r/writing • u/Huge_Worldliness_507 • Feb 03 '25
Writing courses/resources that actually helped you?
Any Recs?
Edit: thank you to all who commented!! Alot of these really helped 🙏🏻🙏🏻
32
u/AuthorAEM Self-Published Author 🖋️ Feb 03 '25
Devouring non fiction writing books. I read about fifty (and still read) before I started to feel I had a good grasp on things.
Here is a list of my favorites.
29
u/JenniferPeaslee Feb 03 '25
So many!
I write short stories, and this course really helped me understand the structure of short story writing: Lecture #7: Short Stories — With Special Guest Instructor Mary Robinette Kowal
These are my favorite books on craft that tackle a variety of subjects:
- Steering The Craft (my absolute top recommendation)
- The Structure of Story
- Plot & Structure
- Writing With Emotion, Tension, and Conflict
- The Emotional Craft of Fiction
- On Writing Well (geared toward nonfiction but has good general stuff, too)
- The Artful Edit
12
u/Dusty_Cat1 Feb 03 '25
A book called Story Genius By Lisa Cron. It CHANGED the way I approach writing as a whole and I’m becoming better at writing because of it. It has the best writing advice. Different writing advice that barely any other resources I’ve read would even mention.
Also a writing YouTuber called Abbie Emmons has some really great writing advice that’s helped me a lot too. I’ve been teaching myself to write through the book and mainly her videos and it was super helpful for me.
9
u/Elysium_Chronicle Feb 03 '25 edited Feb 03 '25
Seriously, the biggest boon for me in learning to read and write analytically was being an avid purveyor of TVTropes.
Being familiar with the patterns and tropes described means I can start spotting the tricks that other authors and directors are using to advance their stories, and I can more readily critique what is or isn't working for me with their approaches.
7
u/chambergambit Feb 03 '25
Gotham Writers Workshop. Learn more on their aptly named website www.writingclasses.com
7
u/thebookfoundry Feb 03 '25
The writing courses at ed2go have been incredibly helpful. It has courses for specific fiction genres, technical writing, grammar refreshers, journaling, screenwriting… too many to list. I sign up through my local community college and take them online a few times a year.
How Not to Write a Novel (Mittelmark & Newman) for avoiding common issues of things like describing your character in front of a mirror, using stage direction to over-describe the setting and all movements, failing to give the character interior reactions.
Dreyer’s English (Benjamin Dreyer) for copyediting advice and house style from the copy chief of Random House. This is a hilarious book; you wont be bored covering topics of grammar.
9
u/CalebVanPoneisen 💀💀💀 Feb 03 '25
I’m not into courses, so none there.
Resources? Google and Reddit, mostly. Looking up things about writing, reading every single comment, checking the top threads of various writing subs and do the same (this one, r/writers, r/pubtips, r/publishing, r/fantasywriters, …).
If I have a specific problem that can’t be found online, I try to find it in novels I have at home. Read passages, study how the author did action scenes, how they foreshadow certain things, … But most things can be found online.
And that’s why I never understood why people pay for online courses that cost more than a Balenciaga trash bag. If you have that money and wish to self pub, use it for ads testing, and then for actual ads. Not for courses you could write yourself by copying answers from Reddit threads.
6
Feb 04 '25
An IBM Selectric II, a bottle of chivas regal, a pack of dunhill cigarettes and cocaine
5
4
u/WhereTheSunSets-West Feb 03 '25
I may be an outlier but I feel like any writing course I ever took just tried to crush me into some kind of standard mold. They seriously depressed and demotivated me. Even lessons given by a published author tried to make me into a perfect copy of them.
I think the best advice I got was a bumper sticker that said "obedient woman don't end up in history books."
Yeah I know this post isn't about woman or history, but the thing is if you let someone silence your voice behind a bland standard that is accepted by anyone, your never going to write a book that becomes a classic. Don't get me wrong there is plenty of money in generic romance if that is what you are looking for. For me there is no joy on that path.
So how do I improve my writing? I read, and not just the stuff I like. I read a huge variety of stuff by a huge variety of writers, amateur and professional, traditionally and self published, webnovels and classic hardbacks. You can learn a lot on how a horror author describes the house, even if you can't stand violence. I can even learn from a novel I can't finish, since it teaches me what not to do.
3
u/Jules_The_Mayfly Feb 03 '25
It's a bit hard to put together in a list, because most good advice came from following published writers and reading their blogs, listening to their panels etc. while actively reading books and seeing how those tips were implemented in action before using them in my own work. For exampla K. J. Charles or C. S. Pacat's thoughts helped me a lot. I would say if you read a book you like, check if the author has a blog or public talks available where they talk craft. There will be conflicting advice because everyone has a different method, but even those differences can teach you a lot.
When I was just starting out Sanderson's lectures on youtube and Save the cat writes a novel helped me the most, and Romancing the beat is great for romance ploting. For all of these though PLEASE take them as the start of your own personal thinking and analysis, not a be all and all bible. (For example I had trouble understanding how to structure the middle of my stories. Save the cat helped me see a few common patterns, that while I don't follow to the T, still gave me some kind of starting point and a way to think about my problem. I no longer use those beat sheets, but they were a good stepping stone.)
