Helpful (or just fun) Guides

#7 is curious. I use a mechanical keyboard with my desktop PC and I can tell there might be some truth to it. Lately I’ve been gravitating towards writing on the laptop instead, and perhaps the issue is precisely the rhythmic noise.
 
I'm an old man, turned 90 Friday, and, I've been writing for years as a hobby, but never had a class in writing, and I've had no idea of passive/ active, as well as so much more about writing. I'd love to find a book about writing, very basic of course. any advice.
Purely for writing fiction, I enjoyed "Writing Great Fiction: Storytelling Tips and Techniques" by James Hynes. I listened on Audible - it's free as part of the Great Courses.

But mostly I find books on editing to be more useful. Recently I've listened to "Effective Editing: How to Take Your Writing to the Next Level" by Molly McCowan (also from the Great Courses), and "Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing", by Tiffany Yates Martin.
 
Purely for writing fiction, I enjoyed "Writing Great Fiction: Storytelling Tips and Techniques" by James Hynes. I listened on Audible - it's free as part of the Great Courses.

But mostly I find books on editing to be more useful. Recently I've listened to "Effective Editing: How to Take Your Writing to the Next Level" by Molly McCowan (also from the Great Courses), and "Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing", by Tiffany Yates Martin.
Thank you, I'll try them.
 
I'm an old man, turned 90 Friday, and, I've been writing for years as a hobby, but never had a class in writing, and I've had no idea of passive/ active, as well as so much more about writing. I'd love to find a book about writing, very basic of course. any advice.
From Wikipedia:

Author James J. Kilpatrick, in his book The Writer's Art, says that if he were limited to just one book on how to write, it would be William Zinsser's On Writing Well. He adds, "Zinsser's sound theory is that 'writing improves in direct ratio to the number of things we can keep out of it."
 
Looks like you're in the US, so your public library will undoubtedly have some decent writing manuals. And these cost nothing....

If you don't find the exact titles folks have listed, try looking with these keywords (which are standard subject headings):

Fiction -- Technique
Fiction -- Authorship

You're sure to get something.

If you want erotic fiction in particular, see the post here.
 
Were it only this simple…

guide-to-writing-a-novel-infographic-800x1024.png
 
TIL homosexual is a gender, and there is no way to be an Asian or African person without also being American.
 
A, B, C, F, I, K, N, O, P, S, U, W, X and Z should work in most other editors, too, since these are OS-wide shortcuts.

H and Y are pretty common, too, although some editors will use Shift+F and/or Shift+Z instead.

Q is just nonsense, though. Ctrl+Q means quit in many programs so repurposing it to mean clear formatting is just poor decision making on MS’s part.
 
I assume this only applies in the US?
Don’t you say “Asian” for what the Americans call “Indian” over there, at Airstrip One? Since the list includes both, I think it’s a pretty safe assumption that the guide is indeed targeted towards Americans.
 
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