: Are 'how-to write fiction' books full of it? I built and sold a business during my first decade of adulthood. During that period, I read a lot of business books published by the popular press.

No one ever became rich or successful simply by reading a book.
Books which document business success and strategy are simply documents about how successful people achieved success through their hard work, risk taking spirit and enterprising nature. They document things which already happened. And as life has shown us many times, there is no set formula and no pattern. So taking bookish advice and applying the same simply does not work out.
Successful people acted according to a plan, according to circumstances and followed their instincts. What worked for them might not work for us.
For success to work, we have to be in the present moment. We have to be well aware of the facts and the circumstances surrounding us and then act upon it, take risks and take responsibility for our actions.
All that simply does not happen by reading books. No doubt, a good book will inspire you to think out of the box. But acting on the same thoughts might not work out for you.

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On this site and many others that exists to support aspiring writers, there are widely recognized common mistakes from beginners. The first listed common mistake from that link is "unclear speaker attribution". Can the skills be taught that will help someone avoid that mistake? Yes - as a quick search on this very site will show. So, if at least some writing skills can be taught, then it follows that a (good) how-to-write book should be able to teach many of the skills needed in writing.

With or without how-to-write books, the author, of course, still has work to do! There are no guarantees, but being a better author can only be helpful in becoming a published author and a professional author, and how-to-write books can help people become better authors.

It therefore seems to me that a how-to-write book will only be "full of it" if it either (a) fails to teach the reader how to become a better writer, or (b) misleads the reader about what else will be involved, beyond writing well. Such books may be "full of it"; but others may not, as it must be at least possible for a useful how-to-write book to exist.

(Speaking for myself, from my own experience and the feedback I get from my test readers, my writing ability has been transformed since reading books like Stephen King's On Writing; Robert McKee's Story; and Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey. I feel very confident in declaring I am now a vastly better author than I was before reading those books - when I re-read my early stories, I find they are dreadful in comparison to what I can write now! Of course, how good I am now in absolute terms, I leave to others to judge; and so far, I've only had one short story published. In any case, I honestly don't think I'd have managed even that minor achievement without learning some of the craft from how-to-write books).

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There are some really, really great books and blogs out there. And a lot of mediocre ones. And a lot that are self-help books about motivation and getting over "writer's block" that is really constant editing instead of banging out your chapter.

For craft, nothing beats K. M. Weiland's Helping Writers Become Authors blog and books. The blog has entire sections on structure, character acts, and scenes.
Bell's Writing Your Novel From the Middle is fantastic, and Conflict & Suspense, and Plot & Structure are both great.
Larry Brooks (story physics), Scofield (the scene book), Vogler (on the hero's journey), and Maasss all have great books.
Cut to the Chase is great for Screenplays. I despise Save the Cat, but many people find it very useful.

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Meebo gleeb owt anso gilf?+ Don't you agree?

+I'll explain in a moment.

Question Heard Around the Writing World

Can a book teach you to write?

Well, of course not. For no matter how great the book, the pupil herself may be completely obstinate and impenetrable to the lessons.

What Would A Book About Writing Teach?
"Furthermore," the cynic says. "What would a book about writing teach anyway? Would it teach me to write a John Grisham best-seller?"

Answer: Of course not. Only John Grisham can write a John Grisham novel.

Isn't It All Subjective?

That's the real question that writer's around the world want to know.

Isn't teaching someone to write fiction just a subjective exercise
which cannot be measured?

Answer: No, not everything is subjective, but yes, much is.
If you are writing the fictional equivalent of my first sentence, you are not going to have many readers, because they simply cannot understand you.

I'm An Artist and An Idiot

I may tell you it is art and you may tell me I am an idiot and we both may be correct.

I've created this exaggerated example to show you that there are certain foundational things that can help your fiction writing and help make you a more successful fiction writer. You can learn these measurable things and determine if your writing is actually better (more pleasant, easier to read, conveys your message properly, etc) or not.

Reader Expectations
You see, there are expectations of readers. Some of these are obvious such as grammar and using a language that is understood by your readers. There are other less obvious things that a book can teach (and hopefully provide examples of) which can make your writing much easier to read because they fit your audience's expectations.

Obviously something makes writing good or bad, because readers know
when writing is good or bad.

I Can Prove This With An Example

"Promises are like babies: easy to make but hard to deliver."
~anonymous

Example 1

Not so good:

George was nice man.

Better:

George looked at his watch and saw it was already 7:45am. Going to
be late for the meeting and Mr. Murphy is going to kill me. He
pushed his front door open and ran out toward his car. As George pulled the
door open on his Jaguar X45 he heard a faint whimpering sound.

He dropped his brief case into the car and walked around to the
passenger side and looked under the car. Nothing there. He looked at
his watch again and felt a pulse of heat travel down his back. He
heard the whimpering sound again and walked around to the back of his
car and looked down at the storm drain. He held his tie back so it
wouldn't get dirty and he looked into the drain and saw two eyes
looking back.

The small dog he was now looking at let out a louder whine and he knew
he'd have to get it out of the drain. He reached down and was just
able to grab the dog by the scruff of the neck and hoist him out.

He pulled the dog close trying to calm it. "Hey little fella. How'd
you get stuck down there?" He looked at his watch again. Murphy is
going to fire me. He looked back into the puppy's eyes and said,
"Well, I guess you can comfort me on those lonely days when I'm
looking for my next job."

You see? This is the show don't tell principle working itself out before your eyes.
As a writer, which tells the story of George better? Probably the second one. Again, notice that I even mark these as "Not So Good" and "Better", since in reality it is still subjective.

100s of Lessons Which Help You Learn More Quickly

There are 100s of other lessons that you can learn the fast way (by reading a well written teaching book like my all-time favorite Make Your Words Work, by Gary Provost -- amazon link)
Why learn slow when you can learn 100s of shortcuts to Reader Expectations very quickly?

Is This A Guarantee?
Will any of this guarantee that you are a professional and world-class fiction writer? Of course not. If you want a guarantee become a trash collector. You'll always have work in that line of business.

Conclusion
All readers have expectations. Many of those expectations are formed by cultural influences which generate a large group (your reading audience) that expect certain things from your writing. The faster you learn of those expectations, the quicker you can go about setting them up so that your writing WORKS THE BEST IT CAN. Then you can even bend the expectations with complete knowledge and understanding at the right time. Which is probably how you transcend and become an Artist.

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Sure, you could say this sort of thing about any how-to book.

Just yesterday I saw an ad for a video titled, "How to get your message across in 30 seconds!". In small print it says, "Running time: 45 minutes". Apparently the people who made the video didn't see the irony.

It's a common joke that people who write "how to get rich books" get rich by selling these books, not by doing any of the things that their books say to do. If I was going to read a get-rich-quick book, I'd want to find one that was written by someone who got rich before he wrote the book.

Now that I think of it, you could say the same about any book at all. Some are written by people who really know the subject and who are skilled at conveying this information, and some are written by people with little or no knowledge of the subject and/or who are terrible writers. Some of anything is great and some is junk. In real life, you have to sort out the good from the bad.

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This comment:

Moreover, successful fiction authors don't write books about writing fiction.

...is false. Le Guin, Bradbury, Card, Block, King all wrote books about writing fiction, and they are all successful to one degree or another.

And this comment:

I can't think of anything, other than altruism, that would motivate
them to publish their methods of writing fiction.

The author gets paid to write these books. Money is a good motivator.

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