#MondayReads: I'm revisiting two old favorites about writing and editing, both to refresh my mind and to pick up some quotes I want to share in future blog posts and articles.
Renni Browne and Dave King's Self-Editing for Fiction Writers is a bit dated and sometimes phrases its guidance more absolutely than necessary (I don't think the occasional "he thought" is fatal). But it's still a clearly written, broadly applicable introduction to the art and practice of making your words more good on the page. The concept of "action beats" in dialogue or R.U.E. ("resist the urge to explain") would be worth the price of admission alone. It's only 220 pages, not particularity dense (the chapter-ending exercises are double-spaced, and there's the occasional comic strip), but full of useful info.
Ron Carlson Writes a Story is even shorter, just 112 pages, including the full text of the short story in question. Carlson walks you through the process of writing it, offering lots of observations and subtle tips along the way. Regardless of whether Carlson's literary fiction is your kind of thing -- it's not quite my genre, and I would not make all the creative choices he did -- many of his process suggestions ring vividly true. "The writer is the person who stays in the room." "When in doubt, include things." "Too often characters act like agents sent in by the author to 'advance the story' and not like people with hopes and fears of their own." "There are times when I don't know how to make a story better, but I can make it colder. I rewrote once only for temperature."
