38 Essential Writer’s Books

In my office, I have my computer table, an oak roll top desk close enough my left elbow bumps it when I really get going on the keyboard

…and behind me, about two feet away, a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf of reference books.

Those books are constantly in motion. I pull them out by piles, stack them on my desk

…and riffle through them to augment particular parts of my stories. Sometimes, I’m looking for facts on nature, animals, buildings. Other times, I’m working through some prickly syntax. Either way, there are those books I can’t write without.

Every writer I know has a bookshelf like this, full of books to inspire the writing process. A reader asked what books I thought most important, so I pulled out my short list which is when I realized I’d added some in the last few years. My must-have writing books have blossomed to 38, some new additions, some deleted from earlier lists. The links (where available) will take you to my review):

1. Anatomy of Motive by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker
2. Bill Bryson’s Dictionary for Writers and Editors, by Bill Bryson
3. Blockbuster Plots: Pure and Simple, by Martha Alderson
4. Breakout Novelist by Donald Maass
5. Careful Writer: A Modern Guide to English Usage, by Theodore Bernstein
6. Creating Character Emotions: Writing compelling fresh approaches that express your characters’ true feelings, by Ann Hood
7. Elements of Style by EB White
8. First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile, by Noah Lukeman
9. Garner’s Modern American Usage, by Bryon Garner
10. How to Write A D*** Good Novel, by James Frey
11. Humor That Works by Andrew Tavin
12. Lexicon, by William F. Buckley Jr.
13. Marketing for Writers Who Hate Marketing: The No-Stress Way to Sell Books Without Losing Your Mind by James Scott Bell
14. Marshall Plan for Novel Writing: A 16-step program guaranteed to take you from idea to completed manuscript, by Evan Marshall
15. National Audubon Society Field Guide
16. New York Times Practical Guide to Practically Everything
17. New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge
18. Novel Writer’s Toolkit: A guide to writing great fiction and getting it published, by Bob Mayer
19. Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus
20. Oxford Book of Aphorisms, by John Gross
21. Oxford Concise Dictionary of English Etymology
22. Oxford Dictionary of Difficult Words
23. Penguin Dictionary of Epigrams, by MJ Cohen
24. Please Understand Me II: Temperament, Character, Intelligence, by David Keirsey
25. Roget’s 21st Century Thesaurus
26. The Rural Setting Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi
27. Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, by Renni Browne
28. Synonym Finder, by J. I. Rodale
29. We are not Alone: The Writer’s Guide to Social Media by Kristen Lamb
30. Write on by Stephen King
31. Writer’s Coach: An Editor’s Guide to Words That Work, by Jack Hart
32. Writer’s Guide to Character Traits, by Linda Edelstein
33. The Writer’s Lexicon Volume I and II by Kathy Steinemann
34. Writing from A to Z, by Sally Ebest
35. Writing the Blockbuster Novel, by Albert Zuckerman
36. Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, by Janet Burroway
37. Writing the Breakout Novel: Insider advice for taking your fiction to the next level, by Donald Maass
38. Writing the Novel from Plot to Print, by Lawrence Block

What’s on your list.

#amwriting

More articles:

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Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy, the Rowe-Delamagente thrillers, and the Man vs. Nature saga. She is also the author/editor of over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, adjunct professor of technology in education, blog webmaster, an Amazon Vine Voice,  a columnist for NEA Today, and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. Look for her next prehistoric fiction, Against All Odds, Summer 2020. 

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