Ken Rand offers his own advice and twenty-five years of experience for the benefit of other writers.His no-nonsense approach to editing fiction will do more to make writing more professional.

    You just need to learn what’s going on inside your brain, and harness the power of brain science to beat resistance and develop a productive writing habit.In Around the Writer’s Block, Rosanne Bane-- a creativity coach and writing teacher for more than 20 years-- uses the most recent breakthroughs in brain science to help us understand, in simple, clear language, where writing resistance comes from: a fight-or-flight response hard-wired into our brain, which can make us desperate to flee the sources of our anxieties by any means possible.Bane’s three-part plan, which has improved the productivity of thousands of writers, helps you develop new reliable writing habits, rewire the brain’s responses to the anxiety of writing, and turn writing from a source of stress and anxiety into one of joy and personal growth.

    He has worked with authors across all fiction and non-fiction genres. Along with his client work, he has studied many other successful authors to learn what works and what doesn't.The result is Your First 1000 Copies where he walks you through the Connection System, a plan that every author can immediately start using. The plan looks like this: Permission - How to open up communication with your readers where you can reliably engage them and invite them to be involved. Content - How to use content to engage with current readers and connect with new ones. Outreach - How to ethically and politely introduce yourself to new readers. Sell - How all of these steps can naturally lead to book sales without being pushy or annoying Track - How to use modern online tools to see what's working and what's not working, and how to make decisions based on data.This is a system that any author can immediately put in place to start building their platform. Whether you're a seasoned author looking to step into the new publishing landscape, or you're a brand new author, Your First 1000 Copies will give you the tools to connect with readers and sell more books.

    Now the celebrated producer, lecturer, teacher, and bestselling author has updated his classic guide for a new generation of filmmakers, offering a fresh insider’s perspective on the film industry today. From concept to character, from opening scene to finished script, here are easily understood guidelines to help aspiring screenwriters—from novices to practiced writers—hone their craft. Filled with updated material—including all-new personal anecdotes and insights, guidelines on marketing and collaboration, plus analyses of recent films, from American Beauty to Lord of the Rings—Screenplay presents a step-by-step, comprehensive technique for writing the screenplay that will succeed in Hollywood. Discover:•Why the first ten pages of your script are crucially important•How to visually “grab” the reader from page one, word one •Why structure and character are the essential foundation of your screenplay•How to adapt a novel, a play, or an article into a screenplay•Tips on protecting your work—three legal ways to claim ownership of your screenplay•The essentials of writing great dialogue, creating character, building a story line, overcoming writer’s block, getting an agent, and much more.With this newly updated edition of his bestselling classic, Syd Field proves yet again why he is revered as the master of the screenplay—and why his celebrated guide has become the industry’s gold standard for successful screenwriting.

    It will help you understand how the genre works, the big do's and don't's - as well as giving you the inspiration and motivation you actually need to write. Written by a leading literary agent who knows what it takes to make it in this market, this book will give you the advice and tips you need to stand out. An essential book for anyone hoping to emulate the success and addictive qualities that characterize books like The Hunger Games, Twilight, Divergent and The Fault in Our Stars.

    Craft Compelling DialogueWhen should your character talk, what should (or shouldn't) he say, and when should he say it? How do you know when dialogue—or the lack thereof—is dragging down your scene? How do you fix character who speaks with the laconic wit of the Terminator?Write Great Fiction: Dialogue by successful author and instructor Gloria Kempton has the answers to all of these questions and more! It's packed with innovative exercises and instructions designed to teach you how to:•Create dialogue that drives the story•Weave dialogue with narrative and action•Use dialogue to pace your story•Write dialogue that fits specific genres•Avoid the common pitfalls of writing dialogue•Make dialogue unique for each characterAlong with dozens of dialogue excerpts form today's most popular writers, Write Great Fiction: Dialogue gives you the edge you need to make your story stand out from the rest.

