are many other arcane writing magics you must first learn. Turning off your modem is a good start. Chopping up your day with the Pomodoro method is another. Throwing yourself in the messy of Rachel Aaron, maybe the most important. Aaron is the keyboard killing word ninja who went from dribbling out a couple of thousand words a day to spraying 10,000 words all over her manuscript every goddamn day, while dealing with a newborn baby. How the hell did she do that? It's her story. I'll let her start."

And then he goes on to Rachel telling the story.

So yeah, you can sort of pick up the tone of that. It's quite funny. And it's really good sometimes to dip into some craft books that actually have some humor to them because we can get really bogged down with the seriousness of, of what we do. But books like this one, I think they give you some fantastic tips, don't get me wrong, but they're also quite funny and they make it lighthearted and easier to deal with.

7. This is one that you may be familiar with if you're a writer and do any plotting. Or if you've sought to be a writer who plots like myself Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting That You'll Ever Need by Blake Snyder.

It's a really, well-known one that talks about laying out the beats of the story in advance so that you have a roadmap for where to go. There's also Save The Cat Writes a Novel, which I have as an ebook. But this is, it does have some really good ideas. And I think if you're a pantser, sometimes it's good to just know your turning points, at least as a minimum, or at least to know the end or at least to know the idea behind the whole thing of planning.

I do think that over time you develop, your process and if you are a planner and that works for you 100% stick with it and go with it. If you're a pantser there's always new ways that you can learn to pants. And I've found that, dipping into some of these books really has helped me to work out some kind of process.

It doesn't always work, so Blake Snyder has a beat sheet. You work out your opening image, what your theme is, what the setup is, the catalyst, the debate and then he calls number six is the break into two. The base story, the fun games, et cetera. And then it goes through, the all is lost, the dark night of the soul etc

 So familiar turning points to anybody who uses a three or a six act structure in their writing. Certainly a book that's worth a look. If you are interested in learning more about plotting, Save the Cat.

8. Okay. We're getting down to the pointy end. This is a book I recommend for everybody who writes cause we all need to know how to revise and self-edit. James Scott Bell is a fantastic writing teacher. Fantastic books on all sorts of craft. He's got a really good one called Writing From the Middle, which is about picking out the mirror moment in your story, thinking about what that mid-point moment in the story is that really sends the character off on the trajectory, that's going to form the end part of your story, but this one is Revision and Self Editing. And I dip in and out of this often when I am getting to that point, or even when I'm not, because sometimes you just get some really good ideas for actually the writing of the book. And I really liked this suggestion at the back that James has: "Try the 20,000 word step back. Whether you're a no outline person or an outline person, the 20,000 word step back can be a tremendous tool. After 20,000 words, you stop take a day off, then read what you have by this time. Your story engine should be running. You've done enough of the novel to know pretty much what it's about. You then take some time to make sure you like the characters and the direction. If you don't, make some changes now. This is a good point to make your lead characters richer by adding background, whether you include this for the readers or not, behaviours, quirks, strengths, flaws and tags. You can also make a decision about the tone and feel of your novel. It may want to take on a different emphasis than what you had planned. A better novel may be asking to be released."

Sometimes we do have some great ideas at the beginning and we shoot off on the story and it is quite common I find to get to 20 to 25,000 words and think, okay, what next? Or, have I done that opening correctly? And I always find, if you get the beginning right you can then go on and the rest of the novel will be fairly solid.

So Revision and Self Editing by James Scott Bell or anything by him really highly recommend that as a book to add to your writing craft shelf.

9. Okay. This is probably what has been my very favourite craft book in the last couple of years. And I have to say really read and devoured and analysed this book when I was writing my first indie publication Cross My Heart. And I credit a lot of the things that I read in this book with what I felt was probably my best writing so far in Cross My Heart.

You know, you can always look back and of course see things wrong with your books and with your writing, but I was really happy with the level of emotional tension and the focus on emotions in that book. And that's all down to this book, which is The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass, How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface.

So for anybody who is interested in really digging deep into your characters, particularly if you're someone who likes to write in deep point of view this is a fantastic book. It's not a book that I would recommend to beginning writers because I think, some of the concepts in it, you do really need to have quite a strong understanding of how story works, how the different elements of story come together in your writing and particularly this idea of showing emotions through body language, through you know, physical, visceral reactions through dialogue and really going deep with your characters.

So here's just a little snippet from The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass..."What shapes us and gives our lives meaning, are not the things that happen to us, but they're significance. Life lessons, revelations, changes, and growing convictions of what we think of when we ponder who we are. As we experience the events of our days, we process them and make them personal. We document our lives, not just with visual images, but with narration, that explains what those images mean. We aren't just resumes, the dry sum total of our accomplishments and anniversaries. We are stories. Plot happens outside, but story happens inside. Readers won't get the true story though, unless you put it on the page, both the big meaning in small events and the overlooked implications of large plot turns."

