One of the best books on writing that I have ever read is
_On Writing Well_, subtitled "An Informal Guide to Writing
Non-Fiction," by William Zinsser.  The book itself is an
example of good writing.  Once I began reading, I could hardly
put it down.
 
It is full of just plain good advice:
 
"Rewriting is the essence of writing."
 
"You will never make a mark as a writer unless you develop a
respect for words and a curiosity about their shades of meaning
that is almost obsessive."
 
"You are writing primarily to entertain yourself, and if you go
about it with confidence you will also entertain the readers who
are worth writing for."
 
"Most adverbs are unnecessary.  You will clutter your sentence
and annoy your reader if you choose a verb with a precise meaning
and then add an adverb that carries precisely the same meaning.
Don't tell us that the radio blared loudly.  Don't write that
someone clenched his teeth tightly.  Again and again in careless
writing, self-sufficient verbs are weakened by adverbs."
 
Do you have a favorite book on writing?  Please tell me about it.

28 responses total.

I like George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language". One quote,
somewhat out of context:
        "If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst
        follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary
        dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity
        will be obvious, even to yourself."

The book that I'm currently reading, and is also the one
that sparked my interest in writing is :

_The No-Experience-Necessary  Writers Courese_
 _A Unique stress-free approach for anyone who has ever wanted to write_

by Scott Edelstein.

Strunk and White is a classic that endures.

Books by good writers, properly approached, become lessons on how
to write well.  Study the fiction of Nabokov, the essays of Lionel
Trilling.

Re #0:  Zinsser's advice is good, but if I may be so bold as to
say so, I think I can improve on his writing a bit.  I'd rephrase
the second quote as:

        You will never make a mark as a writer unless
        you develop a respect for words and a 
        near-obsessive curiosity about their shades
        of meaning.

The quote about unnecessary adverbs commits a sin close to that
which it criticizes.  I'll leave it to the curious reader to
discover where.

It's the passive voice, of course.  Zinsser doesn't profess to be a
perfect writer, just a hard-working one.

(This is a little off-topic, but applies to John's reworded quote.  Always
look for the word "that" in your writing.  You can nearly always get
rid of it.  I picked up this tip from the writer's conference on BIX.)

re #2:  Another book by Scott Edelstein that I enjoyed reading is _The
Indispensable Writer's Guide_.  Instead of being a primer on writing,
it is a book on how build a writing career.

While criticizing unnecessary adverbs, Zinsser uses one.

The full reference for Strunk and White is:

   William Strunk, Jr.  _The Elements of Style_, 3rd Edition.
   With Revisions, an Introduction, and a Chapter on Writing
   by E.B. White.  (Macmillan, 1979)

Short book (less than 100 pages), lots of good advice.

I picked up a copy of that when I purchased my textbook for my C class. 

Also orderable by ISBN number: 0-02-418200-1 (for the paperback edition)

Also available as a program on Ibm and Macintosh machines.
The crop of grammer checking programs seems to be growing well this year.
Perhaps I should buy one ?
.

Strunk and White on a computer?!  As an English major, that seems
almost sacreligious.  Also sounds like a good idea, but that never
seems to matter to most of my professors.

as an english major, you should know that the dependent clause introducing
your second sentence modifies the subject, i.e., "that," which makes very
little sense. (you should know this especially because strunk & white
make a point of exposing this common error: "being in a dilapidated 
condition, i was able to buy the house cheaply." if strunk and white is
available in a format compatible with your computer, you should probably
go for it.

Re #10:
That was more than rude.

From now on, I shall exercise extreme care in my BBS writing.  I did not
realize that what I write here is subject to such exacting criticism.

I believe that what I wrote is called an eliptical sentence.  Granted
it is not great writing, but I think it is acceptable informal writing.
If GREX is a formal writing situation, someone failed to tell me.

Excuse me, that should have been "elliptical."  Typo.  If my writing 
is to be graded, I should avoid such grievous errors.

i know it's difficult to judge tones over line, but what i intended was
an english-crowd "in" joke. please, nobody be alarmed--this is not the
return of the grammar nazis.

jeepers.