    Read this book to learn all about it.From Harry Potter to Twilight, from Wonder Woman to Star Wars, you’ll never look at pop culture the same way again.With over a dozen NYT and USA Today bestsellers, and over a million books in print, popular genre author and former archaeologist Gail Carriger brings her cheeky comedic tone and over a decade of making her living as a fiction author to this fascinating look at one of the most popular yet neglected narratives of our time. The presentation she does on this subject sells for hundreds of dollars.“I’m not sure how you can just rewire my brain to see the heroine’s journey like this and then expect me to make coherent, thought-out comments about the text when all I want to do is hold it in my twisted little grip while I shove it at people screaming like a madman and pointing at passages.”~ Author Beta ReaderGail Carriger uses the heroine’s journey to produce bestselling, critically-acclaimed books that genre blend science fiction, cozy mystery, young adult, urban fantasy, romance, historical fiction, and alternate history. In this non-fiction book she uses her academic background and creative writing skills to bring to life the archetypes, tropes, story beats, themes, and messages inherent in the heroine’s journey. Part treatise on authorship, part feminist literary criticism, part how to write guide, Carriger uses mythology, legend, and Gothic victorian 19th century literature to explore movies, screenwriting, books, and audience desires.This is an excellent reference guide for genre fiction authors seeking to improve their craft or for readers and pop culture enthusiasts interested in understanding their own taste. It is the perfect counterpoint to The Hero with a Thousand Faces not to mention Save the Cat, Women Who Run With The Wolves, and The Breakout Novelist.

    Newly revised and expanded for this Third Edition, Creating Short Fiction is a popular and widely trusted guide to writing short stories of originality, durability, and quality. Celebrated short-story author and writing instructor Knight also includes many examples and exercises that have been effective in classrooms and workshops everywhere.

    This book is the answer to that wish." Social Media is more popular than ever. As society becomes more and more technologically advanced, people are seeking new ways to interact. Humans are social creatures. Relationships and community are vital to our survival and our mental and emotional health. Writers, published and unpublished, fiction and non-fiction are hearing words like platform and brand with increasing frequency as the publishing paradigm shifts into the 21st century. The world around us is changing faster than ever, and publishing is certainly not immune. There are more opportunities for a new author today than there has been in the entirety of human history. Yet, the flip side of that reality is, with thousands and thousands of authors with books and blogs, how can a writer ever hope to stand apart let alone succeed? This book will show you how. There are countless social media experts, but Kristen's system is specifically designed to meet the unique needs of a writer. Take charge of your future today. You have great books to write, and don't have time for rookie mistakes that can cost you years of rebuilding your name, brand, and platform. Kristen's method is simple, effective, and helps you harness that same creativity you apply to your writing and harness it to build you social media platform. Best part is you don't even have to be a computer expert or know anything about sales. This system is designed to change the writer's approach, not the writer's personality. And the best part is you have help. Remember, We Are Not Alone.

    She proclaims, in her delightfully urbane, witty, and very English way, that it is time to look at our commas and semicolons and see them as the wonderful and necessary things they are. Using examples from literature, history, neighborhood signage, and her own imagination, Truss shows how meaning is shaped by commas and apostrophes, and the hilarious consequences of punctuation gone awry.Featuring a foreword by Frank McCourt, and interspersed with a lively history of punctuation from the invention of the question mark in the time of Charlemagne to George Orwell shunning the semicolon, Eats, Shoots & Leaves makes a powerful case for the preservation of proper punctuation.

