Throughout, the emphasis is on promoting a plain English style. This little book can help you communicate more effectively by showing you how to enliven your sentences.

    But how do you reach those readers in the second category, no matter what kind of writer you are?The answer to that question is…Universal FantasyUniversal Fantasy is why my sales tripled when I “accidentally” wrote three books that landed in the Amazon Top 100.Universal Fantasy is why some authors get gobs of gushing reviews and some authors who write “way better” get crickets.Universal Fantasy is the answer to many of the questions you might have thought were unanswerable or simply up to luck, like…• Will this sell?• Why is that selling?• Why didn’t this sell?• Will readers like what I am writing?• Why do I love the TV shows/books/entertainments I do?• Why did I buy that thing I bought when I didn’t intend to buy it?BE WARNED…once known, Universal Fantasy cannot be undiscovered. Leave this book be if you’re truly satisfied with your current writing life.But if you’re not afraid—if you’re ready to know the secret hidden inside all bestselling stories, open this gift and find out how to use UNIVERSAL FANTASY to write and market books that SELL to ANYONE.

    Despite this, little has been written to help authors hone their craft to truly connect with this audience. Writing Great Books for Young Adults gives writers the advice they need to tap this incredible market. Topics covered include: Listening to the voices of youthMeeting your young protagonist Developing a writing styleConstructing plotsTrying on points of view Agent Regina Brooks has developed award-winning authors across the YA genre, including a Coretta Scott King winner. She attends more than 20 conferences each year, meeting with authors and teaching.

    It covers everything from getting started and finding ideas to actually finding time to do the work.

    But a poorly done or unbelievable fight scene can ruin a great book in an instant.In Fight Write you'll learn practical tips, terminology, and the science behind crafting realistic fight scenes for your fiction. Broken up into "Rounds," trained fighter and writer Carla Hoch guides you through the many factors you'll need to consider when developing battles and brawls.- In Round 1, you will consider how the Who, When, Where, and Why questions affect what type of fight scene you want to craft. - Round 2 delves into the human factors of biology (think fight or flight and adrenaline) and psychology (aggression and response to injuring or killing another person). - Round 3 explores different fighting styles that are appropriate for different situations: What really happens in fights on the street? What is the vocabulary used to describe these styles? - Round 4 considers weaponry and will guide you to select the best weapon for your characters, including nontraditional weapons of opportunity, while also thinking about the nitty-gritty details of using them. - In Round 5, you'll learn how to accurately describe realistic injuries sustained from the fights and certain weapons, and what kind of injuries will kill a character or render them unable to fight further.By taking into account where your character is in the world, when in history the fight is happening, what the character's motivation for fighting is, and much more, you'll be able write fight scenes unique to your plot and characters, all while satisfying your reader's discerning eye.

    Drawing on the Method acting theory that theater professionals have used for decades, this in-depth guide explains seven characterization techniques and adapts them for the novelist's use. In this unique and practical book, you'll discover concepts that will help you understand and communicate the behavior, motivation, and psychology of every fictional character you create. Examples from classic and contemporary novels show you how these techniques have been used to dazzling effect by Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Steve Martini, Anne Rivers Siddons, and others. These simple yet highly effective techniques will help you: * Create characters whose distinctive traits become plot components * Determine each character's specific objectives and motivations * Write natural-sounding dialogue rich in meaning * Endow your characters with three-dimensional emotional lives * Use character to bring action sequences to exuberant life * Write convincingly about any character facing any circumstance

    Also included is a bonus section of 100 free (and almost free) ways to promote your ebook.+ How to write a novella in 24 hours+ How to start building your empire+ How long should a story be?+ How to write a bestselling novel on your iPhone+ The secret to making a book cover (that mostly doesn’t suck) in 10 minutes or less+ Why you're staring at a blank screen+ One Weird Trick to Boost Your Creativity+ Your worst idea may be your greatest+ Managing criticism+ The Curse of a Creative Mind+ 100 free (and almost free) ways to promote you ebook

    Based on his acclaimed classes at UCLA Extension, Writing for Emotional Impact goes beyond the basics and argues that Hollywood is in the emotion-delivery business, selling emotional experiences packaged in movies and TV shows. Iglesias not only encourages you to deliver emtional impact on as many pages as possible, he shows you how, offering hundreds of dramatic techniques to take your writing to the professional level.

    It includes: how to test your premise, some easy steps to develop your character and define your story question from that character, how to hit your major plot points, and how to write a scene outline. Concise, clear, and action-oriented, this book is all about plotting, simplified.

    It's an occasionally ribald, frequently witty and unerringly erudite guided tour of the secret labyrinth that lurks beneath the English language, taking in monks and monkeys, film buffs and buffaloes, and explaining precisely what the Rolling Stones have to do with gardening.

