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skills for prose fiction and imaginative writing

skills for prose fiction and imaginative writing

skills for prose fiction and imaginative writing

On Writing Well

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best-selling guide to sharpening your writing style

William Zinsser is professional journalist (former writer and editor on the New York Herald Tribune) who manages to express a love of writing and an appreciation of good style without ever dragging readers into the swamps of grammatical nit-picking and rule-governed instruction. In On Writing Well he expresses himself in an urbane and conversational style typical of popular magazines. This is a reassuring approach for those who want a guided tour of writing issues, held by the hand of someone experienced in the craft. It’s rather like having a writing coach at your shoulder as he talks you through what writers think and the decisions they make.

On Writing Well He’s particularly alert to the fear of those who lack confidence. The first part of the book is taken up with his principal recommendations. These are to cultivate brevity and clarity, and to omit any form of ‘clutter’. He has some wonderful examples of equivocation, ambiguity, and deliberate obfuscation drawn from American public life – including such gems from Alexander Haigh as “at this juncture of maturization” [that is ‘now’] and “We must push this to a lower decibel of public fixation. I don’t think there’s much of a learning curve to be achieved in this area of content.”

He then covers the means by which this clarity is to be achieved. It involves, logically enough, choosing your words carefully, and developing a unity of approach and subject matter.

The third part of the book deals with different forms of writing – such as reportage, interviews, and travel writing. It also covers scientific writing, business and even sports. These chapters are aimed at aspiring journalists, but there’s much to be learned from such details as his sharp-eyed analysis of the travel cliché: ‘villages nestling‘ and ‘byways half-forgotten‘:

Half the sights seen in a day’s sightseeing are quaint, especially windmills and covered bridges

The latter part of the book relaxes into its real subject – journalism – on which Zinsser speaks with feeling about its craft and techniques. In fact he ends by giving a paragraph-by-paragraph account of writing a travel article, explaining the subject options, the choice of vocabulary, and the strategies of approach which he tried and rejected. There’s a certain amount of patting himself on the back after-the-event in this, but aspiring writers might find it interesting to be taken through the generation of a piece of work in this way.

At its best, this approach will make readers sensitive to the effects they produce, and at its weakest it’s like a well-written guidebook on ‘How to Write Stories for Magazines’. But on balance, more people are likely to improve their writing by becoming conscious of rhythm and structure than are likely to fall into the abyss of verbal entertainment which fails.

© Roy Johnson 2006

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William Zinsser, On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction (6th edn), New York: Harper, 2006, pp.336, ISBN: 141775057X

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Style – ten lessons in clarity and grace

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how to refine your writing style

This is a twenty year old book already in its sixth edition, and the author admits that it’s still ‘evolving’, which is a good sign that serious thought is going into its composition. Style ten lessons in clarity and grace is based on a course Joseph Williams teaches at the University of Chicago. His approach is based on two principles – that ‘it’s good to write clearly, and anyone can’ – and the second part of the proposition is what he’s teaching here. His approach is to draw attention to the finer issues of clarity in prose, and to show how language can be used with subtelty to effect it.

Style ten lessons in clarity and grace His ten seperate chapters deal with each of these issues in turn, and his own prose style is engaging and friendly – which both proves his point and shows that he knows what he is talking about. He starts with a brief and amusing guide to bad prose and what creates it, and he ends with the most celebrated advice on creating effective prose – that good writing is about ‘rewriting’. His general advice is that improvement can be made – if you go slowly. So what then are his ten ‘lessons’?

  1. Write with readers in mind
  2. Write clearly
  3. Write concretely
  4. Write in an active mode
  5. Put the subject at start of sentence
  6. Put rhetoric at end of sentence
  7. Edit, edit, edit; and cut, cut, cut
  8. Get the verb in the main clause
  9. Create structure
  10. Write ethically

It’s pitched at a fairly sophisticated level, suitable for intermediate to advanced users. Williams assumes that readers know the basics of what is right and wrong, but want to improve in matters of clarity and elegance. He makes an interesting and useful distinction between three types of correctness – and offers different levels of response to them.

There are are exercises in each chapter with suggested answers, which I think makes this a text which might be more popular with tutors than with the students for whom it was presumably written. You’ve got to put up with a lot of grappling with ‘nominalizations’, ‘resumptive modifiers’, and elimination of the passive voice, as well as the same examples worked over and over until they’re right.

