Writing Resource List

[Klarion]

About Writing​

Hello everyone!

This thread contains a collection of writing-related texts (many available online), applications, videos, infographics, etc. for your use. I will be posting in this thread periodically to share additional resources or reading, and absolutely invite you to do the same. We’re all here to help each other learn and have fun writing, after all!

To make it easier to find particular items, I organized my lists based on when they published or re-published. You don’t have to do this if you make your own list(s), but I’d appreciate it if you would at least label your items with a bolded heading for organization.

** Note: On the darker themes, it might be harder to distinguish between links and regular text. Hover over titles, not author names/dates to find a link.

Thank you and I hope you find some of these useful. If any of the links don't work, please let me know.

Essential Viewing/Reading

(This section includes mostly free and online-accessible texts, except for Backwards and Forwards. Backwards and Forwards is a book intended for screenwriters and playwrights, but I would encourage you to buy and read it anyway. David Ball has great advice for beginning a story, writing individual scenes, and structuring your plot, and plus it’s a fairly short and easy read. All of these texts, however, are worthwhile for aspiring writers.)

1983 David Ball Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays
1994 Anne Lamott Shitty First Drafts
1999 Christopher Vogler Stages of The Hero’s Journey
2003 Gotham Writers’ Workshop Writing Fiction: The Practical Guide
2004 Christopher Booker, TV Tropes The Seven Basic Plots

Online Writing Resources

(The Online Writing Resources includes, you guessed it, resources for writers available online. Some are Youtube videos, others are infographics, but all are free to view and use.)

The New York Times First Chapters: New Books Start Here
Purdue University Purdue Online Writing Lab
Gotham Writers’ Workshop Humor Writing - Publications and Podcasts
Gotham Writers’ Workshop Resources/Reading Lists
Goodreads Medicine and Literature
Goodreads Darkest Books Of All Time
2014 JP Morgan Creating The Hero’s Journey
2017 P.S. Hoffman 19 Current Resources for Horror Fiction Writers
2018 Sara McGuire Hero’s Journey in 6 Iconic Movies

Useful Writing Applications

(The applications and web pages listed below are useful for proofreading, checking your grammar, or writing in-browser and distraction-free.)

Hemingway Editor
Scrivener (Free Trial Available)
10 Free Writing Apps and Tools
Calmly Writer Online (Distraction-free Writing)
Grammarly Grammar Check

Short Stories

(This section is short, mainly because it would take way too long for me to amass all the short stories I know and love. The book listed is a great and pretty modern take on short stories.)

2000 Daniel Halpern The Art of the Story: An International Anthology of Contemporary Short Stories

Writing Theory

(The Writing Theory section contains texts that are either extremely long or short, but each one grants the reader insight into the impact language has on an audience, how rhetoric changes the effect of your writing, and theories about how, exactly, writers decide what to write.)

1921 T.S. Eliot Tradition and the Individual Talent
1970 Edwin Black The Second Persona
1975 Walter J. Ong The Writer’s Audience is Always a Fiction
1982 Douglas Park The Meanings of “Audience”
1983 Mikhail Bakhtin The Dialogic Imagination
1985 James A. Reither Writing and Knowing: Toward Redefining the Writing Process
1985 Arthur E. Walzer Articles from the "California Divorce Project": A Case Study of the Concept of Audience
1986 James E. Porter Intertextuality and the Discourse Community
1987 Peter Elbow Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience
2010 Joseph Defazio, Josette Jones, Felisa Tennant and Sara Anne Hook Academic Literacy: The Importance and Impact of Writing Across the Curriculum – A Case Study
2010 David Beard The Case for a Major in Writing Studies

Book Recommendations (About Writing)

(This section contains some books I’ve read in university and on my own time that I feel have really affected how I write. I think they really indicate the hidden strength being a writer has and give great advice for how to improve your confidence as a writer.)

4th Century B.C. Aristotle Poetics
1918 William Strunk, Jr, E.B. White The Elements of Style
1981 Peter Elbow Writing with Power
1998 Christopher Vogler The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers
2002 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
2004 Charles Bazerman, Paul Prior What Writing Does and How It Does It
2016 Linda Adler-Kassner, Elizabeth Wardle Naming What We Know, Classroom Edition: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies
2016 Martha J. Kolln, Loretta S. Gray Rhetorical Grammar: Grammatical Choices, Rhetorical Effects (This is a classroom version so you will likely be able to find it cheaper elsewhere)