UPDATED 2022 EDITION! These two bestselling writing and editing handbooks, “The Writer’s Guide to Character Emotion” and “The Writer’s Guide to Character Expression” have been updated and combined to create one remarkable single volume! This comprehensive edition contains descriptive writing tools to help writers craft a riveting novel that instantly grabs a reader’s attention. Writers will gain the essential skills needed to craft realistic emotions, visceral responses, and body language to deepen characterization that you can easily and quickly apply to your own writing. ...

The Secrets of Story is a revolutionary and comprehensive writing guide for the 21st century, focused on clever ways to get an audience to fully identify with an all-too-human hero. Authors will learn to how to cut through pop culture noise and win over a jaded modern audience by rediscovering the heart of writing: shaping stories that ring true to our shared understanding of human nature.

On Becoming a Novelist contains the wisdom accumulated during John Gardner's distinguished twenty-year career as a fiction writer and creative writing teacher. With elegance, humor, and sophistication, Gardner describes the life of a working novelist; warns what needs to be guarded against, both from within the writer and from without; and predicts what the writer can reasonably expect and what, in general, he or she cannot.

No one comes out of a movie talking about structure. What audiences love and remember about a movie are great scenes. Marlon Brando in the back seat in On the Waterfront giving his "I could'a been a contender" speech. Meg Ryan's fake orgasm in Katz's Deli in When Harry Met Sally with the climactic punch line: "I'll have what she's having." In Superbad, Jonah Hill professing "I love you" to his friend Michael Cera by touching his nose with a "boop".

While writers might disagree over showing versus telling or plotting versus pantsing, none would argue this: If you want to write strong fiction, you must make your readers feel. The reader's experience must be an emotional journey of its own, one as involving as your characters' struggles, discoveries, and triumphs are for you. That's where The Emotional Craft of Fiction comes in. Veteran literary agent and expert fiction instructor Donald Maass shows you how to use story to provoke a visceral and emotional experience in readers.

Writing advice tends to be full of "rules" and "tips" which are either too broad to be helpful or outright wrong. In On Writing and Worldbuilding, we will discuss specific and applicable ideas to consider, from effective methods of delivering exposition and foreshadowing, to how communication, commerce, and control play into the fall of an empire.

After a decade of teaching writing using the same methods he'd experienced as a student many years before, writer, editor, and educator John Warner realized he could do better. Drawing on his classroom experience and the most persuasive research in contemporary composition studies, he devised an innovative new framework: a step-by-step method that moves the student through a series of writing problems, an organic, bottom-up writing process that exposes and acculturates them to the ways writers work in the world.

Ten years ago, Roy Peter Clark, America's most influential writing teacher, whittled down almost 30 years of experience in journalism, writing, and teaching into a series of 50 short essays on different aspects of writing. In the past decade, Writing Tools has become a classic guidebook for novices and experts alike and remains one of the best loved books on writing available. This new edition includes five brand-new, never-before-shared tools.

DO YOU want readers to find your stories un-put-downable?DO YOU want to create stories readers love? WRITE GREAT SCENES gives you a key set of tools to becoming a writer whose works readers can't stop reading. The most fundamental building block of any novel isn't the character or the plot or anything except the scenes. If you learn how to write great scenes you'll be well on your way to creating novels readers can't put down. This book breaks down what makes a great scene, the four critical elements every great scene needs, and provides you with an entire toolkit of Page-Turner Techniques ...

“Who else wants to write a book this weekend?” It’s easier than you think! Best-selling author Vic Johnson actually wrote this book in a weekend to prove how easy it is. And he gives you step-by-step detail of everything he did, including the resources he uses to turn out content-rich books in no time at all. How to Write a Book This Weekend is a perfect strategy for first-time book writers who have been discouraged by the thought of pounding out words for months at a time.

Lawrence Block is a best-selling author of popular mystery fiction. With over 30 of his works in print, he is as prolific as he is skilled. This collection of essays and articlesfrom his Writer’s Digest columns has been in print for over 20 years. Here he provides invaluable advice to the aspiring writer and the established author. Featuring a witty and honest narration from the author himself, Block presents an illuminating look into the world of the professional writer.

Ready to Start Writing Your Book? Discover What Every First-Time Author Needs to Know For years now, you’ve been saying, “I need to write this book.” But every year, you still don’t write it. The real reason… basically, you don’t know where to start. Sure, you’ve jotted down some notes on your phone and you’ve scripted content or scenes out in your head, but when it actually comes to the writing process, you’re stuck and nothing has made it onto paper. You’ve tried Googling and YouTubing ways to get started, but each article or video just leads you further down the ...

In his essential writing guide, This Year You Write Your Novel, Walter Mosley supplied aspiring writers with the basic tools to write a novel in one year. In this complementary follow up, Mosley guides the writer through the elements of not just any fiction writing, but the kind of writing that transcends convention and truly stands out. How does one approach the genius of writers like Melville, Dickens, or Twain? In Elements of Fiction, Walter Mosley contemplates the answer.

The keys to success as a writer are yours for the thinking! All success begins in the mind. For writers, the mind fuels the imagination and creates stories. But for authors who are productive and resilient, and see a good return on their efforts, there is another factor at work. They are winning the mental game of writing. Successful writers have the ability to inspire themselves to produce consistently, improve systematically, overcome obstacles and keep up a positive mental attitude. In this book, #1 bestselling writing teacher James Scott Bell takes you through the mental landscape of ...

Sell more books and build your career by kicking these blunders to the curb! Ever wonder why some books shoot to the top of the bestseller lists? And others that you think should, don't? It's usually a matter of mistakes that could have been avoided!#1 bestselling writing coach James Scott Bell has analyzed thousands of manuscripts over the years, by both new and experienced writers, and noticed certain errors that keep showing up to take readers out of the fictive dream. Now he's tackled the biggest offenders and shows you how to fix them. In 27 Fiction Writing Blunders you'll learn:* The ...