There’s a particularly good chapter on deleting redundant expressions, writing more concisely, and eliminating ‘metadiscourse’ [signposting or ‘writing about writing’]. He gives one example where a fifty word statement is edited down to a sentence of six. His advice includes one point I write on something like fifty percent of all student essays: ‘Put the subject at the start of the sentence, and follow it as soon as possible with the verb’.

Towards the end of the book he tries to ‘teach the unteachable’ – elegance and ‘good style’. This section requires quite a sophisticated level of literary experience, and strangely enough he ends on punctuation – but pitched at quite an advanced level.

This isn’t a book for beginners. It’s for people who want to improve their existing writing skills, who want to rid themselves of officialese and cloudy abstraction and garbled syntax so as to produce writing which is clear and efficient. If you follow his advice, read carefully what he’s got to say, and complete the exercises, I think you’ll find it money well spent.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Joseph Williams, Style: ten lessons in clarity and grace, New York: Addison Wesley, (6th edn) 1999, pp.309, ISBN: 0321024087

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The Art and Science of Screenwriting

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creative writing guide for the cinema and television

This is a practical handbook on screenwriting, an explanation of what a screenplay is, a guide to getting your own ideas into the correct format, and an account of all the stages that follow the production of a first draft. Philip Parker starts off by explaining the key concepts of any dramatic narrative and showing their relationship to each other in what he calls a ‘creative matrix’. These are story, theme, form, plot, genre, and style. He explains how each of these is relevant, then takes you through what he calls ‘the tools of the trade’ – the original Proposal, the Outline, the Treatment, the Step Outline, and the Screenplay Layout.

The Art and Science of ScreenwritingThese are all progressively longer documents which specify exactly what the film is about and what happens in it. He shows you how to produce these documents, and even how to lay out their contents on the page. He also shows how to develop screen ideas out of novels and stories, contemporary events, historical happenings, even newspaper stories or your own life or dreams. There is also an explanation of the differences in writing for television and the cinema.

The most basic elements are how to establish credible characters and how to best arrange the sequence of events in a multi-strand narrative. To demonstrate this in practice, he offers examples and analyses of film scripts for both television and cinema, showing how scenes are paced and edited, and how narratives are controlled.

He also identifies what he calls the ‘ten basic stories’ and ‘eight basic themes’. I’m not sure that all narratives can be so reduced, but it leads to a lot of useful discussion of genres and stereotypes – and how to recognise them. He also goes on to show the different styles in which films can be shot appropriate to their genre.

He finishes with two important chapters. First, having written the initial draft of your screenplay, how to go about re-writing it to produce a sharper version. Second, how to get your work accepted, deal with agents, cope with rejections, and strike deals which lead to your getting paid.

It’s suitable for anyone who has an interest in screenwriting – from would-be first time writers, to experienced professionals such as directors, producers, and media teachers.

What he emphasises is that producing for the screen is an industry in which the screenwriter is only one part. It might be an important part, but you have to be prepared to co-operate with other people. There are useful suggestions for further reading, but one thing that’s missing is a glossary of technical jargon. That’s one for the next edition.

I still don’t know why screen scripts present their instructions in ugly continuous capitals, but he shows you exactly how to do it. If you want to get on in this business, you have to conform to its rules.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Philip Parker, The Art and Science of Screenwriting, Exeter: Intellect, 2nd edn, 1999, pp.219, ISBN: 1841500003

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The First Five Pages

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a writer’s guide to staying out of the slush pile

Noah Lukeman is a New York literary agent with a number of top-ranking authors as his clients. He has also written a number of books on the craft of writing (see The Art of Punctuation for instance) so he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to the literary marketplace – in which it must be said so many people wish to make their mark. Publishers and literary agents receive hundreds and hundreds of manuscripts each month – almost all of which are rejected. The First Five Pages is his advice for staying out of the slush pile.

