Next Word Better Word

Stephen Dobyns, author of the classic book on the beauty of poetry, Best Words, Best Order, moves into new terrain in this remarkable book.

Author: Stephen Dobyns

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

ISBN: 023011878X

Category: Language Arts & Disciplines

Page: 288

View: 106

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This accessible writer's guide provides a helpful framework for creating poetry and navigates contemporary concerns and practices. Stephen Dobyns, author of the classic book on the beauty of poetry, Best Words, Best Order, moves into new terrain in this remarkable book. Bringing years of experience to bear on issues such as subject matter, the mechanics of poetry, and the revision process, Dobyns explores the complex relationship between writers and their work. From Philip Larkin to Pablo Neruda to William Butler Yeats, every chapter reveals useful lessons in these renowned poets' work. Both enlightening and encouraging, Next Word, Better Word demystifies a subtle art form and shows writers how to overcome obstacles in the creative process.
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The Elusive Craft of Writing

But, having acquired the craft of writing, of expression, they have, in a literary
sense, nothing else to learn. Their concern is not really with literature, but with
some non-literary branch of knowledge or speculation of which literature
happens to ...

Author: Arnold Bennett

Publisher: e-artnow

ISBN: EAN:4057664131577

Category: Self-Help

Page: 247

View: 606

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"The Elusive Craft of Writing" is a book of practical advice for everyone interested in writing. Arnold Bennett provides useful advice on how to develop as an artist. He gives tips on how to start the creative process of writing and how to develop a unique literary style. Finally, the author provides a long list of recommended books written in English every person should read. How to Become an Author The Literary Career The Formation of Style Journalism Short Stories Sensational and Other Serials The Novel Non-fictional Writing The Business Side of Books The Occasional Author Playwriting Specimen Page Showing Correcting for Press The Author's Craft Seeing Life Writing Novels Writing Plays The Artist and the Public The Truth about an Author Literary Taste: How to Form It The Aim Your Particular Case Why a Classic is a Classic Where to Begin How to Read a Classic The Question of Style Wrestling With an Author System in Reading Verse Broad Counsels An English Library: Period I An English Library: Period II An English Library: Period III Mental Stocktaking
539 Download

Mastering the Craft of Writing

Spend a week with each technique, or use this book as a go-to reference.

Author: Stephen Wilbers

Publisher: Penguin

ISBN: 9781599637907

Category: Reference

Page: 312

View: 854

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Make Every Word Memorable! To be remembered for your words, you need to write with skill and style. Whether you're crafting a novel, composing an e-mail, or creating a technical report, Mastering the Craft of Writing presents 52 practical techniques to improve your prose. Spend a week with each technique, or use this book as a go-to reference. Either way, you'll have the tools to enliven your writing and delight your readers. • Write with economy: Eliminate wordiness, use strong verbs to drive your sentences, and don't trust modifiers. • Write with emphasis: Use punctuation for effect, structure sentences and paragraphs for coherency and flow, and employ repetition to make your point. • Write with distinction: Use your imagination to create the unexpected, add a light-hearted touch to your writing, and go beyond clarity to eloquence and grace. With exercises, entertaining asides, and a wealth of useful information, Mastering the Craft of Writing is an invaluable resource for any writer. Once you master these techniques, you'll want to use them in everything you write.
928 Download

Narrative Design

Key features of this book: • An intimate look at the workings of AAA game development from someone who has spent decades embedded on teams at well-known companies. • An insider’s look at the game industry, including advice on breaking ...

