Image Credits: Most images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. Screenshots taken by me, Allison Symes.
I mentioned briefly in my Book Recommendations post last week I have used how-to-write guides (and still turn to them for reference when needed). I adore Stephen King’s On Writing, which is a great mix of memoir and writing advice. Many writers speak highly of it.
What You Need to Know and When
I often use Scrivener for Dummies (Gwen Hernandez) given Scrivener is my word processing program (though it is capable of far more than that. I can create pdfs, web pages, and mobi files, just to name a few, from this software. Scrivener is a huge program but you don’t need to know it all at once so inevitably at some point you will need to look up what you find you suddenly need to know (though there is a handy in built tutorial too).
But this applies to writing guides as a whole. As your writing develops, there will be things you discover you now need to know.
For example, when I first started writing, I was writing for me. I didn’t need to know about websites, social media, the need for marketing etc. I do now! When I started out, I needed guides on the craft of writing. Later, I needed (and still need) guides on how to develop my professional career and so on. The positive thing here is not having to know everything at once and a well written how to guide is a joy to read.
I also refer to the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook and the Mslexia Indie Press Guide for information on potential publishers. Both directories give website links so you can check out the publisher in question and see whether your book might be a good fit with what they already produce. These guides save an awful lot of wasted time – you do have to know what you’re looking for and why and these guides point you in the right direction.
Ingredients for a Decent How To Guide
What I want from a decent how to guide is:-
- A decent cross-referenced index. These make searching for things a joy. The lack of this makes searching for things a pain. The indexer’s work is invaluable.
- A decent chapter outline with bullet points as to what is inside each chapter. Makes finding things quickly easier to do. Just sometimes you do need to remind yourself of something quickly. You don’t want to be “faffing” about trying to find something you know you’ve read.
- A clear outline of what the guide is aiming to do. Makes it so much easier to work out whether this guide is for me or not.
- Good plain English used. No jargon. Layman terms. I have a deep suspicion of jargon in that I suspect most of it is unnecessary. Two of the best books in the field here are from the late and much missed Jane Wenham-Jones (You Wannabe a Writer? and You Wannabe a Writer We’ve Heard Of? Both use a lot of humour and get their points across simply).
- A good structure of what the guide is going to do for me by the time I’ve finished reading it.
- On a similar theme, no over-exaggerated promises. I want a book that guides me. I don’t want something that promises me the moon (in terms of publishing contracts etc) and then, unsurprisingly, that doesn’t happen.
- Website links I can follow up later for further information. (Contact names are useful too for directories – you get the name of an agent, say, at Agency XXX, but just be aware there can be staff turnover so names given can go out of date rapidly. Website links tend to have a longer shelf life).
The Purpose of Guides
This should be always to increase your knowledge in a chosen field. I’ve read how to guides on novel writing, short story writing, marketing, and many more besides. This was especially true when I was starting out and hadn’t yet found my “niche”, the “this is what I must absolutely write” format.
Some guides I’ve found to be more useful than others. That is fine. This is the way of these things. For me, right now, guides to the short forms of writing and marketing are the books which would be most relevant to me. The purpose you want from a guide should tie in with where you are on your writing journey and the direction in which you would like to head.
It also pays to look up guides you think might be interested in and check the reviews for them on well known online retail websites. Don’t forget sites like Goodreads as well and book related Facebook pages. These can include writer pages because the one thing you can guarantee we will talk about, as well as our own writing, are books we love or loathe. This will include the guides.
This is another reason why reviewing a book you’ve read is so useful. What you thought about a book of any kind is useful for other readers to know. I check reviews out and you quickly pick up a “general feel” for what people made of the book. For guides, which can be expensive, this is especially helpful.
Incidentally it is possible to see books like the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook in the library. Just be aware that this might not be the current year’s edition though. Most of these annual guides come out in late August/early September. Yes, they do launch that early for the Christmas market.
But one thing to watch out for is you can sometimes get discounts on the price of the directory which is about to go out of date so if not having the latest version is fine with you, this is something that could benefit you. (Check in late July/early August would be my tip here).
Conclusion
It also pays to check out the record of the person writing the guide but you should be able to do that easily enough as practically every writer has some social media presence (I’d be wary of those who don’t – you do need to know something about people who are trying to sell to you) and their own website.
There is the saying that “those who can’t, teach” which I’ve always felt to be so unfair on (a) teachers and (b) those who produce good quality how-to guides. For a start the guide writers have to draw on what they have learned over the years to be able to write the guide at all.
Indeed the best guides are those where the writer does share how their own experiences in their field come into what they have written in the guide. Even better are where they share what they learned the hard way and are sharing it with you in the guide so you don’t have to do the same thing!
But it does pay you to check that these writers do have a track record they can point at – most writers are only glad to say my experience comes from etc etc.
Do chat to other writers about the guides they’ve found most useful. This is where knowing other writers in your field or similar are so helpful. Some guides cross boundaries. I can benefit from the short story guides as well as any advice on flash fiction, say. However, poets definitely need their own specific guides!
Getting to know other writers at events etc is hugely beneficial in that, not only do you make friends, writers tend to share information and that includes things like the guides they’ve found most useful. That could pay off for you.
All writers need advice and guidance. Having that in the written form is useful. It pays to keep an eye on what is being produced now, as well as the classic guides from the past.
Related Posts:-
Read interviews with Chandler’s Ford writer Allison Symes: Part 1 and Part 2.
Read blog posts by Allison Symes published on Chandler’s Ford Today.
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