The First Five PagesIt’s the job of these publishing professionals to be discriminating, and it’s the job of the writer to produce a manuscript that stands out among the competition. Those outstanding qualities, Lukeman argues, have to be apparent from the first five pages – otherwise no agent or publisher will bother reading further. In fact he claims – and I believe him – that five sentences is enough. His advice when it comes is quite bracing. First of all he dismisses the supremacy of plot, and lets you in to a secret from the professional’s office:

Agents and editors often ignore synopses and plot outlines; instead, we skip right to the actual manuscript. If the writing is good, then we’ll go back and consider the synopsis

The other thing which creates an immediate impression on agents and publishers is the physical presentation of text. He takes a really strict line here.You should use clean, new A4 paper, and the text should be printed at high quality, double spaced with one inch margins and indented dialogue and paragraph first lines. The slightest falling off in these standards gives the reader every reason to chuck your work into the reject bin.

Next comes the surgical removal of excessive adjectives and adverbs – the most common mistake of would-be writers. This is followed by advice on the sound of language, and how to avoid unwanted alliteration, assonance, and verbal echoes. The same is true for any comparisons or metaphors you use. They should be fresh, original, and to the point – otherwise, leave them out.

On literary style his advice is to avoid mannerism and extremes, and he nails down two excellent examples of the ‘academic’ and ‘experimental’ style of writing.

There’s a section on dialogue and eradicating all that ‘he said … she retorted’ sort of thing. He warns specifically against the easy trap of using dialogue to fill in the back story. That is, having characters explicate matters they would both already know (for the benefit of the reader). The rule – as ever – is show, don’t tell.

The same sort of rigour is well-advised over point of view and narrative mode. Many amateur writers use the first person mode thinking it will allow them the chance to show off, but all they end up doing is littering their story with too much biographical dross, and failing to create a consistent and credible or interesting narrator.

Next comes the creation of character. This is a difficult topic on which to generalise. Some great novels have memorable characters about whose appearance we know very little (Kafka’s Joseph K for instance) and others are memorable merely for what they do – such as Catherine Earnshaw, who even dies half way through Wuthering Heights.

The later chapters deal with some of the more subtle points of being creative – knowing what to leave out, striking the right tone, how to stay focused on the main event, and how to deal with setting and pace.

Many aspiring writers will complain that their favourite authors ignore these guidelines – and Lukeman admits that great writers break all the rules. But what he’s offering here is a guide to common mistakes which should be avoided. As he says, would-be writers from California to England to Turkey to Japan … do exactly the same things wrong

To get into print in the first instance you have to obey the literary norms of the day. And that’s what this book The First Five Pages is doing in its own modest way. Noah Lukeman just wants to show you how to stand out from the also-rans in the slush pile, as something worthy of notice.

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© Roy Johnson 2010

Noah Lukeman, The First Five Pages, Oxford: Oxford University Press, revised edition, 2010, pp.191, ISBN: 0199575282

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The Forest for the Trees

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advice to writers – from an experienced editor

All authors, editors and publishers should read this book. Even those who think they know all about writing and the publishing process will find fresh ideas and perceptive insights. Betsy Lerner has a wealth of experience, from her youthful beginnings at Simon & Schuster to becoming executive editor at Doubleday and now as a literary agent. She writes with style, empathy, wit, realism, and above all humanity. In The Forest for the Trees she identifies five ‘writer types’, all of them familiar.

The Forest for the TreesThe Ambivalent Writer is one who can’t commit to a one idea for a story from the many possibles and who does not realise that writing is 90 per cent sheer sticking power. The Natural Writer is the one for whom writing appears to come easily. Or is that the myth of not realising that hard writing makes easy reading? Lerner’s definition of the ‘natural’ is one who is always writing. She cites Thurber who never quite knew when he was or wasn’t at it, ‘Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, “Dammit, Thurber, stop writing.”‘ For ‘natural’, maybe one should read ‘persistent’.

The Wicked Child relies on ‘kiss-and-tell’: someone who exposes family relationships, friends, acquaintances (or even, like Philip Roth, a whole tribe) in a more or less disguised fashion. personal relationships. The Self-promoter will do anything for fame – there are many such writers today, but it is a shock to realise that Walt Whitman shamelessly trumpeted himself from the roof-tops and sucked up to celebrity writers of the day. Emily Dickinson on the other hand died with 2000 poems unpublished .

The Neurotic makes a great fuss about the process itself – writing has to be done with an HB pencil, or on lined paper of exactly the right width. Few of these quirks are as eccentric as Dame Edith Sitwell who needed to start the day’s work by lying in an open coffin, but every reader will recognise such stalling techniques.

