How to Write Magical Words: A Writer’s Companion, Ed. by Edmund R. Schubert – review

If you love to read science fiction/fantasy/horror, you may have also given thought about one day writing it, or you might be attempting to make writing your career now. There are many books on the market to guide your paths, and they are of varying degrees of value. Stephen King’s On Writing is one of the best I’ve read, but there’s one I read recently that I feel is even better, and more helpful, than that one–How to Write Magical Words: A Writer’s Companion, edited by Edmund R. Schubert.

The useful and instructional book is made up of a series of essays that originally appeared at the website MagicalWords.net and written by a veritable Who’s Who of talented and famous authors:  Faith Hunter, David Coe, A.J. Hartley, Stuart Jaffe, Misty Massey, C.E. Murphy, and Edmund R. Schubert.  In the essays they share the benefit of their vast knowledge with the readers of this book for a small fraction of the cost it would take to attend a writing seminar or Writer’s Retreat. Their advice is designed to transform their readers not only into better writers, but also into more marketable ones. After all, the bottom line is to write well enough and to get enough notice by agents and publishers to get your work published, and to put food in your mouth and a roof over your head.

What, you may be asking yourselves, do the essays cover? Is it worth it for you to get this book, and to include it in your library as a personal reference tool you’ll want to keep going back to for advice over the years? Here is a list of the main topics (each heading is followed by several subtopics that are related):

- In The Beginning…
- Characters, Dialogue & Point of View
- Butt In Chair
- On Writing Fantasy
- Self-Editing
- The Business
- A Writer’s Life

The titles of them alone should give you some idea of what the book can teach you, and how you can benefit from reading and studying the essays and lessons it goes into. The subtopics often have creative and imaginative titles, like “The Gregorovich-Feister Idea Farm and Fresh Market,” (A Writer’s Life) by Misty Massey, “Lasagna and Info Dumps,” (Butt In Chair) by Faith Hunter, “Slotted Spoons and the ABC(D)s of Beta Readers,” (Self-Editing) by A.J. Hartley, and “The Leading Edge of the Slog,” (Butt In Chair) by David Coe.

Essays like “With Worldbuilding, Every Detail Counts,” I found very fascinating, because how well and how thoroughly an author creates or builds the worlds s/he is writing about adds to the realism and interest of their writing, and doing that generally equals higher sales and a bigger fan base. Worldbuilding is something that can make or break a novel, and how well authors succeed at worldbuilding is often discussed in reviews of their books. One detail that just doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of them can be jarring to the reader, and affect his/her opinion about an author and his/her work negatively. It was interesting to read about this topic from the inside-out, so to speak.

What’s more, each essay is supplemented at its conclusion by additional comments from other contributors to the book. It’s almost like going to a writing seminar, because you get valuable information and insights from several writers on each topic that’s covered. However, it’s even better than most, if not all, seminars, because it’s much cheaper, and once you buy the book, you have it forever and can refer back to it whenever you choose.

One of the best aspects about the book, besides the light-hearted and humorous manner many of the essays are written in, is that it offers specific, detailed advice on how to sell your book. As much as you might genuinely love to write, it’s much better to be a wealthy artist than a starving one. Hardly anyone is an “overnight success,” of course, but there are certain methods to go about things like “Networking” (Stuart Jaffe), “Business Realities for the Beginning Writer,” and “Royalties,” by C.E. Murphy (all in the section titled “The Business”) that will help you on the road to selling your short stories and novels.

I haven’t read everything, or even close to everything, each author who contributed to How to Write Magical Words has written, but each has significant experience in writing and has faced the difficulties that can be involved getting their work to print and to their readers. I’ve read A.J Hartley’s awesome novel, Will Power, Faith Hunter’s very cool Skinwalker novel Blood Cross, and a great short story by David Coe in the anthology about dragons titledd Dragon’s Lure: Legends of a New Age, but nothing else by them so far.

How to Write Magical Words: A Writer’s Companion is a valuable resource that is always informative and frequently humorous. It’s a book that all authors will find informative, and it’s a must-have for beginning writers. Check it out today!