Tom Chiarella shows you how. Whether it's an argument, a love scene, a powwow among sixth graders or scientists in a lab, this book demonstrates how to write dialogue that sounds authentic and original. You'll learn ways to find ideas for literary discussions by tuning in to what you hear every day. You'll learn to use gestures instead of speech, to insert silences that are as effective as outbursts, to add shifts in tone, and other strategies for making conversations more compelling. Nuts and bolts are covered, too - formatting, punctuation, dialogue tags - everything you need to get your characters talking.

    The romance arc is made up of its own story beats, and the external plot and theme need to be braided to the romance arc—not the other way around. Told in conversational (and often irreverent) prose, Romancing the Beat can be read like you are sitting down to coffee with romance editor and author Gwen Hayes while she explains story structure. The way she does with her clients. Some of whom are regular inhabitants of the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists. Romancing the Beat is a recipe, not a rigid system. The beats don’t care if you plot or outline before you write, or if you pants your way through the drafts and do a “beat check” when you’re revising. Pantsers and plotters are both welcome. So sit down, grab a cuppa, and let’s talk about kissing books.

    Authors will learn to how to cut through pop culture noise and win over a jaded modern audience by rediscovering the heart of writing: shaping stories that ring true to our shared understanding of human nature. Providing conversational advice that spans multiple disciplines - from fiction to film to creative nonfiction - Matt Bird's insightful techniques allow characters to come alive and stories to reach a new level of appeal.

    Here are the stars (Truman Capote on Marilyn Monroe, Joan Didion on John Wayne, Tom Wolfe on Cary Grant, Lauren Bacall on herself), the directors (John Houseman on Orson Welles, Kenneth Tynan on Mel Brooks, John Huston on himself), the makers and shakers (producer Julia Phillips, mogul Daryll F. Zanuck, stuntman Joe Bonomo), and the critics and theorists (Pauline Kael, Graham Greene, Andrew Sarris, Susan Sontag). Here as well are the novelists who have indelibly captured the experience of moviegoing in our lives (Walker Percy, James Agee, Larry McMurtry) and the culture of the movie business (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Budd Schulberg, Nathanael West). Here is a book to get lost in and return to time and time againat once a history, an anatomy, and a loving appreciation of the central art form of our time.

    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

    It’s the harmful debris of your education—a mixture of half-truths, myths, and false assumptions that prevents you from writing well. Drawing on years of experience as a writer and teacher of writing, Verlyn Klinkenborg offers an approach to writing that will change the way you work and think. There is no gospel, no orthodoxy, no dogma in this book. What you’ll find here isn’t the way to write. Instead, you’ll find a way to clear your mind of illusions about writing and discover how you write. Several Short Sentences About Writing is a book of first steps and experiments. They will revolutionize the way you think and perceive, and they will change forever the sense of your own authority as a writer. This is a book full of learning, but it’s also a book full of unlearning—a way to recover the vivid, rhythmic, poetic sense of language you once possessed. An indispensable and unique book that will give you a clear understanding of how to think about what you do when you write and how to improve the quality of your writing.

    In How to Write a Selling Screenplay, he takes writers through the entire process, from developing a story to finding the best agent. Using an annotated version of an often-optioned screenplay of his own, and citing examples from movies ranging from Casablanca and Lethal Weapon to Sling Blade and The English Patient, he discusses how to create three-dimensional characters, find a compelling story, build an airtight plot structure, fine-tune dialogue, and much more. Keane's tips on the difference between writing for film and television, as well as his advice on dealing with Hollywood movers and shakers, make this an essential companion for people writing their first--or their fortieth--screenplay.

