For example:What would motivate your character to tell a lie–a big lie that may have unintended consequences?Is your character the type who would blow the whistle on a corporate cover-up or would she quietly toe the line?How would your character cope with the loss of a parent with whom he was exceptionally close?How likely would your character be to flirt with an attractive stranger in a hotel bar?Is your character the type who would drop everything–and everyone–for a spontaneous road trip?Plus, find out how to develop each scenario further using corresponding prompts and specific psychological insight into areas such as the role friendship plays in a person's mental and physical health, conflict resolution in intimate relationships, and the connection between time-impatience and free-floating hostility. With "What Would Your Character Do?," you don't have to guess at your character's responses to the important decisions and unexpected challenges he's sure to encounter in your story. Use and reuse these scenarios on each of your characters until you've got a nuanced, distinct cast that readers will never be able to forget!

    She followed with two other smash bestsellers: Cherry and Lit, which were critical hits as well.For thirty years Karr has also taught the form, winning graduate teaching prizes for her highly selective seminar at Syracuse, where she mentored such future hit authors as Cheryl Strayed, Keith Gessen, and Koren Zailckas. In The Art of Memoir, she synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patient, writer and spiritual seeker, recovered alcoholic and “black belt sinner,” providing a unique window into the mechanics and art of the form that is as irreverent, insightful, and entertaining as her own work in the genre.Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers’ experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr’s own process. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told— and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth.) As she breaks down the key elements of great literary memoir, she breaks open our concepts of memory and identity, and illuminates the cathartic power of reflecting on the past; anybody with an inner life or complicated history, whether writer or reader, will relate.Joining such classics as Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, The Art of Memoir is an elegant and accessible exploration of one of today’s most popular literary forms—a tour de force from an accomplished master pulling back the curtain on her craft.

    Whether you're writing a rags-to-riches tell-all memoir or literary journalism, telling true stories well is hard work. In You Can't Make This Stuff Up, Lee Gutkind, the go-to expert for all things creative nonfiction, offers his unvarnished wisdom to help you craft the best writing possible. Frank, to-the-point, and always entertaining, Gutkind describes and illustrates every aspect of the genre. Invaluable tools and exercises illuminate key steps, from defining a concept and establishing a writing process to the final product. Offering new ways of understanding the genre, this practical guidebook will help you thoroughly expand and stylize your work.

    Musicians practice. As a writer you need to do the same. Whether you have dreams of writing a novel or a memoir or a collection of poems, or you simply want to improve your everyday writing, this innovative book will show you how to build your skills by way of practice.Through playful and purposeful exercises, you'll develop your natural aptitude for communication, strengthening your ability to come up with things to say, and your ability to get those things into the minds (and the hearts) of readers. You'll learn to:- Train and develop your writer's powers--creativity, memory, observation, imagination, curiosity, and the subconscious - Understand the true nature of the relationship between you and your readers - Find your writer's voice - Get required writing projects done so you have more time for the writing you want to do - And much more Empowering and down-to-earth, How to Be a Writer gives you the tools you need, and tells you what (and how) to practice so that you can become the writer you want to be.

    With Story Trumps Structure, you can shed those rules - about three-act structure, rising action, outlining, and more - to craft your most powerful, emotional, and gripping stories.Award-winning novelist Steven James explains how to trust the narrative process to make your story believable, compelling, and engaging, and debunks the common myths that hold writers back from creating their best work. Ditch your outline and learn to write organically. Set up promises for readers - and deliver on them. Discover how to craft a satisfying climax. Master the subtleties of characterization. Add mind-blowing twists to your fiction. When you focus on what lies at the heart of story - tension, desire, crisis, escalation, struggle, discovery - rather than plot templates and formulas, you'll begin to break out of the box and write fiction that resonates with your readers. Story Trumps Structure will transform the way you think about stories and the way you write them, forever.

    In this all-in-one resource, you'll discover essential novel-writing techniques, such as:How to best structure your research so that you can save time laterHow to card your story before you start writingWhat to consider when developing your cast of charactersHow to adapt classic story structures to fit your own ideas...and insider information on what it takes to get published, including:What agents do at those three-hour power lunches--and how it affects youWhat makes an agent instantly reject a manuscriptHow to correctly translate submission guidelinesWhat happens if you get multiple offers--or no offers at allPlus, learn about the publishing process from the firsthand accounts of such noted authors as Dennis Lehane, Kathryn Harrison, Jim Fusilli, Kathleen George, and others!

    Learn how to:• Write compelling pitch letters • Network with the best in the magazine and newspaper industry• Understand the freelance market and detect its changes• Self-edit and rewrite your work• Manage tight deadlines• Negotiate contracts• Survive the financial ups and downs of the freelance lifeWith plenty of insider advice and tips from the most successful freelance writers and editors in the country, Get a Freelance Life is a must-have resource for turning your freelance gigs into a full-fledged writing career.