The second half of the book deals with the publishing process – everything from finding an agent to the book jacket and sales conference. Authors should be aware of what editors are looking for and what they can realistically expect from a publishing house. It would seem that a wad of rejection letters followed eventually by a book without a launch party and no reviews is completely the norm. And if authors turn up to read their books in local bookshops only to find they haven’t got any copies to sell, that’s par for the course too.

Naturally every author is looking for validation, but ten per cent of all titles earn ninety per cent of all revenues. Publishers are clearly going to concentrate on those at the top of their lists. Yet the truth seems to be that even the publishers don’t know which books are going to be in that top ten per cent. If they did, they probably wouldn’t print any of the others at all.

Lerner concludes: ‘Most of the disappointment that writers experience in having a book published can be traced back to their initial expectations – what most writers don’t understand … is that landing a contract and being published do not guarantee the fulfillment of all their hopes and dreams.’

Why do we do it?

© Jane Dorner 2004

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Betsy Learner, The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers, New York: Riverhead Books/Penguin Putnam, revised and updated edition 2010, pp.304, ISBN: 159448483X

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The Psychology of Writing

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attitudes to writing amongst professional authors

Anyone who has attempted to produce a piece of half-way serious writing will know that the psychological states we go through can range from anxious anticipation, thoughtful cogitation, through anguished production, to teeth-gnashing editing and re-writes. Ronald Kellog’s excellent study The Psychology of Writing examines every one of these stages in the process. The structure of the book follows the development of writing from its (sometime) origin in thought, through pre-writing and planning [very thoroughly explored] to the varieties of text production and the psychological states which sometimes assist it (including trance and alcohol abuse).

Writing a letterHis method in each chapter is to launch the topic theoretically (Knowledge, Writing Strategies) then discuss empirical and anecdotal evidence, and finally inspect the scientific research. Some of the results are of the uninspiring ‘47% did, 53% didn’t’ variety, but the result is commendably thorough. He draws on many types of writing for his examples, yet keeps coming back (for understandable reasons) to creative writing. Why then in the attempts to ‘measure’ or explain quality in writing didn’t the exceptions to his claims not occur to him? Yes – most writers need long and hard-earned experience, and practice and skill development. But how does one explain the Rimbauds, Chattertons, and Keats of this world who were producing masterpieces at an age when the rest of us were struggling with our ‘A’ levels?

I would guess that those following this line of psychological research might profit from taking (for example) concepts such as the intentional and the affective fallacy into account. There also seemed to be an unspoken assumption that the writer and reader are part of what the literary critic Stanley Fish calls the same ‘interpretive community’. A quick dose of deconstruction might not go amiss in helping to shake this idea a little.

Some of the jargon might be accessible to psychologists, but I can’t help feeling that terms such as ‘relative automatization’ and ‘satisficing [sic] heuristic’ will deter many potential readers. On the other hand there were occasional inspired flashes which I wished could have been developed further – on plagiarism, ideas processors and ‘invisible writing’ for instance.

Even though the prose was rather dry and the argument occasionally sagged in ploughing its way through the data, everything perked up again with the concluding chapters. The scholarship throughout is exemplary, and the book is rounded off with a magnificent bibliography and a good index. Computer users may be interested to know that there are chapters dealing with word-processing packages and outliners – as well as programmes which cause the screen to flash if your writing slows down!

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Ronald T. Kellog, The Psychology of Writing, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, pp.253, ISBN: 0195081390

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The Way We Write

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interviews with award-winning writers

There are any number of books on the theory of writing (Ron Kellogg, Mike Sharples, Naomi Baron) but we rarely hear from writers themselves about how they tackle this most personal of all expressive mediums and the writing techniques they use. Barbara Baker interviewed award-winning writers in a number of genres: writers of children’s fiction, novelists, play and screen writers, poets, and short story writers. And even though the interviews were conducted by phone, fax, or face to face, the editor is scrupulously absent, leaving the writers to talk for themselves. The most immediate and interesting thing is how unromantic most of them are about writing. They see the process of creation as a practical matter, and are much rooted in physical practicalities.

Writing techniquesRaymond Briggs for instance talks about how cartoon stories have to fit into thirty-two pages, because it has to be a multiple of eight because of the way paper is folded. It’s also interesting to note that the majority of the writers interviewed still write their first drafts by hand: “I write with a fountain pen and black ink. My fountain pens are very precious to me and I would never take them out of the house.” (Graham Swift). These might then be transferred to word-processors for editing, but there seems to still be a charm or intimacy about writing with pen on paper – a feeling I recognise, having just done that for this review.

