Quack This Way


David Foster Wallace - 2013
    Their subjects: language and writing. The interviewee drove more than an hour, from Claremont to downtown Los Angeles. The interviewer flew from Dallas. They spoke on film for 67 minutes and then walked uphill to a nearby seafood restaurant, where they continued the running conversation they had started five years earlier. They liked each other, and they seemed to understand each other. The rest is history. This is the last long interview with David Foster Wallace.

The Art of Writing Advertising: Conversations with Masters of the Craft: David Ogilvy, William Bernbach, Leo Burnett, Rosser Reeves,


Denis Higgins - 1968
    "What makes a great advertisement?" Nearly four decades ago, an unmatched group of five advertising pioneers first answered that question in "The Art of Writing Advertising." Their entertaining and historically compelling answers will provide advertising professionals with valuable techniques for applying breakthrough creativity and innovation in the workplace.

The Unofficial Author's Guide To Selling Your Book On Amazon: The Top 5 Cheat Sheet for Self Publishing Authors


Richard McCartney - 2016
     This Unofficial Guide unveils many of the hidden secrets to promoting your published book. How can I get my book into the Hot New Releases? How can I get my book to appear along side the Best Sellers on Amazon? How can I pick the best book category for my book, and why are they hidden from me in Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)? I’m now going to show you the answers. I’m going to tell you what is really going on. This Kindle book is quite literally a cheat sheet, a short cut to your biggest challenge on Amazon: Getting discovered. Get your copy now!

The Writer's Portable Mentor: A Guide to Art, Craft, and the Writing Life


Priscilla Long - 2010
    The Writer's Portable Mentor helps writers understand and incorporate the regular practices of virtuoso creators; provides a guide to structuring literary, journalistic, or fictional pieces or entire books; opens the door to the sentence strategies of the masters; provides tools for developing a poet's ear for use in prose; trains writers in the observation skills of visual artists; and guides them toward more effective approaches to getting their work into the world. Says Maya Sonenberg, Director of the Creative Writing Program at University of Washington, "I have never seen anything quite like Priscilla Long's book. It presents a true alternative for the advanced writer."

Breakout


Kevin Emerson - 2015
    The truth is, he's not trying to be anyone's hero. Anthony Castillo needs a new life. His teachers are clueless autocrats except for Mr. Darren, who’s in charge of the rock band program. The girls at school are either shallow cutebots or out of his league. And his parents mean well, but they just make things worse. It’s as if Anthony is stuck on the bottom level of his favorite video game, Liberation Force 4.5. Except there is no secret escape tunnel and definitely no cheat code. Fed up, pissed off, and feeling trapped, Anthony writes his first song for his rock band, the Rusty Soles. His only problem: Arts Night. If he exercises his right to free speech and sings his original lyrics—where his own bombs will drop—he and his band will be through. The clock is ticking. Time for Anthony to pick his battles and decide what’s really worth fighting for.

So You Want to Be a Producer


Lawrence Turman - 2005
    What does it take to be a producer, how does one get started, and what on earth does one actually do? In So You Want to Be a Producer Lawrence Turman, the producer of more than forty films, including The Graduate, The River Wild, Short Circuit, and American History X, and Endowed Chair of the famed Peter Stark Producing Program at the University of Southern California, answers these questions and many more.Examining all the nuts and bolts of production, such as raising money and securing permissions, finding a story and developing a script, choosing a director, hiring actors, and marketing your project, So You Want to Be a Producer is a must-have resource packed with insider information and first-hand advice from top Hollywood producers, writers, and directors, offering invaluable help for beginners and professionals alike. Including a comprehensive case study of Turman’s film The Graduate, this complete guide to the movie industry’s most influential movers and shakers brims with useful tips and contains all the information you need to take your project from idea to the big screen.

Genre


John Frow - 2005
    But it is also much more than that: in talk and writing, in music and images, in film and television, genres actively generate and shape our knowledge of the world. Understanding genre as a dynamic process rather than a set of stable rules, this book explores:*the relation of simple to complex genres*the history of literary genre in theory*the generic organisation of implied meanings*the structuring of interpretation by genre*the uses of genre in teaching.John Frow’s lucid exploration of this fascinating concept will be essential reading for students of literary and cultural studies.

Write Short Kindle Books: A Self-Publishing Manifesto for Non-Fiction Authors (Indie Author Success #1)


Nathan Meunier - 2015
    Write books FASTER. Write BETTER books. Write MORE books. #1 Kindle Bestseller in Authorship, Writing Skills, and Business Writing - Jan. 2015! The Kindle self-publishing revolution is here! Are you in? Why spin your wheels struggling to write bulky, bloated books the traditional publishing way when you can turbo-charge your Kindle author platform with greater freedom, flexibility, and chances for success? This game-changing guide is for aspiring authors AND established publishing pros alike who want to shake-up their routine and embrace a powerful new approach to self-publishing non-fiction. Are you ready to Write Short Kindle Books? You'll learn: Why writing shorter Kindle books is the best approach for many non-fiction authors The benefits of boosting your volume with many shorter, high-quality books How to price your short ebooks for maximum success Ideal word counts for Kindle books How to break larger book ideas down into numerous smaller books How to brainstorm, outline, and write books faster and more efficiently How to save money on covers, editing, and Kindle book formatting Why building a team of Beta Readers is crucial How to bring your book from final draft to launch And much more! Click on "Look Inside" to Learn More!

