This is a book about the business of managing your screenwriting career, from advice on choosing an agent to tips on juggling three deal-making breakfasts a day. Prescriptive and useful, Breakfast with Sharks is a real guide to navigating the murky waters of the Hollywood system.Unlike most of the screenwriting books available, here’s one that tells you what to do after you’ve finished your surefire-hit screenplay. Written from the perspective of Michael Lent, an in-the-trenches working screenwriter in Hollywood, this is a real-world look into the script-to-screen business as it is practiced today.Breakfast with Sharks is filled with useful advice on everything from the ins and outs of moving to Los Angeles to understanding terms like “spec,” “option,” and “assignment.” Here you’ll learn what to expect from agents and managers and who does what in the studio hierarchy. And most important, Breakfast with Sharks will help you nail your pitch so the studio exec can’t say no.Rounded out with a Q&A section and resource lists of script competitions, film festivals, trade associations, industry publications, and more, Breakfast with Sharks is chock-full of “take this and use it right now” information for screenwriters at any stage of their careers.

    They teach you how to discover the "Franchise" or structure of a television show in order to write a successful and eye catching spec script. The four-act structure is covered, along with the elements that go into telling a good story. After you've blown them away with your spec script, learn how to pitch confidently and concisely. You'll also find invaluable information on how to work with producers, how to handle your first writing assignment, and tackle revisions. Also included are Writer's Guidelines, and beat sheets, from several television shows to help you familiarize yourself with the way writer's work.

    Book in a Month shows you how to: Set realistic goals and monitor your progress Manage your time so that your writing life has room to flourish Select a story topic that will continue to inspire you throughout the writing process Quickly outline your entire story so that you have a clear idea of how your plot and characters are going to develop before you start writing Draft each act of your story by focusing on specific turning points Keep track of the areas you want to revise without losing your momentum in the middle of your story Relax and have fun-you are, after all, doing something you love So what are you waiting for? If you've been putting off your book project, let Book in a Month be your guide and find out just how much you can accomplish.

    Employing an accessible, example-rich approach, Wonderbook energizes and motivates while also providing practical, nuts-and-bolts information needed to improve as a writer. Aimed at aspiring and intermediate-level writers, Wonderbook includes helpful sidebars and essays from some of the biggest names in fantasy today, such as George R. R. Martin, Lev Grossman, Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, Catherynne M. Valente, and Karen Joy Fowler, to name a few.Praise for Wonderbook: “Jammed with storytelling wisdom.” —Fast Company’s Co.Create blog“This is the kind of book you leave sitting out for all to see . . . and the kind of book you will find yourself picking up again and again.” —Kirkus Reviews online“If you’re looking for a handy guide to not just crafting imaginative fiction like sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, but to writing in general, be sure to pick up a copy of Steampunk Bible author Jeff Vandermeer’s lovingly compiled Wonderbook."  —Flavorwire“Jeff Vandermeer and Jeremy Zerfoss have created a kaleidoscopically rich and beautiful book about fiction writing.”  —Star Tribune“Because it is so layered and filled with text, tips, and links to online extras, this book can be read again and again by both those who want to learn the craft of writing and those interested in the process of others.” —Library Journal

    Copy veteran Constance Hale is on a mission to make creative communication, both the lyrical and the unlawful, an option for everyone.With its crisp, witty tone, Sin and Syntax covers grammar’s ground rules while revealing countless unconventional syntax secrets (such as how to use—Gasp!—interjections or when to pepper your prose with slang) that make for sinfully good writing. Discover how to:*Distinguish between words that are “pearls” and words that are “potatoes”* Avoid “couch potato thinking” and “commitment phobia” when choosing verbs* Use literary devices such as onomatopoeia, alliteration, and metaphor (and understand what you're doing)Everyone needs to know how to write stylish prose—students, professionals, and seasoned writers alike. Whether you’re writing to sell, shock, or just sing, Sin and Syntax is the guide you need to improve your command of the English language.

    How? By taking the fear and mystery out of dictation. By providing exercises designed to nurture and connect parts of the brain used during dictation. By offering specific tips to remove the discomfort that causes most writers to abandon dictation. Fool Proof Dictation is the only ebook of its kind, focusing primarily on the mental process of dictation. It’s a self-paced training system that streamlines the dictation process. There are warm-ups, practical exercises, and an easy to follow routine for dictating your scenes.Fool Proof Dictation serves both absolute beginners and writers who’ve tried dictation but grew discouraged, eventually giving it up. This system offers an ease-of-use that will surprise everyone with how effective and gratifying dictation can be!This ebook details the method I use when I dictate fiction. It also explains all the exercises I’ve used over time to train my brain for effective dictation. On top of that, it includes enough prompts to keep those exercises working for months!

    Drawing from her popular blog, the Newbery Honor author answers readers' questions and dives into how to make a story come alive. If you're interested in writing prose and poetry or just want to be a better and more rounded writer, this book will help you on your creative journey.With her trademark humor and vast writing knowledge, Gail Carson Levine reveals the tricks of her trade, writer to writer.