Most of them like to be alone, and to write in their own workroom, no matter how cluttered or unprofessional it might be. However, the poet U.A.Fanthorpe doesn’t have a room, can write anywhere, and even uses the back of her hand if there’s no paper available. And people tempted by a puritanical ethic might keep in mind that writers as distinguished as Vladimir Nabokov, Marcel Proust, and Patrick White wrote in bed.

Julian Fellowes has some interesting things to say about writing for the screen – most notably how little directions are necessary:

One of the things I think is fatal is the film-school idea of writing the directions in very abrupt shorthand. It is impossible to read and puts off 99 people out of 100, and I cannot imagine why they tell students to do it!

Another feature which crops up amongst most of them is not knowing what the ending of a novel will be whilst they are writing it. Many just start with an idea, a character, or just an image – then work forwards.

And it’s amazing just how insecure even some of the most successful are. Margaret Dabble – Lady Holroyd – daughter of a novelist and wife of a famous biographer – speaks of “The insecurity of a writer’s position is extreme … With every [book] I think, ‘This is the one that will be turned down’.”

Some of the authors come across as incredibly smug: “Writing comes easily to me…I have a gift for language” but most of them are very modest – happy if they can find the time for writing and grateful for being published. And that majority also have one other thing in common – they find writing hard work; they go through several drafts before they are satisfied; and they are writing all the time.

Aspirant writers might take comfort from the fact that out of eighteen writers (and award-winners at that) only two had any formal training. Anyone who aspires to producing some published story, poem, novel, or screenplay will find interest and encouragement here.

© Roy Johnson 2008

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Barbara Baker (ed), The Way We Write: Interviews with Award-Winning Writers, London: Continuum, 2007, pp.234, ISBN: 0826491227

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The Weekend Novelist

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fundamental  techniques of novel-writing explained

The Weekend Novelist is a guide to novel-writing techniques which teaches by two principal features. The authors Robert J. Ray and Bret Norris (both experienced creative writing workshop tutors) first take you through the basics elements of novels by showing structure, character, and plot being created in the work of successful novelists. Then they set exercises which allow you to practise the techniques you have just learned. Actually, there’s a third strand too.

The Weekend Novelist Running through the chapters is a practical example of a novel in the process of being created – though Trophy Wives reads as if it’s going to be closer to a Jackie Collins novel rather than Nostromo or To the Lighthouse. Nevertheless, they are demonstrating for would-be novelists all the things they need to take into account. They start quite reasonably with the concept of structure, encouraging writers to sketch out diagrams of their stories.

This is backed up with some very useful analyses of novel plots, showing how they are built on standard models such as the journey, the quest, and the rise from rags to riches.

As points of reference they use contemporary fiction such as the Harry Potter novels, Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, as well as examples from classics such as Jane Eyre, Moby Dick, and The Great Gatsby.

Sometimes the advice is conveyed by emotive metaphors – “When your prose speeds up your brain catches fire. When your brain catches fire, ideas spark” – and at other times they draw heavily on a scene by scene construction technique which is drawn from the world of television and cinema.

In fact there is so much concentration on concepts such as ‘the back story’, ‘chain of events’, ‘climax’, and ‘the importance of carefully chosen objects’ that I suspect it will be just as much interest to screenwriters and dramatists.

There’s quite a lot of plot synopsis, and as a result of using the same plot lines in most of their exercises, there’s also a good deal of repetition and overlap. But the upside of this feature is that you get to consider these stories in depth, and they make you aware of the complexities and careful planning which goes into the development of a successful novel.

Given their title, I was surprised there wasn’t more advice on personal time management, but they are telling you how to write – not when. Besides which, I doubt if many people with serious designs on writing novels will limit themselves merely to free time at weekends.

The approach is very encouraging and hand-holding. You need to plan, plan, plan. Then write, stick at it, and be prepared to revise and edit.

