The Writer's Idea Book


Jack Heffron - 2000
    And once you've got an idea, what then? Ideas without a plan, without a purpose, are no more than pleasant thoughts. In The Writer's Idea Book, Jack Heffron, former senior editor at Writer's Digest Books and Story Press, will help you find the answer. Utilizing over 400 prompts and exercises, you'll generate intriguing ideas and plumb their possibilities to turn them into something amazing. The Writer's Idea Book will give you the insight and the self-awareness to create and refine ideas that demand to be transformed into greater works, the kind of compelling, absorbing writing that will have other writers asking "where do you get those ideas?"

Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping


Matthew Salesses - 2021
     The traditional writing workshop was established with white male writers in mind; what we call craft is informed by their cultural values. In this bold and original examination of elements of writing—including plot, character, conflict, structure, and believability—and aspects of workshop—including the silenced writer and the imagined reader—Matthew Salesses asks questions to invigorate these familiar concepts. He upends Western notions of how a story must progress. How can we rethink craft, and the teaching of it, to better reach writers with diverse backgrounds? How can we invite diverse storytelling traditions into literary spaces?Drawing from examples including One Thousand and One Nights, Curious George, Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, and the Asian American classic No-No Boy, Salesses asks us to reimagine craft and the workshop. In the pages of exercises included here, teachers will find suggestions for building syllabi, grading, and introducing new methods to the classroom; students will find revision and editing guidance, as well as a new lens for reading their work. Salesses shows that we need to interrogate the lack of diversity at the core of published fiction: how we teach and write it. After all, as he reminds us, "When we write fiction, we write the world."

Writing the Breakout Novel


Donald Maass - 2001
    Maybe you've already been published, but your latest effort is stuck in mid-list limbo. Whatever the case may be, author and literary agent Donald Maass can show you how to take your prose to the next level and write a breakout novel - one that rises out of obscurity and hits the best-seller lists.Maass details the elements that all breakout novels share - regardless of genre - then shows you writing techniques that can make your own books stand out and succeed in a crowded marketplace.You'll learn to:- establish a powerful and sweeping sense of time and place - weave subplots into the main action for a complex, engrossing story - create larger-than-life characters that step right off the page - explore universal themes that will interest a broad audience of readers - sustain a high degree of narrative tension from start to finish - develop an inspired premise that sets your novel apart from the competitionThen, using examples from the recent works of several best-selling authors - including novelist Anne Perry - Maass illustrates methods for upping the ante in every aspect of your novel writing. You'll capture the eye of an agent, generate publisher interest and lay the foundation for a promising career.

Writing Great Books for Young Adults: Everything You Need to Know, from Crafting the Idea to Landing a Publishing Deal


Regina Brooks - 2008
    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.

Dear Writer, You Need to Quit


Becca Syme - 2019
    There are a thousand of those out there and you've read them all.What this book is: a mindset shift book. If you want to stay in this industry, there are some things you need to quit. And I'm not going to tell you "how", but I am going to tell you why.

On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction


William Zinsser - 1976
    It is a book for everybody who wants to learn how to write or who needs to do some writing to get through the day, as almost everybody does in the age of e-mail and the Internet. Whether you want to write about people or places, science and technology, business, sports, the arts or about yourself in the increasingly popular memoir genre, On Writing Well offers you fundamental priciples as well as the insights of a distinguished writer and teacher. With more than a million copies sold, this volume has stood the test of time and remains a valuable resource for writers and would-be writers.

The Elements of Style


William Strunk Jr. - 1918
    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.

Embrace Your Weird: Face Your Fears and Unleash Creativity


Felicia Day - 2019
    Including Felicia’s personal stories and hard-won wisdom, Embrace Your Weird offers: —Entertaining and revelatory exercises that empower you to be fearless, so you can rediscover the things that bring you joy, and crack your imagination wide open —Unique techniques to vanquish enemies of creativity like: anxiety, fear, procrastination, perfectionism, criticism, and jealousy —Tips to cultivate a creative community —Space to explore and get your neurons firing Whether you enjoy writing, baking, painting, podcasting, playing music, or have yet to uncover your favorite creative outlet, Embrace Your Weird will help you unlock the power of self-expression. Get motivated. Get creative. Get weird.

Writing for Story: Craft Secrets of Dramatic Nonfiction


Jon Franklin - 1986
    And now Jon Franklin, himself a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and undisputed master of the great American nonfiction short story, shares the secrets of his success. Franklin shows how to make factual pieces come alive by applying the literary techniques of complication/resolution, flashback, foreshadowing, and pace. He illustrates his points with a close analysis and annotation of two of his most acclaimed stories, so that the reader can see, step-by-step, just how they were created. This lively, easy-to-follow guid combines readability and excitement with the best of expository prose and illuminates the techniques that beginning journalists—and more experienced ones, too—will find immensely helpful:Stalking the true short storyDrafting an effective outlineStructuring the rough copyPolishing like a proand the tips, tools, and techniques that will put your stories on the cutting edge

Growing Gills: How to Find Creative Focus When You’re Drowning in Your Daily Life


