User profile

Status:
Name: JD Lasica
Nickname: JD Lasica
Member since: 2009-04-05 18:26:31
Website URL:
About me: JD Lasica is a startup founder, thriller author and journalist with a special interest in VR, AR and AI. Follow him on Twitter at @jdlasica.

Facebook profile
 

User comments

'Catch and Kill' giveaway

I posted the winners to a different page and reached out to each individual on Saturday, but may as well post it here as well! The winners of the ebook giveaway are:

Sally
Dawn
Batsheva
Suzanne
Beth
Debbie
Judy
Ali
Cathy
Jackie
Courtney
Fran
Paige
Cat
Carolyn
– where are the guys? –
Calvin (oh, there’s one)
Louise
Ziad
Elliott
David
Carl
Cassandra
Anika
Mathis
Adrienne
Rosalinda
Sarah
Florian
Chris
Kris
Jeff
Sean
Joanne
Jessica
Kim
David
Pat
Jason
Steve
Kevin

10 books to make you a better writer

More …

– You might also enjoy “Blueprint your bestseller: Organize and Revise any Manuscript with the Book Architecture Method” by Stuart Horwitz, “The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of a Blockbuster Novel” by Jodie Archer and Matthew L Jockers and “Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts” by Ryan Holiday.

10 books to make you a better writer

More …

– Here’s my ten, in no particular order,…

1. Scene and Structure, Jack M. Bickham
2. Setting, Jack M. Bickham
3. Story Trumps Structure, Steven James
4. How to Write Best Selling Fiction, Dean Koontz
5. Plot & Structure, James Scott Bell
6. Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction, Orson Scott Card, Philip Athans, Jay Lake and the Editors of Writer’s Digest (this is actually Card’s How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy and Writers Digest’s old The Writer’s Complete Fantasy Reference thrown together into one volume)
7. How to Grow a Novel, Sol Stein
8. Writing the Novel: From Plot to Print, Lawrence Block (he’s updated this — I’ve got that, too — and its new title is Writing the Novel: From Plot to Print to Pixel)
9. The Art of Dramatic Writing, Lajos Egri
10. Techniques of the Selling Writer, Dwight V. Swain (Swain was Bickham’s instructor at Univ. of Oklahoma, which is where Bickham’s Scene & Structure is rooted, and then there’s The Fantasy Fiction Formula, by Deborah Chester, who followed Bickham at Univ. of Oklahoma, and she taught Jim Butcher of Dresden Files fame — so, Swain, Bickham and Chester all pretty much teach the same thing that’s been taught in the Professional Writing program at Univ. of Oklahoma for decades, with improvements as time has worn on).

10 books to make you a better writer

Personally, I think it’s a tragedy for the Web that all discussions now take place on Facebook or Twitter rather than on blogs. But there you go. In the interests of pointing aspiring authors to other writing resources, I’ll repost a few of the suggestions I received on Facebook and Twitter:

– If You Want to Write from Brenda Ueland is pretty great too.

– The Secret of Story by Matt Bird.

– Structuring Your Novel by Meredith and Fitzgerald. That book taught how to read like a novelist and it breaks down seven novels: The Pearl and Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck, From Here To Eternity to James Jones, Madame Bovary by Flaubert, Tom Jones by Fielding, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by LeCarre, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Lee. It goes over Viewpoint, Theme, Plot or Storyline, Characters and so on. I have learned so much from reading it.

– Elmore Leonard’s ten rules for writing

– If you want to write, Brenda Ueland. On Writing, Stephen King. On Writer’s Block, Victoria Nelson.

– Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat, Libbie Hawker, Take Off Your Pants are two books I refer to constantly to help with plotting

– I probably read over 100 books on the craft now- each one helpful in their own way. I think that using Save the Cat, the Donald Mass workbook and Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell is what helped me to sell my very first attempt at a novel to a NYC editor.

Pin It on Pinterest