It’s realistic, because it realises you don’t have all the time in the world. And it urges you repeatedly not to sit staring out of the window, but to get pen to paper, fingers to keyboard. Their advice is a mixture of writing techniques, warnings, and encouragement. All you need to do is follow it, and you could have a best-seller on your hands.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Robert J. Ray and Bret Norris, The Weekend Novelist, London: A & C Black, 2005, pp.268, ISBN: 0713671432

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The Writer’s Handbook

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addresses, contacts, resources, and advice for writers

The Writer’s Handbook is the ‘other’ reference manual for writers and people working in the media. It lists publishers in the UK and the US, offers advice to would-be writers on how to place their work, and counsels them on how to deal with agents and middlemen if they have the luck to be ‘accepted’. It’s a comprehensive guide which even goes into the detail of listing the key personnel you need to contact if that deathless prose of yours is ever to see the light of public day. How does it differ from the more established Writers and Artists Year Book?

The Writer's HandbookWell, it spreads itself just a little more generously across a wider range of media. There’s a bit more here on newspapers and magazines, more on radio, TV, small presses and theatre companies. There’s a particularly good section on library services, and there are tips on writing from well-known authors.

It’s updated every year, and many of the entries are annotated with subjective but useful comments on how much people pay – an important issue for hard-pressed writers. New features for the latest edition include how to crack the American market; e-books and the future of hard print; how to get into travel writing; and how newspaper serialisations work.

This is the information you will need for Getting Published. Recent editions have also featured best-seller lists and articles written by successful authors. There’s not a lot to choose between this and the Yearbook. Have a look at both and decide which one suits you.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Barry Turner (ed), The Writer’s Handbook, London: Macmillan, (issued annually) pp.832, ISBN: 0230207294

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The writer’s marketplace

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a selection of resources

You’ve written a short story, a novel, poems, your memoirs, or even an article on goldfish or steam engines. The problem is, how to get your work published? How can you find a publisher who will accept what you have produced? You need to be aware of the writer’s marketplace.

If you’ve had a preliminary stab at this, you’ve no doubt received a few rejection slips. Don’t be put off. Everybody gets them. It is not necessarily to do with the quality of your work. It’s much more likely to be a question of matching what you have to offer with what a publisher is looking for. Publishers have audiences and markets. They want to supply these markets with the products which sell.

Some publishers specialise in antiques, travel, or local history; others concentrate on modern fiction, historical fiction, or science fiction. You need to match what you have to offer with what they are looking for. It’s no good sending your family saga to a publisher who specialises in chic lit or travel guides. And if the latest fad in publishing is for Running Over Lemons from a House in Provence – that’s what they will be looking for.

However, many long term best-sellers have been written for niche audiences – such as Walter Wainwright’s walking guides to the Lake District, or Elizabeth David’s cookbooks. So the first thing to do is get to know your market. Fortunately, this problem has been around so long that there are now several excellent books on the market to help you with all the issues involved.

Writer's MarketplaceThe Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook
Without doubt, this is the most successful. It’s a number one best-seller which offers details of publishers, agents, and outlets in the US and UK. It tells you what they are looking for, where to contact them, and how to submit your work. But the real value for beginners is in the short essays offering advice to would-be writers and media workers which punctuate the listings. They cover fiction and poetry; drama scripts for TV, radio, theatre, and film; graphic illustration and design; plus photography and music.

The other features which make it particularly useful are general information on publishing methods, copyright and libel, income tax and allowances, and a list of annual competitions and their prizes. Recent editions have also included lists of the year’s bestsellers – including both the number of copies sold and the amount of money they’ve made. It is issued annually, and gets bigger each year.
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writer's marketplaceThe Writer’s Handbook
Barry Turner’s rival book does much the same thing – but focuses its attention on writers, and covers a slightly broader spread of media. In addition to the key areas of UK and US book publishers and agents, magazines, screen writing, TV and radio, theatre, film and video and poetry, this edition contains features on the appeal of biography; the uses and abuses of the English language; the challenges and rewards of self-publishing; writing poetry; and media contracts. This is well worth considering as an alternative.

Both of these books have extensive listings of all the outlets for creative work – fiction, journalism, sound broadcasting, photography, reporting, and editing. They also include mini-essays on various aspects of the publishing business, advising you how to place your work, where to find agents, and even how to sort out your tax problems after you hit the jackpot.
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writer's marketplaceThe Guardian Media Directory
If your writing is more geared to the mainstream media – newspapers, magazines, radio, and television, the Guardian annual directory is establishing itself as the major source of advice. It lists the addresses, phone numbers, websites and key personnel for companies in every sector of the media, from digital television to magazines, regional newspapers to publishing houses, think tanks to charities. This edition contains over 10,000 contacts and has been redesigned throughout.

