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.

    She meets and joins up with Lloyd Bophtelophti, a true "original" who has changed his name to avoid alimony payments and who now lives with a paraplegic named Pootie (who also pretends to be deaf in order to get double disability). Thus begins a series of picaresque escapades involving numerous psychiatrists, a TV game show, and, eventually, an ill-fated reunion with her husband. Filled with bizarre characters and events, the play reflects the fractured lifestyles which have become the norm for so many in our tenuous times.

    As selected and introduced by Tobias Wolff, they also make up an alternate map of the United States that represents not just geography but narrative traditions, cultural heritage, and divergent approaches.

    The news media–once the vaunted watchdogs of our republic–are often too timid or distracted to identify these deceptions.unSpun is the secret decoder ring for the twenty-first-century world of disinformation. Written by Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the founders of the acclaimed website FactCheck.org, unSpun reveals the secrets of separating facts from disinformation, such as: • the warning signs of spin, hype, and bogus news• common tricks used to deceive us• how to find trustworthy and objective sources of informationTelling fact from fiction shouldn’t be a difficult task. With this book and a healthy dose of skepticism, anyone can cut through the haze of biased media reportage to be a savvier consumer and a better-informed citizen.“Read this book and you will not go unarmed into the political wars ahead of us. Jackson and Jamieson equip us to be our own truth squad, and that just might be the salvation of democracy.” –Bill Moyers“THE DEFINITIVE B.S. DETECTOR–AN ABSOLUTELY INVALUABLE GUIDEBOOK.”–Mark Shields, syndicated columnist and political analyst, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer“unSpun is an essential guide to cutting through the political fog. Just in time for the 2008 campaign, Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson have written a citizen’s guide to avoiding the malarkey of partisan politics.”–Mara Liasson, NPR national political correspondent“The Internet may be a wildly effective means of communication and an invaluable source of knowledge, but it has also become a new virtual haven for scammers–financial, political, even personal. Better than anything written before, unSpun shows us how to recognize these scams and protect ourselves from them.”–Craig Newmark, founder and customer service representative, Craigslist.orgFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

    These are the children and grandchildren of Appalachian families who migrated to northern cities in the 1950s to look for work. They make up this largely "invisible" urban group, a minority that represents a significant portion of the urban poor. Literacy researchers have rarely studied urban Appalachians, yet, as Victoria Purcell-Gates demonstrates in Other People's Words, their often severe literacy problems provide a unique perspective on literacy and the relationship between print and culture.A compelling case study details the author's work with one such family. The parents, who attended school off and on through the seventh grade, are unable to use public transportation, shop easily, or understand the homework their elementary-school-age son brings home because neither of them can read. But the family is not so much illiterate as low literate--the world they inhabit is an oral one, their heritage one where print had no inherent use and no inherent meaning. They have as much to learn about the culture of literacy as about written language itself.Purcell-Gates shows how access to literacy has been blocked by a confluence of factors: negative cultural stereotypes, cultural and linguistic elitism, and pedagogical obtuseness. She calls for the recruitment and training of "proactive" teachers who can assess and encourage children's progress and outlines specific intervention strategies.

    Includes writing exercises and advice. A Hugo and Locus award winner.

    A woman's journey ended at the altar. Professor Heilbrun notes that the diversity of women's lives now makes it possible for women to dare to choose their own scripts.

    If its purpose is to entertain or to provoke thought, it makes readers want to come back for more.Revised and updated, this guide covers four essential aspects of good writing:Individual words - spelling variations, hyphenation, frequently confused homonyms, frequently misused words and phrases, irregular plurals and negatives, and uses of capitalization and type style to add special meaningsPunctuation - the role of each mark in achieving clarity and affecting tone, and demonstration of how misuses can lead to ambiguitySyntax and structure - agreement of subject and verb, parallel construction, modifiers, tenses, pronouns, active versus passive voice, and moreStyle - advice on the less hard-and-fast areas of clarity and tone, including sentence length and order, conciseness, simplification, reading level, jargon and cliches, and subtletyFilled with self-test exercises and whimsical literary quotations, "Grammatically Correct" steers clear of academic stuffiness, focusing instead on practical strategies and intuitive explanations.Discussions are designed to get to the heart of a concept and provide a sufficient sense of when and how to use it, along with examples that show what ambiguities or misinterpretations might result if the rules are not followed. In cases where there is more than one acceptable way to do something, the approach is not to prescribe one over another but simply to describe the options.Readers of this book will never break the rules of language again - unintentionally."

    Readers familiar with the previous edition will find a text that retains all the features that make Rulebook ideally suited for use as a supplementary course book -- including its modest price and compact size. Unlike most textbooks on argumentative writing, Rulebook is organised around specific rules, illustrated and explained soundly and briefly. It is not a textbook, but a rulebook, whose goal is to help students get on with writing a paper or assessing an argument.