I use the program RightWriter on the stuff I write, mostly to catch
long sentences and passive voice.  It's also good for catching some
typos like an incorrect article and double words.  The program is
useful, but it certainly leaves a lot to be desired.

I have a few somewhat obscure books to bring up here.  Some aren't exactly
billed as books on writing but fit that billing to a degree.  Let me
start off with a pair by James Blish, writing as "William Atheling, Jr.":
_The Issue at Hand_ and _More Issues at Hand_.  These had their origin in
a book-review column in a SF fanzine in the 1950s.  They're written rather
abrasively (by intention, I believe) and full of good stuff as well as some
questionable stuff.  (I should add that they were my introduction to some
of the stories reviewed, some 20 years later, and for the most part the
reviews were on target.)

What stands out most sharply in my memory of them is the discussions of
what Blish called "said-bookism", that particularly obnoxious form of
elegant variation in which synonyms for "said" range wider and wider.  I
will quote one of these discussions at length, for flavor, and then log
out.

    His dialogue is terrible.  All the speakers sound alike, and all of them
  sound like the narrative passages--that is, like Mr. Zirul himself.
  The text betrays an obvious reason for this failure.  Mr. Zirul has
  concentrated upon *how* a thing is said, to the exclusion of *what* is
  said, which is exactly the wrong way to write dialogue.  How do we
  know he's done this?  An informal count of his speech-tags betrays it
  at once.  About half of the 15,000 words of this story are dialogue,
  at a minimum estimate, and in the 7,500 words of miscellaneous yatter,
  the characters actually *say* something only twenty-seven times.  For
  the rest of the yarn they shout (six times), repeat, snap (twice),
  order (four times), stammer, observe (five times), ask (sixteen times),
  lecture, argue, "half-whisper," muse, call sigh (four times), nod,
  agree (three times), report (three times), cry, yell, command, bark,
  scream (twice), guess, state (twice, both times "flatly"), add,
  suggest, chide, propose, announce, explain, exclaim, admit, growl,
  chuckle (twice), sneer, answer, mutter (twice), resume, gasp, bellow
  (twice), roar (twice), grunt, quote, fume, write (twice), continue
  and blare--a total of 89 more or less legitimate substitutes for "said",
  not counting about an equal number of illegitimate ones which we'll get
  to below.
    Obviously, Mr. Zirul has in his possession a table or book of such
  substitutes, either compiled by himself or bought with good money, and
  he is using it to give his dialogue "variety."  There are many reasons
  why this is a self-defeating project, of which three are important.
  For one thing, it is over-emphatic.  Mr. Zirul has never met any group
  of people who used so many different tones of voice in conversation,
  and neither has anyone else.  Such an assemblage of "said" substitutes
  cannot fail to make the story in which it is used sound to the ear
  like five minutes before feeding time in a bear pit.  Secondly, it is
  redundant.  All sixteen of the speeches tagged by Mr. Zirul with the
  word "asked" end with question-marks; that is sufficient.  When
  a character repeats a word after another character, we do not need
  to be told that "he repeated"; we can see that.  When a character
  says "N-No, sir," it is wasted ink to add, "he stammered."
    Third, it inevitably leads even writers less tone-deaf than Mr. Zirul
  into morasses of approximation and bollixed construction.  It is only
  a short step from the dubious "he half-whispered" to a speech-tag like
  "he tinned," which is meaningless unless it is soldering you are writing
  about.  (How, I wonder, did Mr. Zirul manage to leave out that favorite
  speech-tag of lady corn-huskers, "he husked?")  Then you abandon tags
  which represent sounds (although these are the only legitimate reasons
  for using speech-tags other than "said"--it is impossible, for instance,
  to suggest in the speech itself that the character is whispering) and
  begin to substitute facial expressions ("he smiled," "he beamed,"
  "he smirked," "he sneered"--what a procession into hysteria!) or
  gestures("he winced," "he shrugged").  Pretty soon you are turning
  nowns("he understated") or adjectives ("he flustered") into verbs, and
  your gestures have left the realm of emotional expression altogether
  ("he pointed").  The final step in this dismal process--and Mr. Zirul
  takes them all, all the way out to the end--is to start dropping
  entire sentences into the middle of your speeches, sentences which
  have nothing at all to do with your characters' manner of speaking,
  but instead only tell what *else* they are doing while they are talking,
  and hence split their speeches in two without taking any part in them.
  This results in a text which reads, as Mr Zirul's frequently does, like
  a freshman translation from the German.