There are lots of resources for writers on the Internet: the problem is knowing where to find them. Even trawling through search engine results can be time-consuming, and sometimes a dispiriting experience. Thank goodness then when somebody else has done all the research and written up the results.
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writer's marketplaceThe Internet: A Writer’s Guide
The main strength of Jane Dorner’s guide is that she is a professional writer who practices what she writes about. She writes for print and screen, and promotes her work via a personal web site. This book explores both the new opportunities for writers created by the Internet and the practicalities of publishing on your own site.

She touches on writing groups which exist in the form of mailing lists, websites, newsletters, chat groups, and conferences, and she also deals with eBooks plus annotated lists of all the sources a writer could possibly wish for – from libraries to bookshops, dictionaries to writing circles, newspapers to writing style guides, electronic publishers to free Internet service providers.
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Writer’s Market
This provides no-nonsense advice and authoritative guidance you need to get published and to get paid. With updated listings and ‘need-to-know’ publishing advice, Writer’s Market gives writers over 4,000 listings for consumer magazines, book publishers, trade journals, and contests and awards. It also includes complete contact information for fifty top literary agents.

There are dynamic interviews with established writers, plus publishers, editors and successful freelancers. This is essential publishing information and advice, including pay rates, a guide to book publisher imprints and valuable self-marketing tips. If you want to find out what’s available, or if you are really serious about placing what you have written with a commercial publisher – then sooner or later you will need one of these books. There are others, but these are the best; and every professional writer I have known has one or more of them on the shelf.
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writer's marketplaceWriters’ Questions and Answers
Writers who wish to publish their work are often baffled by some of the mysteries of the publishing process itself. How can you get the attention of a publisher? Do you need an agent? How much can you expect to get paid? Should you submit an outline – or the complete work? Gordon Wells’ book answers these question, plus lots more which are frequently asked by people trying to get a foothold in the world of published writing.

The press always seems to have stories of first-time authors who have been paid a five or six-figure advance for their first novel. But those who have tried to do the same thing know that it’s a far more common experience to be dealing with rejection slips. How do you break into this seemingly charmed world?

Well, these guidance notes certainly tell you how to learn from rejection – and what to do about it. The advice is all practical, realistic, and based on the clear-eyed realisation that if you wish to succeed in this extremely competitive world – you need to know how it works.

Wells tackles all the most frequently asked questions – Who is the best person to approach with your masterpiece? Does vanity publishing work? What makes a best-seller? What if somebody poaches your ideas? Which publishers pay best?

If you want to move beyond the comforts of your local writers’ circle into the world of commercial publishing, you should read what he has to say. Keep dreams of success in mind by all means, but take the trouble to learn how professional writers actually work.
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The Writer's MarketWriter’s Market UK 2009
This is a huge, 1,000 page compendium of advice, resources, and detailed information on how writers can locate markets and get their work into print. It has feature articles written by well-known authors giving advice on breaking into print. These are surrounded by listings of publishers, magazines, literary agents, and broadcast outlets. Then come specialized resources such as prizes and competitions, bursaries and fellowships, writers groups, and web sites.

The feature articles are precisely the sort of advice that aspirant writers are most likely to want and need. How to tackle the various genres of fiction writing: the short story, children’s writing, crime, and the novel. What agents and publishers are looking for – and how to approach them. Writing for radio, the Web, newspapers and magazines are all covered well,

There are essays on how books are designed, financed, and marketed, plus why you should know about contracts and legal issues. There are articles on the odd but very profitable field of ghost writing, and when you have made lots of money how to deal with agents, and how to promote your work once it’s published.

There are huge listings of bursaries, prizes, competitions, writers’ foundations, and all sorts of support to help the struggling want-to-be. And testing it out for being up to date, I found all sorts of on line resources for would-be writers: magazines, forums, self-help groups, web sites full of resources, writing software, plus competitions and prizes.

Given the differences in page and font sizes, it’s difficult to do a direct quantitative comparison with its two main rivals, but having looked through all three recently, I’d say that this gives the other two a very good run for their money.
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© Roy Johnson 2009

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