    Part memoir, part manual full of tips, tricks and rituals to integrate into your life to be the best you, you can be. ‘Enough’ follows the journey of Angela Cox, who after years of unsuccessful & often dangerous dieting, needed a radical mindset shift and a floppy haired Body Coach by the name of Joe, to finally change her own story and support others to do the same. She could never have predicted how she'd gain far more than a new body. In meeting her New Self, she first had to make peace with a painful past that had kept her under lock and key for nearly forty years. This book demonstrates that the power to change your now and your forever exists inside you if you believe that you are enough.

     It was supposed to have been a celebration. A night out among friends. A chance to celebrate the culmination of ten long years. For the last decade, Kyle Clady has served as a Navy SEAL. He has endured sleepless nights, hellish environments, personal injury, strained relations. He has fought enemies foreign and domestic, and multiple continents. At long last, it is over. He is free to return home to San Diego, to the wife that has endured by his side, to the plans they have made for the future. Little does he know that waiting there for him is an eventuality far worse than anything he ever encountered in the military...

    "Not a means to an end, but an ongoing participation." A widely acclaimed poet and finalist for the National Book Award, Addonizio meditates on her own process as she encourages writers to explore both their personal and political worlds, to seek inspiration from poets new and old, and to discover the rich poetic resources of the Internet. Lively, accessible, and informative, Ordinary Genius?provides wisdom gleaned through personal experience and offers a heady variety of writing exercises. Chapters on gender, addiction, race and class, metaphor and line invite each individual writer to find and to hone his or her unique voice. This is the perfect book for both experienced writers and beginners eager to glimpse the angel of poetry.

    But for the inexperienced author, trying to make sense of--much less master--the available platforms can be a frustrating experience. The variety of social media options alone is dizzying enough: WordPress, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, and more.That's where this guide comes in. Whether you're just starting to create an audience or looking to refine your online presence, Social Media for Writers will equip you with the essential tools you'll need to succeed. In this book you'll learn how to:Develop an editorial calendar: schedule consistent, quality content for your blog and work with other authors on guest posts and blog toursCreate an online brand: write content for several different networks, and tie them together to develop an authoritative, trusted voiceUtilize "best practices": learn the ins-and-outs of the online community and how to maximize the potential of each platformBuild a community: make connections and create a fan base to endorse your workYou'll also find appendixes that show you how to set up the major social media platforms and perform basic functions. With all of these strategies, techniques, and applicable information, Social Media for Writers is a comprehensive source for all your social media needs!

     Every college sport picks its champion by a postseason tournament, except for one: Division I-A football. Instead of a tournament, fans are subjected to the Bowl Championship Series, an arcane mix of polling and mathematical rankings that results in just two teams playing for the championship. It is, without a doubt, the most hated institution in all of sports. A recent "Sports Illustrated" poll found that more than 90 percent of sports fans oppose the BCS, yet this system has remained in place for more than a decade. Built upon top-notch investigative reporting, "Death to the BCS" at last reveals the truth about this monstrous entity and offers a simple solution for fixing it. "Death to the BCS" includes findings from interviews with power players, as well as research into federal tax records, Congressional testimony, and private contracts, revealing: ?The truth behind the "Cartel"-the anonymous suits who run the BCS and who profit handsomely by protecting it ?The flawed math and corruption that determine which teams participate in the national championship ?How the system hurts competition by perpetuating "cupcake" schedules ?How "mid-major" teams are systematically denied a chance to play for the championship ?How a comprehensive sixteen-team playoff plan can solve the problem while enhancing profitability The first book to lay out the unseemly inner workings of the BCS in full detail, "Death to the BCS" is a rousing manifesto for bringing fairness back to one of our most beloved sports.

    Provocative and reassuring, nurturing and wise, The Lie That Tells a Truth is essential to writers in general, fiction writers in particular, beginning writers, serious writers, and anyone facing a blank page.John Dufresne, teacher and the acclaimed author of Love Warps the Mind a Little and Deep in the Shade of Paradise, demystifies the writing process. Drawing upon the wisdom of literature's great craftsmen, Dufresne's lucid essays and diverse exercises initiate the reader into the tools, processes, and techniques of writing: inventing compelling characters, developing a voice, creating a sense of place, editing your own words. Where do great ideas come from? How do we recognize them? How can language capture them? In his signature comic voice, Dufresne answers these questions and more in chapters such as "Writing Around the Block," "Plottery," and "The Art of Abbreviation." Dufresne demystifies the writing process, showing that while the idea of writing may be overwhelming, the act of writing is simplicity itself.