You can see just from that snippet, it is quite a complicated concept that he's dealing with here. This idea of engaging your readers with emotion. The basic premise of it is really connecting with the emotions in the reader. Showing the emotions on the page so that it connects with similar emotions in the reader and really getting that engagement from the reader.

I love everything by Donald Maass. I'm a bit of a Maass junkie. If you are in the earlier stages of writing, have a look at his Writing the Breakout Novel, Writing 21st Century Fiction and The Fire in the Fiction.

He's got a load of books. He's the literary agent turned writing craft guru. And he has a lot to say and a lot to show and great examples too, from other books that he uses in his explanation. So that one, I would say is my favourite.

10. This is one that a lot of you will be familiar with The Emotion Thesuarus. And I couldn't actually have a list of books on writing craft and writing resources without including this book. I came across this book quite a few years ago now, Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. I actually interviewed Angela a few weeks ago. So that episode is out, talking about their latest edition, which is The Conflict Thesaurus.

But for anyone who is not familiar with The Emotion Thesaurus, the whole point of it is to help you show emotion rather than to tell. So instead of saying, for instance, ‘I felt really hurt’ or your character felt ‘hurt’, it gives you a list of things like physical signals. So things like eyes widening, swallowing hard, a trembling chin, mouth falling open, you know, there's probably about 25 examples like that there. For internal sensations, these are great for your protagonists, so things like dizziness, nausea, painful tightness in the throat, constricting lungs, weakening muscles, spots, flashing in one's vision. There's also mental responses: the sense that time has stopped, shock and disbelief feeling broken inside. etc. So you can put these into the characters in a dialogue, It goes on for each example then with cues of acute or long-term hurts- it might be tears sobbing, running away, reacting with anger. It gives what it could escalate to: depression, anguish, or anger, and then cues of suppressed hurt like visible, swallowing, unnatural stiffness. So for each emotion, whether it's hurt sorrow doubt, determination, denial, there's a whole range of them there for each emotion.

And what I find is sometimes I'll think, okay, I want to show that this character is feeling anxious. I might look up anxiety andI might go through that list and think, ‘yeah, none of those are really doing it for me. They're not things that are working for this character’, but what that does is it'll trigger another idea for me and then I'll come up with the answer myself by looking at these as suggestions.

I actually don't really use this in physical form anymore. What I use is onestopforwriters.com which has The Emotion Thesaurus, on there, but it has a whole lot of others. So there's a Wound Thesaurus ... There's a whole lot of resources at onestopforwriters.com and I do literally use that every single time I sit down to write. So that's one I highly recommend.

So that brings me to the end of my little roundup of my favourite writing craft books. There's 10 there, but there's another couple that I want to mention. And I haven't got my Kindle here to show you but one is Method Acting for Writers by Lisa Hall, Wilson. Lisa is someone I came across a few years ago and again, really helped me with the writing of Cross My Heart. She focuses particularly on deep point of view, writing in deep point of view. So if anybody is writing in deep point of view and wants to know more about how to do that, look up Lisa Hall, Wilson. She has a great website and she also has a great Facebook page. I think it's Going Deeper with Emotions so you can find her there. And she has this book Method Acting for Writers, very similar to the Donald Maass actually, but how to show emotion through different ways rather than telling, and to go really deeper. It talks about taking out all those filtering words, like thought reflected, wandered, et cetera and a whole lot more ongoing, deeper.

And another one, which I'm actually reading currently, which I'm really finding helpful. It is quite complicated, again, it's one that I recommend that you look at if you are more experienced with, and particularly with plotting and planning is The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne.

He has studied a whole lot of books from fantasy to thriller, to general fiction, women's fiction, romance and he does these sort of analysis of them and looks at how the turning points are worked out, what are the ingredients of a bestseller, that sort of thing, particularly in commercial fiction.

So that’s a great one to look for. And another really good resource to look up is Michael Hague storymastery.com. I'm not aware of Michael actually having any physical books, but he's got a lot of resources on his website.

 I hope that that has helped. If you've been wondering about building up your craft library, if there's been books that you've been thinking about getting, but you're not sure maybe some of those were in the list and now I've given you a little prompt.

Of course it's not compulsory to have these writing craft books and to have writing craft books at all. As I mentioned, there's a lot of writers. skilled enough to actually be able to write fabulous stories without consulting craft books. Take it from me, they can be a great procrastination tool which is not always a good thing. You know, what we want to be doing is actually doing the writing! But if you feel that you need some guidance, you need some inspiration, hopefully that list of resources that I've provided there will help you.

Thank you for listening. Have a great weekend. And I will see you in the next episode with Natasha Lester, where we'll be Asking Natasha. Thanks. See you everyone.