Author: Michael Breault

Publisher: CRC Press

ISBN: 9780429577468

Category: Computers

Page: 206

View: 423

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Narrative designers and game designers are critical to the development of digital and analog games. This book provides a detailed look at the work writers and designers perform every day on game development projects. It includes practical advice on how to break into the game industry as a writer or game designer. Readers can use the templates and detailed instructions provided here to create lively portfolios that will help open the door to jobs in the game industry. Key features of this book: • An intimate look at the workings of AAA game development from someone who has spent decades embedded on teams at well-known companies. • An insider’s look at the game industry, including advice on breaking into the industry. • Detailed instructions for creating a portfolio to demonstrate narrative design and game design skills to prospective employers. • Lessons and exercises to help students develop narrative design and game design skills. • A how-to guide for college instructors teaching classes in narrative design and game design. Detailed assignments and syllabi are included. Author Bio: Michael Breault is a 35-year industry veteran who has contributed his writing and game design skills to over 130 published games. He currently teaches narrative design and game design courses at Webster University in St. Louis. The courses he creates and teaches are based on the tasks narrative designers and game designers undertake every day while developing games. These classes provide his students with a real-world view of the work they will be doing as writers and designers in the game industry.
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A Stranger s Journey

Long recognized as a master teacher at writing programs like VONA, the Loft, and the Stonecoast MFA, with A Stranger’s Journey, David Mura has written a book on creative writing that addresses our increasingly diverse American literature.

Author: David Mura

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

ISBN: 9780820353456

Category: Language Arts & Disciplines

Page: 272

View: 328

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Long recognized as a master teacher at writing programs like VONA, the Loft, and the Stonecoast MFA, with A Stranger’s Journey, David Mura has written a book on creative writing that addresses our increasingly diverse American literature. Mura argues for a more inclusive and expansive definition of craft, particularly in relationship to race, even as he elucidates timeless rules of narrative construction in fiction and memoir. His essays offer technique-focused readings of writers such as James Baldwin, ZZ Packer, Maxine Hong Kingston, Mary Karr, and Garrett Hongo, while making compelling connections to Mura’s own life and work as a Japanese American writer. In A Stranger’s Journey, Mura poses two central questions. The first involves identity: How is writing an exploration of who one is and one’s place in the world? Mura examines how the myriad identities in our changing contemporary canon have led to new challenges regarding both craft and pedagogy. Here, like Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark or Jeff Chang’s Who We Be, A Stranger’s Journey breaks new ground in our understanding of the relationship between the issues of race, literature, and culture. The book’s second central question involves structure: How does one tell a story? Mura provides clear, insightful narrative tools that any writer may use, taking in techniques from fiction, screenplays, playwriting, and myth. Through this process, Mura candidly explores the newly evolved aesthetic principles of memoir and how questions of identity occupy a central place in contemporary memoir.
189 Download

The Craft of Scientific Writing

—Sir Francis Darwin Many people underestimate how difficult scientific writing is.
One aspect that makes scientific writing difficult is the inherent complexity of the
subject matter. Some subjects such as eddies in a turbulent flow are complex ...

Author: Michael Alley

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

ISBN: 9781475724820

Category: Education

Page: 282

View: 545

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Designed to help both professional and student scientists and engineers write clearly and effectively, this text approaches the subject in a fresh way. Using scores of examples from a wide variety of authors and disciplines, the author - himself a writer and physicist -- demonstrates the difference between strong and weak scientific writing, and how to convey ideas to the intended audience. In addition, he gives advice on how to start writing, and how to revise drafts, including many suggestions about approaching a wide variety of tasks - from laboratory reports to grant proposals, from internal communications to press releases - as well as a concise guide to appropriate style and usage.
814 Download

Telling Stories

Telling Stories is intended for anyone interested in thinking more about the elements of storytelling in short stories, novels, and memoirs.

Author: Lee Martin

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

ISBN: 9781496202024

Category: Language Arts & Disciplines

Page: 258

View: 184

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A prolific and award-winning writer, Lee Martin has put pen to paper to offer his wisdom, honed during thirty years of teaching the oh-so-elusive art of writing. Telling Stories is intended for anyone interested in thinking more about the elements of storytelling in short stories, novels, and memoirs. Martin clearly delineates helpful and practical techniques for demystifying the writing process and provides tools for perfecting the art of the scene, characterization, detail, point of view, language, and revision—in short, the art of writing. His discussion of the craft in his own life draws from experiences, memories, and stories to provide a more personal perspective on the elements of writing. Martin provides encouragement by sharing what he’s learned from his journey through frustrations, challenges, and successes. Most important, Telling Stories emphasizes that you are not alone on this journey and that writers must remain focused on what they love: the process of moving words on the page. By focusing on that purpose, Martin contends, the journey will always take you where you’re meant to go.
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The Art and Craft of Writing Historical Fiction

In The Art and Craft of Writing Historical Fiction, best-selling author James Alexander Thom (Follow the River, From Sea to Shining Sea, Sign-Talker) gives you the tools you need to research and create stories born from the past that will ...

