Roni’s Favorite Resources for Writers

Books:

• Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting That You’ll Ever Need by Blake Snyder
• My Story Can Beat Up Your Story by Jeffrey Alan Schechter
• The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Psychological Trauma by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi
• Story Trumps Structure by Steven James
• Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel by Lisa Cron
• Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell
• Goal, Motivation, & Conflict by Debra Dixon
• On Writing by Stephen King
• Dear Writer, You Need to Quit by Becca Syme
• Hooked by Les Edgerton (about beginnings)
• The Art of War for Writers by James Scott Bell
• Sin and Syntax by Constance Hale

Websites:

• Writer Unboxed - Helpful articles by a number of different writers
• Kill Zone - This blog is meant for mystery and suspense writers but has helpful posts that can apply to all kinds of writers. This is also where James Scott Bell (one of my favorite writers on writing) blogs.
• Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds (warning for lots of profanity) - Chuck covers a lot of things on his blog, but his posts for writers are always full a great, helpful tidbits.

Classes:

• Write Better Faster and Strengths for Writers by Becca Syme - to learn about your personality and how it affects your process (life-changing stuff for me)
• Michael Hauge's classes on character journey (I've attended these in person at RWA conferences so I can't speak to the online options.)
• Sarra Cannon's HB90 Quarterly Planning Bootcamp class - This is more about productivity but Sarra is a writer and is coming from that perspective. She also has a lot of free YouTube videos.
• The RWA annual conference - the volume and variety of classes is worth the trip (plus you come home with a ton of free books!)
• Local writers conferences. These can vary in quality but I've had good experience with a few, including DFWCon.
• Local RWA groups usually have a monthly workshop/speaker and it's cheap to join.