    The book became a national bestseller, won a slew of awards, and is soon to be a major motion picture. Get the first draft down quickly! The 90-Day Novel is a day-by-day guide through the process of getting the first draft of your novel onto the page. The 90-Day Novel has been used at the L.A. Writers' Lab over ten years and has helped hundreds of writers complete their work. Some of Watt's students have gone on to become bestselling authors and win major literary awards.The 90-Day Novel is structured into three parts. Part One describes the process of getting your story from imagination to the page and prepares you, through a few simple, powerful writing exercises to access the story within. Part Two is a series of 90 daily letters that will guide you through the hero's journey. Writers often tend to get stuck halfway through, mired somewhere in their "idea" of the story. The 90-Day Novel will show you how and why you got stuck, and how to get to the end of your first draft. Part Three is a compendium of stream-of-consciousness writing exercises designed to access the primal forces in your story, as well as the Structure Questions that will invite up images at key stages in your hero's journey. The 90-Day Novel teaches you how to distill your plot to its nature, and clarifies the mysterious process of assembling vague disparate images into a coherent narrative. Working in this way, story structure (which is often taught as a formula) becomes a springboard, setting you free to explore the far reaches of your imagination. "There are no rules," Watt tells us. "Stay out of your left brain, and let your unconscious do the heavy lifting." The 90-Day Novel clearly articulates the process of marrying the rigor of story structure to the wildness of the imagination, and in the process reminds us of something we so often forget . . . that writing is actually fun. For more information, go to www.lawriterslab.com."For years I have been fascinated by the industry legend of how Alan Watt wrote his masterful novel, Diamond Dogs, in 90 days. Now, at last, he shares his secrets. The 90-Day Novel is smart, insightful, thorough and wise. It's also one of the best books on novel-writing I have ever seen. I feel confident that anyone who takes this program seriously will have a solid manuscript to show for the effort."- David Liss (national bestselling author and Edgar winner of A Conspiracy of Paper)"Let Al Watt take your heart by its hand and get your 90-Day Novel onto the page. It will be the experience of a lifetime."- Viki King (author of How to Write a Movie in 21 Days: The Inner Movie Method)"The 90-Day Novel is the real deal. Alan Watt gets down to it by brilliantly articulating the fusion of the muse to the rigor of story structure. If you've been struggling with your story, or really want to get dangerous on the page, read this book. Follow it, and you will have a first draft in 90 days."- Eric Miles Williamson (Pen finalist for his novel East Bay Grease, and author of Say It Hot) "The 90-Day Novel provides the inspiration, focus, and structure that every novelist needs to finally put down on paper what has been alive inside him, perhaps for years, struggling to get out."- Allison Burnett (author of Christopher, finalist for Pen Center USA's Literary Award in Fiction)"The 90 daily letters are absolutely worth the price of admission. A friendly nudge, a gentle reminder of our commitment, a powerful blast of insight: all serve to boost our flagging morale, or comb out our confusion, or intercede with the bitter fight against our creative impulses."- Mary Shannon (Professor of Creative Writing, Cal State Northridge/90-Day NovelistAbout the AuthorBestselling author Alan Watt has received many awards for his writing, including France's 2004 Prix Printemps (best foreign novel). He founded LA Writers' Lab in 2002. He lectures on the creative process and teaches The 90-Day Novel workshops to writers throughout the world.

    This is not one of those books. On the contrary, this is a collection of terrible, awkward, and laughably unreadable excerpts that will teach you what to avoid—at all costs—if you ever want your novel published.In How Not to Write a Novel, authors Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman distill their 30 years combined experience in teaching, editing, writing, and reviewing fiction to bring you real advice from the other side of the query letter. Rather than telling you how or what to write, they identify the 200 most common mistakes unconsciously made by writers and teach you to recognize, avoid, and amend them. With hilarious "mis-examples" to demonstrate each manuscript-mangling error, they'll help you troubleshoot your beginnings and endings, bad guys, love interests, style, jokes, perspective, voice, and more. As funny as it is useful, this essential how-NOT-to guide will help you get your manuscript out of the slush pile and into the bookstore.