    Guaranteed to bringa little magic into even the most sensible life.

    Here at last is a book by two professional editors to teach writers the techniques of the editing trade that turn promising manuscripts into published novels and short stories.In this completely revised and updated second edition, Renni Browne and Dave King teach you, the writer, how to apply the editing techniques they have developed to your own work. Chapters on dialogue, exposition, point of view, interior monologue, and other techniques take you through the same processes an expert editor would go through to perfect your manuscript. Each point is illustrated with examples, many drawn from the hundreds of books Browne and King have edited.

    When they’re not nodding, they roll their eyes.Time to slash the Pinocchio strings and turn them into real people. Award-winning author Kathy Steinemann provides the tools. She cuts through the so-called rules and offers simple solutions.Too many repetitions of “little”? There’s a cure for that. Do you rely on “very” too often? There’s a cure for that too. You’ll find the remedies in this book’s dispensary.Should you ever use anything other than “said” to attribute dialogue? Are exclamation points taboo? The answers might surprise you.Learn how to harness body language, purge hackneyed adjectives, and draw on the environment for ambience. No more wooden characters. You’ll transform them into believable personalities that your readers will learn to love. Or hate.Get in the driver’s seat, relax, and enjoy your journey—with Kathy Steinemann’s book as your GPS.

    Corbett provides an inventive, inspiring, and vastly entertaining blueprint to all the elements of characterization-from initial inspiration to realization-with special insights into the power of secrets and contradictions, the embodiment of roles, managing the "tyranny of motive," and mastering crucial techniques required for memorable dialogue and unforgettable scenes. This is a how-to guide for both aspiring and accomplished writers that renders all other books of its kind obsolete.

    Where do you start? Maybe you want to blog, but where do you begin? What do you say? How do you get anyone to care about what you have to say? “Are You There, Blog? It’s Me, Writer” is a compilation of social media expert Kristen Lamb’s best social media blogs and lessons, and some additional material only found here. This book is designed to be a laugh-out-loud journey to the heart of social media.Many of us know we need a social media platform, but what exactly does that mean? Most of us would rather have brain surgery with a KFC spork than learn about computers and social marketing. Fortunately, “Are You There, Blog? It’s Me, Writer” is not your average social marketing book. This book will strip away all those fears and teach you how to make the most of Twitter, Facebook, and blogging and give you all you need to build a worldwide platform based on relationship and community. Kristen will show you how to manage time, be more productive, and maximize the top social media tools. The best part is you’ll be having so much fun, you will forget you’re supposed to be learning.

    In the pages of The Poetry Home Repair Manual, Kooser brings those decades of experience to bear. Here are tools and insights, the instructions (and warnings against instructions) that poets—aspiring or practicing—can use to hone their craft, perhaps into art. Using examples from his own rich literary oeuvre and from the work of a number of successful contemporary poets, the author schools us in the critical relationship between poet and reader, which is fundamental to what Kooser believes is poetry’s ultimate purpose: to reach other people and touch their hearts. Much more than a guidebook to writing and revising poems, this manual has all the comforts and merits of a long and enlightening conversation with a wise and patient old friend—a friend who is willing to share everything he’s learned about the art he’s spent a lifetime learning to execute so well.

    With both humor and reverence, Room to Write playfully prevails on us to experience the world through a writer's eyes, and respond to the creative sparks that charge good writing.In two hundred daily essays, the author invites the reader--whether an experienced writer or someone just starting out--into the crucibles from which creative writing erupts: emotion, imagination, intellect, and soul. Once there, she urges the reader to grab a pen, grasp a keyboard, and seize the moment when perception fires revelation and language becomes art.Each page features an essay exploring an aspect of the writing process, an exercise to get the reader writing, and a quotation to tickle the mind and keep the writing going. Ultimately, readers learn about how they write, and how to trust their intuition. Room to Write is a collection of beguiling provocations, an irresistible invitation to all those who believe that writing, like any creative endeavor, is a way of life.

    Along with a clever plot, well-drawn characters make us want to continue reading a novel or finish watching a movie. In Creating Characters, Dwight V. Swain shows how writers can invent interesting characters and improve them so that they move a story along.“The core of character,” he says in chapter 1, “lies in each individual story person’s ability to care about something; to feel implicitly or explicitly, that something is important.” Building on that foundation—the capacity to care—Swain takes the would-be writer step-by-step through the fundamentals of finding and developing “characters who turn you on.” This basic but thought-provoking how-to is a valuable tool for both the novice and the seasoned writer.