I have a couple more (at least), but after rereading this entire item,
perhaps I should say: Strunk & White is indeed invaluable.  Similarly
(but at greater length) Fowler's _Modern English Usage_.  (I prefer the
first ed., but 2nd is good too.)  Like Strunk & White it's more a book
about the elements which make up writing than the craft as a whole;
also like S&W (but more often) , it's sometimes dated; in both cases,
the authors fought some battles that have been pretty much completely
lost by now.

There's a pamphlet by Ursala K. Le Guin, _From Elfland to Poughkeepsie_,
about some important aspects of the writing of fantasy.  I think it may
still be available.  To sum up her point in one sentence:  to carry off
fantasy, you at least have to convince the reader he's not still in
Poughkeepsie, & a lot of writers don't.  (I know, there are fantasies
set firmly in *our* world; these aren't under discussion, that's all.)
I admit to never having been anywhere near Poughkeepsie, myself ...

To quote a little bit:

   ... Here is a little excerpt from what I read.  The persons talking are
   a Duke of the blood royal of a mythical Keltic kingdom, and a warrior-
   magician - great Lords of Elfland, both of them.

      "Whether or not they succeed in the end will depend largely on
      Kelson's personal ability to manipulate the voting."
        "Can he?" Morgan asked, as the two clattered down a half-flight
      of stairs and into the garden.
        "I don't know, Alaric," Nigel replied.  "He's good - damned good -
      but I just don't know.  Besides, you saw the key council lords.  With
      Ralson dead and Bran Coris practically making open accusations -
      well, it doesn't look good."
        "I could have told you that at Cardosa."

   At this point I was interrupted (perhaps by a person from Porlock, I don't
   remember), and the next time I sat down I happened to pick up a different
   kind of novel, a real Now novel, naturalistic, politically conscious,
   relevant, set in Washington, D.C.  Here is a sample of a conversation from
   it, between a Senator and a lobbyist for polution control.

      "Whether or not they succeed in the end will depend largely on
      Kelson's personal ability to manipulate the voting."
        "Can he?" Morgan asked, as the two clattered down a half-flight
      of stairs and into the White House garden.
        "I don't know, Alaric," Nigel replied.  "He's good - damned good -
      but I just don't know.  Besides, you saw the key committee chairmen.
      With Ralson dead and Brian Coris practically making open accusations -
      well, it doesn't look good."
        "I could have told you that at Poughkeepsie."

(I may as well add that Blish is strong on the same critique of a lot of SF,
rightly in my judgment, in _The Issue at Hand_.)  This is quite brief - 28
pages, originally a speech at the second annual Science Fiction Writers'
Workshop in 1972.  My own opinion is that anyone who plans to write fantasy
(probably including "contemporary urban fantasy", though as I say that's not
really her topic) or even SF should probably read this.  Not that you can't
do it right otherwise, but it may make you aware of both what to do and what
to avoid.

