What writing books does Richard Lowe keep on his shelf?
The ones you use, not the famous titles people buy and never open.Share on X
When I converted my dining room into an office, I lined the wall behind my desk with books. Not for decoration. For work. These are the books I pull off the shelf while writing novels, ghostwriting client projects, and developing my writing courses.
Every book on this list has proved itself through use. Some I’ve referenced hundreds of times across 113+ books of my own. Others solved a specific problem on a specific project and stayed on the shelf because the problem comes back. Popularity got none of them onto this wall, and neither did somebody else’s list. They’re here because they work.
I’m suspicious of most writing-book lists I see online.
The categories reflect how I organize them on the shelf: general craft, character development, showing versus telling, mystery and crime research, romance, and science fiction, horror, and fantasy.
If you’re a fiction writer looking to build your own reference library, start with the category that matches what you’re writing now. You don’t need all of these at once. You need the right ones for the project in front of you.
I’m suspicious of most writing-book lists I see online. Too many are pulled off bestseller charts by people who’ve never had to fix a sagging middle on deadline, and new writers pay for that with a shelf full of books nobody opens twice.
| Category | Books | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| General Writing Craft | 2 | Foundations, On Writing (King), etc. |
| Character Development | 7 | Villains, psychology, character depth |
| Show Versus Tell | 7 | Emotion & description toolkits |
| Mystery & Crime Research | 17 | Procedure, forensics, investigation |
| Romance | 2 | Genre craft and heat-level guidance |
| Sci-Fi, Horror & Fantasy | 10 | Worldbuilding and speculative craft |
General Writing Craft
Character Development
- 13 Steps to Evil: How to Craft Superbad Villains
- The Psychology Workbook for Writers: Tools for Creating Realistic Characters and Conflict in Fiction
- Creating Character Arcs: The Masterful Author’s Guide to Uniting Story Structure
- The Story Works Guide to Writing Character
- How to Write Realistic Women
- How to Write Realistic Men
- Character Traits of Villains: The Guide to Psychopaths
Show Versus Tell
- Emotion Amplifiers by Angela Ackerman
- The Emotion Thesaurus
- The Negative Trait Thesaurus
- The Positive Trait Thesaurus
- The Emotional Wound Thesaurus
- The Rural Setting Thesaurus
- The Urban Setting Thesaurus
Mystery and Crime Research
- Amateur Detectives: A Writer’s Guide to How Private Citizens Solve Criminal Cases
- Armed and Dangerous: A Writer’s Guide to Weapons
- Body Trauma: A Writer’s Guide to Wounds and Injuries
- Cause of Death: A Writer’s Guide to Death, Murder and Forensic Medicine
- Code Blue: A Writer’s Guide to Hospitals
- Deadly Doses: A Writer’s Guide to Poisons
- HowDunit Forensics
- HowDunit: The Book of Poisons
- Just the Facts, Ma’am: A Writer’s Guide to Investigators and Investigation Techniques
- Missing Persons: A Writer’s Guide to Finding the Lost, the Abducted and the Escaped
- Murder One: A Writer’s Guide to Homicide
- Order in the Court: A Writer’s Guide to the Legal System
- Police Procedure and Investigation: A Guide for Writers
- Private Eyes: A Writer’s Guide to Private Investigating
- Rip-off: A Writer’s Guide to Crimes of Deception
- Scene of the Crime: A Writer’s Guide to Crime Scene Investigation
- The Writer’s Guide to Weapons: A Practical Reference for Using Firearms and Knives in Fiction
Romance
Science Fiction, Horror, and Fantasy
- The Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy, Volume 3: The Author’s Grimoire
- The Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy, Vol. 1: Alchemy with Words
- Fantasy Writers’ Phrase Book
- How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy
- Storyworld First: Creating a Unique Fantasy World for Your Novel
- Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction
- Writing About Magic
- Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction
- Writing Heroes and Villains
- The Writer’s Complete Fantasy Reference
My take
Buy reference books you’ll open while you’re writing, and leave the inspirational ones at the store. My shelf is there for work. The Emotion Thesaurus series and the writer’s guides to poisons, forensics and police procedure answer questions a craft book never will. Build yours around the genre you write, so a mystery writer stocks the crime guides and a fantasy writer stocks the worldbuilding references. If a book hasn’t been opened in a year, it’s decoration.
How Do You Build a Writing Reference Shelf?
You don’t need every book on this list.
You need the ones that solve problems in whatever you’re writing right now. If you’re writing a mystery, start with the HowDunit series. If you’re struggling to make characters feel real, the Ackerman and Puglisi thesaurus books will change how you write emotion and description. If you’re writing fantasy or science fiction, the world-building references will save you from inventing systems that don’t hold together.
Buy the book when you hit the problem it solves. That’s how a reference shelf gets built: project by project, problem by problem. Every book on my wall arrived because a specific manuscript needed it.
It drives me nuts watching new writers buy a dozen craft books before they’ve finished a single draft. A stack of unread guides feels like progress, and it’s one more way to avoid the page. Buy one, use it on the manuscript in front of you, and let the next one wait until the book demands it.
For my own craft guidance on fiction writing, including character development, dialogue, world building, plotting, and more, explore my writing courses.
One book I’d add to your shelf is my own Show Don’t Tell. It explains the advice every workshop repeats, with more than a hundred before and after examples.
Frequently Asked Questions
From the review library: Readings For Writers.
