I’m a writing craft book junky. I’ve been studying writing, writing process, and story telling for 40 years, and I still find writing craft books inspiring. To me, craft books are a look behind the curtain at how stories work, and attempt to explain how writing blossoms to be more than the sum of its parts. Here you will find a curated list of excellent craft books. I have my favorites but any of these is worth full study.
As a memoirist, I’ve developed a taste for memoir craft books as well. Memoir is having its dat/week/decade, and if you write memoir, you know how tricky the craft is. Fortunately, you are traveling a well-worn path. Many others have dropped bread crumbs along the way to help guide your spirit and pen through the folds of memory.
General Writing Craft Books
- Cron, Lisa. 2016. Story Genius. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press.
- King, Stephen. 2000. On Writing. New York: Scribner.
- Maass, Donald. 2016. The Emotional Craft of Fiction. Writer’s Digest Books.
- McCann, Colum. 2017. Letters to a Young Writer. New York: Random House.
- McPhee, John. 2017. Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
- Saunders, George. 2021. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. New York: Random House.
- Zinsser, William. 1998. On Writing Well. New York: Harper Perennial.
Memoir Craft Books
- Goldberg, Natalie. 2016. Writing Down the Bones. Boulder: Shambhala.
- Karr, Mary. 2015. The Art of Memoir. New York: Harper Perennial.
- Lamott, Anne. 1994. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York: Anchor Books.
- Larson, Thomas. 2007. The Memoir and the Memoirist. Ohio: Swallow Press.
- Silverman, Sue William. 2009. Fearless Confessions: A Writers guide to Memoir. Athens: The University of Georgia Press.
- Zinsser, William. 2004. Writing About Your Life. New York: Marlowe & Company.
- Zinsser, William, ed. 1998. Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir. Boston: Mariner Books.
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