Quick Cheats for Writing With Dragon: Hidden Tricks to Help You Dictate Your Book, Work Anywhere and Set Your Words Free with Speech Recognition (Dictation Mastery for PC and Mac)


Scott Baker - 2016
    No confusion. Just solid, fail-safe tips for writers to take their dictation to the next level. From the author of "The Writer's Guide to Training Your Dragon", this mini-guide will help you choose the right microphone, transcribe on-the-go with Dragon and put you on the path to sky-high word counts. You will also learn little-known tricks, such as:- Dictating into programs Dragon doesn't support - such as Scrivener;- Preventing a crash from taking your dictated text with it;- Creating a "Quiet Profile" for when you need to dictate without disturbing others;- Using the same profile on multiple computers - and keeping it updated;- Running your desktop Dragon app on an iPad or Android tablet - anywhere, anytime.Designed to get you up-and-running with this powerful software in no time, "Quick Cheats for Writing with Dragon" may make you want to never look at a keyboard again!

Screenwriting 101 by Film Crit Hulk!


Film Crit Hulk! - 2013
    A LOT OF THESE SCREENWRITING BOOKS LIKE TO FILL YOUR HEAD WITH FALSE PROMISES AND EASY TRICKS. BUT IT’S SO DAMN FAR FROM THE OBVIOUS TRUTH: BECOMING A TALENTED WRITER TAKES A LONG TIME AND A LOT OF HARD WORK. THEY ALSO CONVENIENTLY FORGET TO MENTION THAT THE ODDS ARE AGAINST YOU. THERE ARE OVER A MILLION SCRIPTS ALREADY FLOATING AROUND HOLLYWOOD. HULK HAS READ, OH... A COUPLE THOUSAND OF THEM. AND NEARLY EVERY SINGLE PERSON HULK MEETS IN THE FILM INDUSTRY ALREADY HAS A SCRIPT OF SOME SORT. NOT ONLY DOES THE SHEER VOLUME OF SCRIPTS MAKE IT DIFFICULT TO DISTINGUISH ONESELF IN THIS CLIMATE, BUT SO DOES THE FACT THAT THERE ARE ALREADY A VAST NUMBER OF TALENTED, PROFESSIONAL WRITERS IN NEED OF WORK. SO GIVEN ALL THESE CRIPPLING ODDS, WE SHOULD ALL JUST GIVE UP, RIGHT? WELL, NO. YOU’RE NOT HERE READING THIS BECAUSE THAT REALITY BOTHERS YOU. AND THAT’S THE THING ABOUT THE MOVIES: THEY’RE WONDERFUL. THEY’RE THE IMAGINATION OF STORYTELLING MADE TANGIBLE. THEY’RE OUR DREAMS MADE REAL. WHO WOULDN’T WANT TO BE A PART OF ALL THAT? FILM CRIT HULK WAS CREATED IN A CHAOTIC LAB EXPERIMENT INVOLVING GAMMA RADIATION, THE GHOST OF PAULINE KAEL, AND TELEPODS FOR SOME REASON. NOW HULK HAS A DEEP AND ABIDING LOVE OF CINEMA WHEREIN HULK RECOGNIZES THE INHERENT VALUES OF POPULAR, NARRATIVE, OR EXPERIMENTAL STYLES! THROUGH A UNIQUE JOURNEY, HULK HAS ENDED UP WORKING IN HOLLYWOOD FOR OVER A DECADE AND NOW WRITES ABOUT CINEMA AND STORYTELLING IN THOROUGHLY HULK-SIZED FASHION. AND NOW YOU HOLD IN YOUR HANDS / HAVE ON YOUR SCREEN / WHATEVER IN YOUR WHATEVER, THE FIRST EBOOK BY FILM CRIT HULK. THE ONLY THING IT MEANS TO BE IS HELPFUL. Free sentence case version included!

Writing Science in Plain English


Anne E. Greene - 2013
    But, as Anne E. Greene shows in Writing Science in Plain English,writers from all scientific disciplines can learn to produce clear, concise prose by mastering just a few simple principles.   This short, focused guide presents a dozen such principles based on what readers need in order to understand complex information, including concrete subjects, strong verbs, consistent terms, and organized paragraphs. The author, a biologist and an experienced teacher of scientific writing, illustrates each principle with real-life examples of both good and bad writing and shows how to revise bad writing to make it clearer and more concise. She ends each chapter with practice exercises so that readers can come away with new writing skills after just one sitting.  Writing Science in Plain English can help writers at all levels of their academic and professional careers—undergraduate students working on research reports, established scientists writing articles and grant proposals, or agency employees working to follow the Plain Writing Act. This essential resource is the perfect companion for all who seek to write science effectively.