    In interviews with Hollywood screenwriters from across the board—Oscar winners and novices alike—Cohen explores what sets apart the blockbuster successes from the downright disasters.Tracing the fortunes of twenty-five films, including Troy, Erin Brockovich, Lost in Translation, and The Aviator, Cohen offers insider access to back lots and boardrooms, to studio heads, directors, and to the over-caffeinated screenwriters themselves. As the story of each film evolves from the drawing board to the big screen, Cohen proves that how a script is written, sold, developed, and filmed can be just as dramatic and intriguing as the movie itself—especially when the resulting movie is a fiasco.Covering films of all kinds—from tongue-in-cheek romps like John Waters's A Dirty Shame to Oscar winners like Monster's Ball and The Hours—Screen Plays is an anecdote-filled, often inspiring, always revealing look at the alchemy of the movie business. With Cohen as your expert guide, Screen Plays exposes how and why certain films (such as Gladiator) become "tent poles," those runaway successes every studio needs to survive, and others become train wrecks. Full of critical clues on how to sell a script—and avoid seeing it destroyed before the director calls Action!—it's the one book every aspiring screenwriter will find irresistible.

    Crafting Short Screenplays That Connect is the first screenwriting guide to introduce connection as an essential, although essentially overlooked, aspect of creating stories for the screen and of the screenwriting process itself. Written with clarity and humor, this book teaches the craft of writing short screenplays by guiding the student through carefully focused writing exercises of increasing length and complexity. Eight award-winning student screenplays are included for illustration and inspiration.The text is divided into three parts. Part one focuses on preparing to write by means of exercises designed to help students think more deeply about the screenwriter's purposes; their own unique vision, material and process; and finally about what screenplays are at their simplest and most profound level—a pattern of human change, created from specific moments of change—discoveries and decisions. Part two teaches students how to craft an effective pattern of human change. It guides them through the writing and re-writing of "Five (Not So Easy) Pieces"—five short screenplays of increasing length and complexity—focusing on a specific principle of dramatic technique: The Discovery, The Decision, The Boxing Match, The Improbable Connection, and The Long Short Screenplay. Part Three presents the five screenplays used throughout the book to illustrate the dramatic principles that have beendiscussed, and includes interviews with the screenwriters, a look at where they are now and what they are doing, and brief discussion of how each film evolved. * Groundbreaking book that stresses human connection as the basis of a good screenplay&151;not conflict* The only screenwriting book that includes a DVD that contains performances of the short films and screenplays that are featured in the book* Ample exercises for practice and inspiration

    Writers are often told to write scenes, dramatize, cut exposition, cut summary-but it's misguided advice. The truth is good writing almost always requires both showing and telling. The trick is finding the right balance of scene and summary-the two basic components of creative prose. "Showing and Telling" shows you how to employ each of these essential techniques in the appropriate places within a narrative. You'll learn how to: write scenes and cut exposition compress time and summarize background information create graceful transitions effectively inject interpretation and more Complete with examples from bestsellers and interactive exercises, this comprehensive guide offers an in-depth look at scene development, the role of reflection in storytelling, the art of summarizing, and how to bring it all together.

    Whether your manuscript is an advanced draft or you are just starting out, whether you are working in fiction, film and TV, or creative nonfiction, you will learn a new approach to structure that will transform the way you look at your writing. Along the way, Horwitz offers detailed, concrete examples that reveal how the Book Architecture Method works with everything from literary classics to blockbuster films. And you won't have to resort to using a formula--which may seem risky! But it can be done.

    Brande believed passionately that although people have varying amounts of talent, anyone can write. It's just a question of finding the "writer's magic"--a degree of which is in us all. She also insists that writing can be both taught and learned. So she is enraged by the pessimistic authors of so many writing books who rejoice in trying to put off the aspiring writer by constantly stressing how difficult it all is.With close reference to the great writers of her day--Wolfe, Forster, Wharton and so on--Brande gives practical but inspirational advice about finding the right time of day to write and being very self disciplined about it--"You have decided to write at four o'clock, and at four o'clock you must write." She's strong on confidence building and there's a lot about cheating your unconscious which will constantly try to stop you writing by coming up with excuses. Then there are exercises to help you get into the right frame of mind and to build up writing stamina. She also shows how to harness the unconscious, how to fall into the "artistic coma," then how to re-emerge and be your own critic.This is Dorothea Brande's legacy to all those who have ever wanted to express their ideas in written form. A sound, practical, inspirational and charming approach to writing, it fulfills on finding "the writer's magic."