100 craft books later
I've read over a hundred writing craft books. The "how to write good" books. The subtitle here is "and I still don't know wtf I'm doing." I'm not going to say, "So you don't have to." I'm going to say, "And you probably should too." Maybe not a hundred. That's a bit excessive.
Craft books generally fall into two camps. There are hugely popular authors like Stephen King and Margaret Atwood. These books are often a memoir-style, "what I think about when I think about writing" vibe. These people are not educators, may not have had the formal MFA-type education. They are not giving super concrete advice, I imagine because they don't really know how they do what they do. They are more likely to say "read the classics" than discourse on show don't tell. Their agent and publisher begged them to write this book. Don't get me wrong, I love this. These types of books are inspiring and important.
The other type of book is from people who have studied craft and ground out a formula. We may not have heard of them - or we've watched or read their work without knowing it. They are probably not A Name. They are often educators, or from other professions like journalism, and have been through the cycle. The "don't get me wrong" in this case is that their hard-fought advice is just as useful - if not more useful - than advice from those for whom writing comes as naturally as getting out of bed.
Having read so many of these books the same stories get used as examples for different structures all the time. Or different parts attributed to different beats. I've seen Hunger Games dissected a dozen different ways and I've never even read it. It's not a rule, it's a tool, people say. While talking about it like the alternative is heresy. Does this mean they are all basically the same? Does it mean people see what they want? Is it evidence just to do whatever? The answer to all of these questions is probably yes.
Not that most craft books cover wildly different structures. Even if they don't have a particular drum to bang like Save The Cat, most default to a pretty generic three-act Hero's Journey. Which makes me want to fight. There is some representation for structures like kishōtenketsu.
This isn't supposed to be a blog post complaining about the cult of structure and what we are told to sacrifice on its altar. I'll complain about that another time, any time. Plenty of writing craft books aren't about structure at all but line-level stuff, or character, or genres, and such.
Of course, we don't have to follow any of the advice in these books. We can write about whatever we want! In whatever shape or form we want! No one is stopping us! Sure, it might have limited appeal. Sure, publishers probably will not buy it. And if we self publish it, readers might avoid it, abandon it, or write pissy reviews. None of that means it's bad - it's just different. If we really want to write it, we should.
I'll post the list tomorrow and link it.