Author: James Alexander Thom

Publisher: Writer's Digest Books

ISBN: 1582975698

Category: Reference

Page: 256

View: 763

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Once Upon a Time, it was NOW... While a historian stands firmly planted in the present and looks back into the past, a historical novelist has a more immediate task: to set readers in the midst of bygone events and lead them forward, allowing them to live and feel the wonderment, fear, hope, triumph, and pain as if they were there. In The Art and Craft of Writing Historical Fiction, best-selling author James Alexander Thom (Follow the River, From Sea to Shining Sea, Sign-Talker) gives you the tools you need to research and create stories born from the past that will move and inspire modern readers. His comprehensive approach includes lessons on how to: Find and use historical archives and conduct physical field research Re-construct the world of your novel, including people and voices, physical environments, and cultural context Achieve verisimilitude in speech, action, setting, and description Seamlessly weave historical fact with your own compelling plot ideas With wit and candor, Thom's detailed instruction, illuminating personal experience, and invaluable insights culled from discussions with other trusted historical writers will guide you to craft a novel that is true to what was then, when then was now.
241 Download

Building a Community of Writers

"Featuring: writer's workshop teaching techniques ; activities directly linked to writing standards."--Cover.

Author: Kim Cernek

Publisher: Creative Teaching Press

ISBN: 9781591983767

Category: Education

Page: 96

View: 338

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"Featuring: writer's workshop teaching techniques ; activities directly linked to writing standards."--Cover.
422 Download

The Princeton Review Writing Smart Junior

A systematic introduction to clear, effective writing. Includes a grammar review, a guide to putting together words, sentences, and paragraphs, and exercises.

Author: Cynthia Johnson

Publisher: Princeton Review

ISBN: 0679761314

Category: Creative writing

Page: 214

View: 297

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A systematic introduction to clear, effective writing. Includes a grammar review; a guide to putting together words, sentences, and paragraphs; and exercises.
967 Download

The Writing Thief

Within this book, you'll discover more than 90 excellent mentor texts, along with straight-forward activities that incorporate the traits of writing across informational, narrative, and argument modes.

Author: Ruth Culham

Publisher: Stenhouse Publishers

ISBN: 9781625311412

Category: Children's literature

Page: 206

View: 820

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It's been said that good writers borrow while great writers steal. Writing thieves read widely, dive deeply into texts, and steal bits and pieces from great texts as models for their own writing. Ruth Culham admits to being a writing thief--and she wants you and your students to become writing thieves, too! A major part of good writing instruction is finding the right mentor texts to share with students. Within this book, you'll discover more than 90 excellent mentor texts, along with straight-forward activities that incorporate the traits of writing across informational, narrative, and argument modes. Chapters also include brief essays from beloved writing thieves such as Lester Laminack, David L. Harrison, Lisa Yee, Nicola Davies, Ralph Fletcher, Toni Buzzeo, Lola Schaefer, and Kate Messner, detailing the reading that has influenced their own writing. Ruth's renowned easy-going style and friendly tone make this a book you'll turn to again and again as you guide your students to reach their full potential as deep, thoughtful readers and great writers. There's a writing thief in each of us when we learn how to read with a writer's eye!
456 Download

Screenwriting Fundamentals

Part One of the book covers character, location, time-frame and dialogue, emphasizing the particularity in writing for a visual medium. Part Two of the book focuses on the narrative aspect of screenwriting.