    But what if the stories you love to write aren’t the kind that are selling like ice water in July? How do you create a career in writing that you both love and hits the financial success you need to justify the hours spent at the keyboard? For Love or Money talks about writing for love (and how to sell that) as well as writing for money (and how to love it). It contains serious strategies about making money with your books, living the freedom of indie publishing, and stretching yourself creatively in your career. For authors willing to take a hard look at themselves and the market, this book will lay out the necessary steps to create your dream writing career. For Love or Money is meant to be used in tandem with The Indie Author Survival Guide (Second Edition), the first book in the Crafting a Self-Publishing Career series. Together, these two books will set you on a path of turning your love for storytelling into a career. **JOIN THE FOR LOVE OR MONEY FACEBOOK GROUP** Connect with your fellow self-published authors and share information about writing and publishing. Susan hosts monthly consultation giveaways and shares updates on the constantly evolving publishing landscape. JOIN HERE: http://smarturl.it/LoveOrMoneyGroup **Table of Contents** Author's Note Crafting Your Dream Writer Life 1.1 Choosing Your Mountain 1.2 Park Your Biases At The Curb 1.3 Embrace Your Freedom 1.4 My Journey 1.5 Decide For Yourself 1.6 Bite-Sized Summary Writing For Love 2.1 Writing Challenges Me 2.2 Forget About Readers 2.3 Joyful Writing 2.4 Take Your Craft Up A Level 2.5 It Will Always Be Hard 2.6 Bite-Sized Summary Turning Love Into Money 3.1 Don't Give Up Too Soon 3.2 All The Marketing Tricks 3.3 Making What You Love More Commercial 3.4 My Biggest Failure/Learning Experience 3.5 Why Isn't My Book Selling 3.6 Build Your Backlist 3.7 Bite-Sized Summary Writing For Money 4.1 Writing What Sells 4.2 What's In Your Wheelhouse 4.3 Don't Try This At Home 4.4 Bite-Sized Summary Balancing Writing And Life 5.1 Staying Sane in a Crazy (Indie Publishing) World Managing Your Career Appendix: Your Self-Publishing Toolkit

    If an editor or agent (or reader) loses interest after a page or two, you've lost him or her completely, even if the middle of your novel is brilliant and the ending phenomenal. Noah Lukeman, an agent in Manhattan, has taken this advice and created a book that examines just what this means, and I have to tell you, it's one of the best I've read. I've written (and seen published) pretty close to a dozen novels in as many years -- some are still to be published and will be out shortly; others are already out of print after four years. But I wish I had read Lukeman's book, The First Five Pages, when I began writing fiction. I'm glad I did now. It has helped, immediately. I'm already embarrassed about some of the goofs I made in my writing -- and I've been revising recent prose with his advice in mind. First off, Lukeman is a literary agent who once was an editor, and his editorial eye is sharp. If every novelist and short story writer in this country had Lukeman as an editor, we'd have a lot more readable prose out there. He writes: Many writers spend the majority of their time devising their plot. What they don't seem to understand is that if their execution -- if their prose -- isn't up to par, their plot may not even be considered.This bears repeating, because in all the books I've read on writing, this is an element that is most often forgotten in the rush to come up with snappy ideas and sharp plot progressions. You can always send a hero on a journey, after all, but if no reader wants to follow him, you've wasted your time. In a tone that can be a bit professorial at times, Lukeman brings what prose is -- and how it reads to others -- into sharp focus. He deals with dialogue, style, and, most importantly, sound. Sound. How does prose sound? It must have rhythm, its own kind of music, in order to draw the reader into the fictive dream. Lukeman's tips and pointers are genuinely helpful, and even important with regard to the sound of the prose itself. Lukeman also brings in on-target exercises for writers of prose and the wonderful advice for novelists to read poetry -- and often. Those first five pages are crucial, for all concerned. But forget the editor and agent and reader. They are important for you, the writer, because they determine the sharpness of your focus, the completeness of your vision, the confidence you, as a writer, need to plunge into a three- or four- or five-hundred-page story. The First Five Pages should be on every writer's shelf. This is the real thing.P#151;Douglas Clegg Douglas Clegg is the author of numerous novels and stories, including The Halloween Man and the collection The Nightmare Chronicles. In addition, Clegg is the author of the world's first publisher-sponsored Internet email novel, Naomi.

    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.

    WITHOUT the quality suffering.

    The book has special interest for aspiring writers, students of literature and language, and anyone who finds joy in reading and writing.". . . Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style, generally recognized as the best study of sentence style." Brooks Landon, University of Iowa, in Building Useful Sentences, page 122.

    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.

    Gary Provost has a light-hearted style, but his message is clear and strong: Make Every Word Count.

    The bestselling grammar book has been updated and revised to include the latest and greatest on the basics and subtleties of English, and features a new chapter on the language of the Internet.