Jessica Abel - 2017
     If you feel like you’re floundering in the deep end (Not waving, drowning!), and anxiety over the complexity and enormousness of your creative projects overwhelms you, stop scrambling to fit everything in and feeling stretched thin. DIVE DEEP AND SWIM Sustain the energy you feel when thinking of how awesome your projects could be. Value your own creative work as highly as work you do for other people. Build a reusable structure and process that will consistently get you to the finish line. Blast through your stuck-ness. Focus. Finish. Move on to the next project. You’re a creative person. Even if you have a hard time calling yourself a “writer” or an “artist” in public, making your creative work is core to who you are and how you see the world. You may be harboring a big, ambitious idea for a project. Possibly a lot of them. And it’s killing you. You lie awake thinking about it…and hating yourself for not doing more to make it real. And then in the morning you’re exhausted, and you can’t believe you “wasted” more time on this stupid idea. Who ever told you you were creative anyway? You try to shove your idea away, to forget it. But your creative work is what keeps you sane. You can’t not do this. So you live with guilt and anxiety all the time. You’ve tried to carve out the time and attention you need to devote to your creative work. You’ve made ambitious goals, you’ve written lists, you’ve scheduled calendars…you’ve installed shackles on your desk chair. But chaining yourself to your work only seems to make you more distractible and more miserable. (And those unsightly leg sores!) Maybe you've even tried to borrow time-management tips from the business world. Get things done! Build seven habits! Eat that frog! But following business-minded productivity systems just doesn’t work for you. The issue isn’t simply getting “things” done, it’s allowing yourself to devote precious time and attention to the vital, self-generated creative work that builds toward your vision for the future. The problem is, the life you’re living is already full. You’ve made a lot of promises, to yourself, your family, your friends, and your community, that you’ll be there for them. You probably have a job; you may have kids. You may well have many competing ideas for your creative work. Where, exactly, can you find that mythical Creative Focus Unicorn? In Growing Gills, you’ll discover that the power is already within you to make your work. The biggest obstacles to your getting your important creative work done lie in the unknowns you’re facing. Growing Gills takes you step by step through the process of pinning down exactly what’s stopping you from finishing your beautiful, inventive, and potentially game-changing projects. Using the power of conscious decision, you’ll build your own unique system for fitting creative work into your existing life, taking into consideration how you work best.

Leaving a Trace: On Keeping a Journal


Alexandra Johnson - 2001
    Now in paperback comes the acclaimed, one-of-a-kind practical guide to starting and keeping a journal and transforming it into a larger creative work: a family chronicle, a memoir, or a novel.

47 Mind Hacks for Writers: Master the Writing Habit in 10 Minutes Or Less and End Writer's Block and Procrastination for Good


Karen Dimmick - 2016
    No more interruptions. No more feeling you're not good enough to be the writer you long to be. No more conflicts with family. No more writer's block. Awareness + Solution = Mind Hack Rather than "feel good inspiration", 47 Mind Hacks for Writers takes you through the simple steps you need to shift your mindset so you can write on your terms.We asked over 100 writers what their biggest obstacles were around writing. This book gives you a mind hack for each one. DISCOVER 47 Mind Hacks that Will Make You a More Productive Writer The book will help you: Put an end to writer's block… forever Uncover the real reason you're procrastinating and start writing today Discover a fun way to get your family to help you reach your writing goals Stop feeling like you're not good enough Shut down the overly-critical self-talk that holds you back Karen & Steve Dimmick have been using belief change techniques, coaching and Neuro-Linguistics since 2004, and have been helping authors since 2007.You know what life hacking is, now it's time to hack your mind, get out of your own way and be the writer you know you can be. DOWNLOAD 47 Mind Hacks for Writers, today, and get back in control of your writing life!

Writer's Doubt: How You Can Overcome Doubt and Create Work That Matters


Bryan Hutchinson - 2014
    As a child, he had to take a remedial reading and writing class because he could barely write a full sentence. One editor told him his book would never be published.And yet Bryan is now a bestselling author whose books have been read by over 100,000 people and the book the editor said would never be published has been praised publicly by the foremost experts in the field.All writers doubt their ability. But Bryan's story shows doubt doesn't have to define your writing future.

The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories


Christopher Booker - 2004
    Using a wealth of examples, from ancient myths and folk tales via the plays and novels of great literature to the popular movies and TV soap operas of today, it shows that there are seven archetypal themes which recur throughout every kind of storytelling. But this is only the prelude to an investigation into how and why we are 'programmed' to imagine stories in these ways, and how they relate to the inmost patterns of human psychology. Drawing on a vast array of examples, from Proust to detective stories, from the Marquis de Sade to E.T., Christopher Booker then leads us through the extraordinary changes in the nature of storytelling over the past 200 years, and why so many stories have 'lost the plot' by losing touch with their underlying archetypal purpose. Booker analyses why evolution has given us the need to tell stories and illustrates how storytelling has provided a uniquely revealing mirror to mankind's psychological development over the past 5000 years.This seminal book opens up in an entirely new way our understanding of the real purpose storytelling plays in our lives, and will be a talking point for years to come.

Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer


Roy Peter Clark - 2006
    "You need tools, not rules." His book distills decades of experience into 50 tools that will help any writer become more fluent and effective. WRITING TOOLS covers everything from the most basic ("Tool 5: Watch those adverbs") to the more complex ("Tool 34: Turn your notebook into a camera") and provides more than 200 examples from literature and journalism to illustrate the concepts. For students, aspiring novelists, and writers of memos, e-mails, PowerPoint presentations, and love letters, here are 50 indispensable, memorable, and usable tools. "Pull out a favorite novel or short story, and read it with the guidance of Clark's ideas. . . . Readers will find new worlds in familiar places. And writers will be inspired to pick up their pens." -Boston Globe"For all the aspiring writers out there-whether you're writing a novel or a technical report-a respected scholar pulls back the curtain on the art." -Atlanta Journal-Constitution"This is a useful tool for writers at all levels of experience, and it's entertainingly written, with plenty of helpful examples." -Booklist