    Each writer begins with a favorite passage from a novel, a song, a poem—something that gets them started and keeps them going with the creative work they love. From there, incredible lessons and stories of life-changing encounters with art emerge, like how sneaking books into his job as a night security guard helped Khaled Hosseini learn that nothing he creates will ever be truly finished. Or how a college reading assignment taught Junot Díaz that great art can be a healing conversation, and an unexpected poet led Elizabeth Gilbert to embrace an unyielding optimism, even in the face of darkness. LIGHT THE DARK collects the best of The Atlantic‘s much-acclaimed “By Heart” series edited by Joe Fassler and adds brand new pieces, each one paired with a striking illustration. Here is a guide to creative living and writing in the vein of Daily Rituals, Bird by Bird, and Big Magic for anyone who wants to learn how great writers find inspiration—and how to find some of your own.CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS: Elizabeth Gilbert, Junot Díaz, Marilynne Robinson, Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon, Aimee Bender, Mary Gaitskill, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Roxane Gay, Angela Flournoy, Jonathan Franzen, Yiyun Li, Leslie Jamison, Claire Messud, Edwidge Danticat, David Mitchell, Khaled Hosseini, Ayana Mathis, Kathryn Harrison, Azar Nafisi, Hanya Yanagihara, Jane Smiley, Nell Zink, Emma Donoghue, Jeff Tweedy, Eileen Myles, Maggie Shipstead, Sherman Alexie, Andre Dubus III, Billy Collins, Lev Grossman, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Charles Simic, Jim Shepard, T.C. Boyle, Tom Perrotta, Viet Than Nguyen, William Gibson, Mark Haddon, Ethan Canin, Jessie Ball, Jim Crace, and Walter Mosley.“As [these authors] reveal what inspires them, they, in turn, inspire the reader, all while celebrating the beauty and purpose of art.” –Booklist

    As soon as you name an emotion, readers go into thinking mode. And when they think about an emotion, they distance themselves from feeling it. A great way to show anger, fear, indifference, and the whole range of emotions that characterize the human experience, is through beats. These action snippets that pepper dialogue can help describe a wide range of emotions while avoiding lazy writing. The power of beats lies in their innate ability to create richer, more immediate, deeper writing. This emotional thesaurus includes hundreds of examples that you can use for your inspiration, so that you, too, can harness this technique to easily convert your writing into palpable feelings. Genre fiction authors can use Emotional Beat as a feeling thesaurus and watch their writing take off! Emotional Beats was an award-winning Finalist in the IPA 2017 Awards.

    It is the road on which nearly everyone who wants to write—and many of the people who do write—get lost.”So writes Ann Patchett in "The Getaway Car", a wry, wisdom-packed memoir of her life as a writer. Here, for the first time, one of America’s most celebrated authors ("State of Wonder", "Bel Canto", "Truth and Beauty"), talks at length about her literary career—the highs and the lows—and shares advice on the craft and art of writing. In this fascinating look at the development of a novelist, we meet Patchett’s mentors (Allan Gurganas, Grace Paley, Russell Banks), see where she made wrong turns (poetry), and learn how she gets the pages written (an unromantic process of pure hard work). Woven through engaging anecdotes from Patchett’s life are lessons about writing that offer an inside peek into the storytelling process and provide a blueprint for anyone wanting to give writing a serious try. The bestselling author gives pointers on everything from finding ideas to constructing a plot to combating writer’s block. More than that, she conveys the joys and rewards of a life spent reading and writing.

    The authors mix inspirational anecdotes with practical guidance on how to find a voice, develop characters and plot,make revisions, and overcome writer's block. Fun writing prompts will help young writers jump-start their own projects, and encouragement throughout will keep them at work.

    Maybe you’re frustrated with your writing progress or overwhelmed by creative doubt, burnout, or writer’s block. Maybe you just can’t seem to sit down and write.No matter the roadblock standing between you and writing success, here’s the good news: You’re capable of becoming the writer you want to be—and that work can begin today. In this actionable and empowering guide to personal writing success, Kristen Kieffer shares 25 insightful chapters designed to help you:• Cultivate confidence in your skills and stories• Develop a personal writing habit you can actually sustain• Improve your writing ability with tools for intentional growth• Discover what you (really) want from your writing life—and how to get it! By the end of Build Your Best Writing Life, you’ll know how to harness the simple techniques that can help you win your inner creative battles, finish projects you can be proud to share with the world, and work with focus to turn your writing dreams into reality.