One more, for now.  I'm going to mention a book that probably no one else
here has ever seen, Oliver La Farge's _The Man with the Calabash Pipe_.
This is a posthumous collection of his weekly columns (from the Santa Fe
_New Mexican_ over 13 years), and only one part is explicitly concerned
with writing ... but the rest can stand as an example, too.  The reflections
on language & writing are pretty varied, some abstract, as in this:

       Different languages work in vastly different ways, and grow
     differently.  English, like all the Indo-European languages, is deeply
     concerned with time.  It is almost impossible to make a sentence that
     does not express the idea of past, present, or future.  Our daily
     thinking, our mathematics, even our nuclear physics, are all
     conditioned by this concern with time, and the point of view
     towards it that is built into our daily speech.
       So vigorous a language as Navaho is also growing and increasing
     its capabilities, but it is little concerned with time.  Tense is
     less developed.  Navaho, however, pays detailed attention to the
     nature of an action.  We say "I throw," meaning any one of a series
     of actions that causes any object, or several objects, to move through
     the air.  To us, it's all throwing.
       Navaho finds that inadequate.  Throwing a rope is not the same
     as throwing a ball, and both those actions are different from throwing
     a handful of gravel.  The verb reflects these differences.  To us,
     Navaho seems under-developed in regard to time; to a Navaho, English
     is sadly inaccurate in regard to the nature of an action.

La Farge's own writing is meaty & vigorous.  His discussion of "regional
writing" (like everything else) is well thought out & thought-provoking.
("I have been asked to give a discourse on regional writing at the
writers' conference at the University of Utah.  In honesty I had to warn
the authorities that, if my understanding of what "regional writing" means
is correct, I'd have to talk against it.  They said that was all right.")
(Ok, so why *is* Faulkner a "regional writer" but not Dickens?)

I believe this book is in both the UM and the A2 Public Libraries.  La Farge
isn't ever likely to be considered one of the greats, more's the pity, but
I like him quite a bit for the most part.  "Spud and Cochise" (in _A Pause
in the Desert_) is one I'd offer as an (offbeat) example of how to build
a short story; it's pure pleasure.  So is almost all of this book.

An exceptionally different book for screenwriting is "Alternative 
Screenwriting," by Ken Dancyger.

My Bible is The Art of Fiction by John Gardner, he quotes Melville and exhorts
us to "MINE DEEPER!" Dig out the fundamental meaning of events by organizing
the imitation of reality around some primary question or hteme suggested by the
 charaacter's concern. Authors must muse on the story idea to determine what it
is in it that has attracted them, why it seems worth telling. -is  book when I
am stuck for inspiration to get through a rough passage. 

  I guess I have a favorite book which has helped me to learn to write. It's
  called "Roget's Thesaurus". Perhaps some of you have raised your brows in
  querry. A thesaurus you ask? Well, in looking up words in it, I have greatly
  expanded my
vocabulary and allowed me to write with detail and use "pinpoint" words
instead of vague, over-used ones. It has taught me to truly appreciate
the english language and to constantly learn something new. Also, I have
a good book I would like to share with you. It is called "How to Write &
Sell Your First Novel" By Oscar Collier with Frances Spatz Leighton. This
book is not really fr the advanced writer, as it contains information which
the experienced will probably already know, but it gives an excellant base for
a beginner, and for someone who is extremely bad at finishing things, it offers
a very intelligent plan for finishing a novel in 90 days.  It also provides
help in deciding what to write about and once it is written,  where to take it.
I highly recommend it for first time novel writers like myself. :)

I have the same thesaurus and I like it a lot too.  Sometimes I can't 
find the right word, and the thesaurus really helps me.  I don't think 
it's strange that it's a favorite book of yours.

And thanks for recommending the other book, I need something like that.
My creative writing class this semester has ended, and I need somewhere
to go from there!

I am certainly glad I was able to help you, Kimberly. I was reading the book
last night as the incessant white stuff blew its way to Earth, and I was just
really happy with the way the book is layed out and some of the advice in it. I
wish the book would have given more chapters to the difficult task of writing
the actual novel instead of devoting so much time to how to publish. But, we
can't always get what we want. :)

Like my nine year old sister says, "'What you want is what you get' is not 
nearly as true as 'What you get is what you get'."

Very sweet. I have a nine year old sister myself. :) 

Really?  How many years apart are the two of you?
Do you have any other siblings?
{set drift = off}
{writing conference?}

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