The Ultimate Fiction Writing Online Study Course

Purpose

Now that Oasis is “in the can” I’ve been turning back to writing, which I’ve been missing. I’ve been reviewing and reading up on a bunch of techniques and ideas.

I figured I’d organize and share a bunch of stuff that has really helped me in my quest to become an excellent writer of fiction. I’m not so arrogant as to say that I’m there yet, but at least this is stuff that has pointed me in the right direction. I’ve split it up by teachers. If you’ve been around here for a while, you may already be familiar with some of this.

Of course the thing that helps a writer most is the act of writing, but here is some good theory that’ll help refine your natural talents.

Jim Butcher

Writes fantasy novels, has plenty of writing street cred, with 10 or 15 novels published, also had a TV series made from one of his series. He has a (apparently now-defunct) livejournal where he used to lay down some of his thoughts on writing.

• Introduction
• Story Craft
• Conflict, Logical Response and Point of View
• Story Skeletons
• Characters
• The Great Swampy Middle
• Scenes
• Sequels
• Story Climax
• Putting It all Together

Randy Ingermansen

Has several published novels, and has been a regular speaker/teacher at fiction writing conferences for years. He has a lot of good, usable stuff. With permission, I’ve compiled some of the multi-part articles from his newsletter and made them into nicely formatted pdfs.

• Writing the Perfect Scene – online article
• The Snowflake Method of Writing a Novel – online article
• Ideas for Getting Published – pdf
• StoryWorld – pdf
• Dialogue and the Art of War -pdf
• How to Write a Fight Scene – pdf
• Creating Characters – pdf

Ken Follett

Ken Follett has written a slew of bestselling novels.

Ken Follett’s Masterclass

Crawford Killian

SF and Fantasy author and fiction writing professor.

He wrote a series of articles titled “Advice on Novel Writing” a while back which has been compiled and posted on a bunch of websites. Here is one such compilation: Advice on Novel Writing. Here’s the official (albeit split up by chapter) version: Write A Novel. He also has a couple of blogs you might want to check out: http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/fiction/ & http://crofsblogs.typepad.com.

Bill Johnson

Has written several plays and scripts. Helps head up a pretty large writer’s organization.

• Understanding What A Story Is
• Foundation Principles of Storytelling
• Understanding the Process of Storytelling
• Premise — Foundation of Storytelling
• Creating Dramatic Characters
• What A Plot IS
• Writing A Story Synopsis

Other Stuff

Stephen King – Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully – in Ten Minutes

Self-Editing

Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy

Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot

Final Thoughts

That’s a lot of stuff. Don’t try to chew through it all in one sitting. Your head will explode.

And again, all this is completely worthless if you don’t ever get to the part where you actually write fiction.

If there’s anything else you think should be on this list, leave a comment.