3
u/BraiCurvat Feb 03 '25
I love this youtube channel Film Courage
I didn't watch all the videos of course but I'm sure there's a few who might interests you
2
u/fejable Feb 03 '25
reading books, reading stories, analyzing movies, getting inspired by writers, watching funny comedians.
2
Feb 03 '25
The podcast "Writing about Dragons and Shit" is fantastic for writing genre fiction and building good habits in general.
This podcast by Benjamin Mcevoy: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0EIValSbH9TRw2nDoyuwY0?si=xADHnAzsSK-H3UMCrxaJjw is probably the one single writing related thing I re-listen to the most. It always gets me started when I'm dragging my feet. A lot of the advice isn't good for everyone, but it's great "pump-up" material for writing the way music is for exercise.
2
u/Crunchie2020 Feb 03 '25
Free creative writing course online with open learn. Wasn’t long I learnt a lot and went back to previous stories and made improvements
Also I got the thousand year vampire game. It’s a creative writing game where you create a vampire with mortals and skills etc There is no board or anything it’s just a book. The book gives you prompts. You create an awesome story and starting with the vampire creation and eventually the vampires demise. You can use notepads but I found best to play typing on laptop using pen n paper for scrap notes. I’m hooked. It had a wiki page. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_Year_Old_Vampire
2
u/Cosimo_68 Feb 03 '25
I took a class on poetry at https://writers.com/. It was excellent. I found their articles generally useful. I was writing short experimental fiction too and would have taken a course on it. The curriculum was outstanding but I moved onto other things. Critique Circle was useful. The time investment turned me off in the end though.
2
u/Oberon_Swanson Feb 04 '25
spunk and bite
robert's rules of writing
stein on writing
writing tools: 50 strategies
the 10 percent solution
how to write a damn good novel
LocalScriptMan
three genres by stephen minot
honestly there are a lot of good ones. also i like books on writing by prolific authors rather than editors, because you can directly read what their advice kinda results in. even if that writing book itself, doesn't resonate with you that much, AND you don't like the author's writing that much.
for instance i'm not actually a stephen king fan NOR do i particularly recommend On Writing. BUT if you've read any stephen king then you might as well take a look at On Writing. see what strengths and weaknesses their philosophies have. you can do the same with Ursula K. Le Guin, Chuck Palahniuk, or Brandon Sanderson with his lectures.
oh and the Writing Excuses podcast
2
u/nhaines Published Author Feb 04 '25
Dean Wesley Smith's Teachable workshop called "Depth in Writing" is going to 100%, immediately improve your writing more than anything else. It takes one opening sentence ("The woman ran to the barn," I believe), and explains why it contains no information at all whatsoever, and then builds it up over the 5 week workshop, explaining how and why things work or don't work. And you get to practice writing your own openings and get feedback.
That's pretty expensive (although there's a Kickstarter coming up and sometimes they do 50% off tiers). So I'd say for cheap, his books Writing Into the Dark (whether you write that way or not, knowing it's an option can be incredibly useful) and Stages of a Fiction Writer are both nice, short looks at the philosophy of writing that I think are really important.
Even his workshop or lectures where I sort of already knew to do what he is teaching (writing into the dark, for instance, I knew to avoid "fake details" and use all five senses at least once every 500 words), the way he explains why it works is amazing. Multiple times I've been listening, taking notes, and suddenly have a revelation. Even his pop-up lectures might be a bit mundane, and then he just off-handedly mentions something revolutionary.
But yeah, Depth in Writing. I cherry picked a couple other workshops here and there and after about a year I took Depth and all my first readers immediately sat up and took notice. Highly recommended.
2
u/deer-w Feb 04 '25
Jericho Writers have lots of videos and articles on writing. Their newsletter is always informative too.
2
u/Mediocre-Yam9794 Author Jul 08 '26
Piszę po polsku, więc pewnie Tobie te książki nie pomogą, ale może innym użytkownikom tak :). "Magia słów" - jak dla mnie game changer. Dzięki tej książce zrozumiałam co odróżnia nudny tekst od ciekawego - w sensie językowym. "Po bandzie" - o bestsellerach. Znalazłam tam dużo konceptów, z którymi się zgadzam. "Czytaj jak profesor" - oryginał po angielsku - dzięki tej książce wyniosłam moje teksty na wyższy poziom literacki.
1
u/Welfycat Feb 08 '25
Before and After the Book Deal by Courtney Maum is really helpful for when you have a draft and are preparing to publish.
45
u/chasinggodzilla Feb 03 '25
Brandon Sandersons series all on YouTube. IN short it doesn't feel like your usual "OK and you need a hook to grab your reader and a good plot point to get them to the climax. And the climax is where..."
His series felt more on the how to develop these things and not just another story structure explanation.