Author: Irv Bauer

Publisher: CRC Press

ISBN: 9781317214137

Category: Performing Arts

Page: 184

View: 292

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Screenwriting Fundamentals: The Art and Craft of Visual Writing takes a step-by-step approach to screenwriting, starting with a blank page and working through each element of the craft. Written in an approachable anecdote-infused style that’s full of humor, Bauer shows the writer how to put the pieces together, taking the process of screenwriting out of the cerebral and on to the page. Part One of the book covers character, location, time-frame and dialogue, emphasizing the particularity in writing for a visual medium. Part Two of the book focuses on the narrative aspect of screenwriting. Proceeding incrementally from the idea and story outline, through plotting and writing the treatment, the workshop-in-a-book concludes with writing the First Draft. A unique emphasis on the visual elements of storytelling because the camera is always present—the screenplay must act as a guide for the director and the editor. A "workshop in a book" approach that walks the reader step-by-step through a screenplay—focusing on character, location, time frame, visual components, and transitions—with plenty of exercises that generate material for the narrative writing process. A process-oriented approach, combined with a lighthearted tone and approachable style, that allows the reader to ease into the daunting task of writing a First Draft and takes them all the way through to the end— First Draft in hand.
282 Download

Writing True

This book shows writers of all ages how to find and develop nonfiction topics that matter to them--in ways that make readers care too.

Author: Sondra Perl

Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing Company

ISBN: 1133307434

Category: Language Arts & Disciplines

Page: 390

View: 670

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This book shows writers of all ages how to find and develop nonfiction topics that matter to them--in ways that make readers care too. It emphasizes writing for discovery, not just writing what one knows. It emphasizes a strong authorial presence (voice) and a convincing point of view. Most important, it not only tells but also shows how writing true involves the poet's attention to language, the fiction writer's power of storytellling, the journalist's pursuit of fact, and the scholar's reliance on research. The first part of the book offers ten practical chapters from getting started to turning first ideas into finished work. Topics include: The Power of the Notebook, Ten Ways to a Draft, Taking Shape, Finding Voice, Twenty Ways to Talk About Writing, The Craft of Revision, The Role of Research, The Ethics of Creative Nonfiction, Workshopping a Draft, and Exploring New Media. The second part of the book is an anthology of the best nonfiction writing for aspiring writers to read and study in order to write with creativity, integrity, and authenticity. Organized by form, they include Memoir, Personal Essay, Portrait, Essay of Place, Narrative Journalism, and Short Shorts. Selections represent a variety of experience from classic masters (E.B.White and George Orwell) to major contemporary writers (such as Alice Walker, Stephen Dunn, and Scott Russell Sanders) to up and coming writers (such as E.J. Levy and Amy Butcher). The anthology also includes "Stories of Craft," with five prominent writers, including Patricia Hampl and Sue Miller, describing the challenges and rewards of writing engaging nonfiction.
421 Download

The Art Craft of Writing Christian Fiction

Let's face it: Christian fiction is fun.

Author: Jeff Gerke

Publisher: Penguin

ISBN: 9781599636481

Category: Language Arts & Disciplines

Page: 425

View: 307

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Let's face it: Christian fiction is fun. Even if you're writing a serious-minded study of man's inhumanity to man, there is something exhilarating about story; about creating people and worlds and events; about telling a tale that keeps readers enraptured and maybe - just maybe - leaves them fortified in their walk with Jesus. But for all of the fun, it's also hard work. There is skill involved in writing excellent Christian fiction. There is craftsmanship to be learned. And there are the long hours pounding away on a manuscript that, by the time you're done with it, has you convinced it's the worst piece of garbage ever penned by man. That's not even talking about trying to get your book published. It's a wonder anyone would choose such a way to spend otherwise useful time. So maybe you put your novel away for awhile. You've tried to do more sensible things with your spare moments. You've attempted to be engaged with workaday matters, laundry, and bills. But one day, a new story idea will pop into your head or you won't be able to stop hearing the voice of a character demanding to be written about. On that day, you'll be right back where you were, counting the cost of writing Christian fiction â€" and loving it like nothing else.
149 Download