    Over the past seven years, I have created 19 award-winning romance novels for two international publishers and over 1.2 million copies have been sold in 28 countries around the world in 23 languages. The good news is that romance fiction is as popular as it has ever been. Just look at the Amazon Bestsellers top 100 paid list. It is dominated by romance titles. Writing short romance Kindle books is an ideal home-based business, with minimal start-up costs. You work where and when you choose, writing the kind of romance stories that you love to read –and then publish them for free! What’s more, short fiction is fast to both read and to write. No more procrastination! You can create passive income from day one with short romance stories that only took you a few hours to write. This eBook guides you through an intense Masterclass on the key techniques that you need to start writing short romance fiction, which you can then publish on the Amazon Kindle platform. As a professional romance author, I have broken down the process of writing romance fiction into: A complete nine-step plan packed with the essential information you need to write your own short romance fiction, from understanding the different types of romance categories through to advanced story structure. A proven six-layer character development technique to help you to create compelling three-dimensional characters readers will love! As a bonus, I have included a section with practical advice on how to transform your manuscript into an eBook. This detailed Fast-Track guide has been designed to be around 40 minutes long, which means that there is no filler, just quality information from the start. Your complete starter plan is written in straightforward language and each step has been tried and tested. I know that it works because this is the system that I use to create my own award-winning romance fiction! Take a risk and learn How to Write Short Romance Kindle Books today – it could be the key to a new career and a brilliant entrepreneurial small business. It is much easier than you think. Just take that first step! NEW SPECIAL OFFER! This eBook is part of the ROMANCE SELF-PUBLISHING BOOK BUNDLE (Books One to Three): All the Information you need to Write, Publish and Promote your Romance Kindle Book. Available now at a great sale price. http://amzn.to/1NpEGx2

    And when writers do focus on setting, they often pull readers out of the narrative and jolt their attention from the action on the page.A Writer's Guide to Active Setting will show you how to create vivid, detailed settings that bring your story to life. You'll learn how to deepen character development, anchor readers to a specific time and place, reveal backstory without slowing things down, elevate action sequences, and more.Drawing upon examples from authors writing across a variety of genres, Mary Buckham will illustrate exactly how the proper use of setting can dramatically improve your story. You'll learn what's effective about each passage and how you can use those techniques to make your story shine.-Takes an all too often overlooked technique, and elevates it to a next-level game changer for powerful fiction.- --Cathy Yardley, author of Rock Your Plot-A powerful combination of fresh insights, practical examples, and how-to advice on the often overlooked but critical element of setting...written in a quick-to-read and easy-to-understand style, and packed with useful application exercises.- --Kelly L. Stone, author of Thinking Write: The Secret to Freeing Your Creative Mind-If you're a writer, then Mary Buckham's book is a must-have tool for your writer's toolkit. Creating settings that are rich and believable is not an easy task, but with this book, I found that each chapter gave me great tips that I could immediately implement in my manuscript.- --Laurie G. Adams, author of Finding Atticus

    Some are arcane, some simply hilarious—and one editor, Carol Fisher Saller, reads every single one of them. All too often she notes a classic author-editor standoff, wherein both parties refuse to compromise on the "rights" and "wrongs" of prose styling: "This author is giving me a fit." "I wish that I could just DEMAND the use of the serial comma at all times." "My author wants his preface to come at the end of the book. This just seems ridiculous to me. I mean, it’s not a post-face."In The Subversive Copy Editor, Saller casts aside this adversarial view and suggests new strategies for keeping the peace. Emphasizing habits of carefulness, transparency, and flexibility, she shows copy editors how to build an environment of trust and cooperation. One chapter takes on the difficult author; another speaks to writers themselves. Throughout, the focus is on serving the reader, even if it means breaking "rules" along the way. Saller’s own foibles and misadventures provide ample material: "I mess up all the time," she confesses. "It’s how I know things."Writers, Saller acknowledges, are only half the challenge, as copy editors can also make trouble for themselves. (Does any other book have an index entry that says "terrorists. See copy editors"?) The book includes helpful sections on e-mail etiquette, work-flow management, prioritizing, and organizing computer files. One chapter even addresses the special concerns of freelance editors.Saller’s emphasis on negotiation and flexibility will surprise many copy editors who have absorbed, along with the dos and don’ts of their stylebooks, an attitude that their way is the right way. In encouraging copy editors to banish their ignorance and disorganization, insecurities and compulsions, the Chicago Q&A presents itself as a kind of alter ego to the comparatively staid Manual of Style. In The Subversive Copy Editor, Saller continues her mission with audacity and good humor.

    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.

    Eighty million books later, Nancy Drew has survived the Depression, World War II, and the sixties (when she was taken up with a vengeance by women’s libbers) to enter the pantheon of American girlhood. As beloved by girls today as she was by their grandmothers, Nancy Drew has both inspired and reflected the changes in her readers’ lives. Here, in a narrative with all the vivid energy and page-turning pace of Nancy’s adventures, Melanie Rehak solves an enduring literary mystery: Who created Nancy Drew? And how did she go from pulp heroine to icon?  The brainchild of children’s book mogul Edward Stratemeyer, Nancy was brought to life by two women: Mildred Wirt Benson, a pioneering journalist from Iowa, and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, a well-bred wife and mother who took over as CEO after her father died. In this century-spanning story, Rehak traces their roles—and Nancy’s—in forging the modern American woman.