Real Sofistikashun: Essays on Poetry and Craft


Tony Hoagland - 2006
    Why? Because the willingness to be offensive sets free the ruthless observer in all of us, the spiteful perceptive angel who sees and tells, unimpeded by nicety or second thoughts. There is truth-telling, and more, in meanness. —from "Negative Capability: How to Talk Mean and Influence People"Tony Hoagland has won The Poetry Foundation's Mark Twain Award, recognizing a poet's contribution to humor in American poetry, and also the Folger Shakespeare Library's O. B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize, the only major award that honors a poet's excellence in teaching. Real Sofistikashun, from the title onward, uses Hoagland's signature abilities to entertain and instruct as he forages through central questions about how poems behave and how they are made.In these taut, illuminating essays, Hoagland explores aspects of poetic craft—metaphor, tone, rhetorical and compositional strategies—with the vigorous, conversational style less of the scholar than of the serious enthusiast and practitioner. Real Sofistikashun is an exciting, humorous, and provocative collection of essays, as pleasurable a book as it is useful.

Slow Your Prose


James W. Lewis - 2011
    They have the pedal pressed to the floor when they shouldn't have gotten in the ride at all, sort of speak. In "Slow Your Prose: 25 Tips On How New Authors Can Improve Their Craft," we go back to the basics.Showing vs. telling, passive/active voice, point-of-views ... many writers confuse these key elements for writing a good story. Before rushing a book to market, it's more important to write the best book possible first. But why do so many authors skip this step? As a bonus, you'll find three proven query letters that have led to deals with a literary agent, a magazine and popular anthology by a New York Times best-selling author.

Mastering Stand-Up: The Complete Guide to Becoming a Successful Comedian


Stephen Rosenfield - 2017
    Here, Stephen Rosenfield lays out a clear plan for achieving success, candidly explaining what works, what doesn’t, and why. Including a 12-item “Successful Comedian’s To-Do List,” Rosenfield states, “Get undeniably good at each of these and you can kiss your day job good-bye. You will be a pro.” The New York Times heralded Stephen Rosenfield as “probably the best known comedy teacher in the country.” His alumni include some of today’s most prominent comedians and comedy writers, such as Lena Dunham, Jim Gaffigan, Eric Slovin, and Jessica Kirson. Rosenfield has directed, coached, and/or written for these and hundreds of other comedians. As a pioneer in the field of teaching comedy, he founded the American Comedy Institute, the premier stand-up comedy school in the United States, in 1989.

How To Write Descriptions of Eyes and Faces


Val Kovalin - 2011
     (Note: both books (1) How to Write Descriptions of Eyes and Faces and (2) How to Write Descriptions of Hair and Skin are now available in a single, unabridged volume for readers interested in both buying both books together at a cheaper price than buying them individually: How to Write Descriptions of Eyes, Faces, Hair, Skin. ASIN: B00670OUGW.) Here, you get more help than you could possibly imagine on describing eyes and faces. Each section centers on a type of description, such as Eye Color (for example, "Crystal blue eyes"), or Appearance of the Eye (for example, "Beady eyes," or "Bedroom eyes"), or Actions Involving the Eyes (for example, "Darting eyes" or "Gawking"). Each section lists its descriptive terms alphabetically with full explanations. You can read the lists to learn new terms, or you can look up a specific term. The eye section starts with the location of colors in the iris. Through examples, you learn how physical description starts with an accurate, detailed picture of everything you see, which you condense for your fiction. You learn about the appearance of the eyes, actions involving the eyes, and how to describe eyelids, eyebrows, and eyelashes. All of this leads into more than 2,000 words explaining 82 different color names to assign to eyes that are black, blue, brown, gray, green, hazel, or violet. The face section shows how to describe facial shapes, forehead, ears, cheekbones, nose, lips, chin, and facial hair, if any. You learn about facial expressions, such as simpering or sneering, and things like the differences between a frown and a scowl. You also get a section on how the face shows different emotions. For example, you can look up "Anger" and read about common physical signs of anger such as blood rising beneath the skin, the forehead tightening, the eyes narrowing, and the nose wrinkling in disgust. Who may benefit from this book? Anyone who wants a quick prompt or idea so as not to lose his writing momentum. Readers for whom English is a second language may enjoy the in-depth explanations of American English terms. Authors in genres that demand much physical description (for example, fantasy fiction and romance fiction) may also find this book useful. How to Write Descriptions of Eyes and Faces is about 15,000 words in total. Thank you for reading.