Writing Self-Help
Top 10 Writing Self-Help
: The Writer's Idea Book, Writing 21st Century Fiction: High Impact Techniques for Exceptional Storytelling, The Pocket Muse: Ideas and Inspirations for Writing, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, Writing Is My Drink: A Writer's Story of Finding Her Voice (and a Guide to How You Can Too), Bullies, Bastards and Bitches: How to Write the Bad Guys of Fiction, The Artist's Way Every Day: A Year of Creative Living, The Daily Writer: 366 Meditations To Cultivate A Productive And Meaningful Writing Life, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, The Fire in Fiction: Passion, Purpose and Techniques to Make Your Novel Great
"Where do you get your ideas?"
It's a question and a quandary that bedevils every writer. 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...
Writing 21st Century Fiction: High Impact Techniques for Exceptional Storytelling
| Author | Donald Maass |
| ISBN | 1599634007 |
The first book to provide a concrete framework for writing powerful literary/commercial novels. With this book, literary novelists will: Learn to create compelling plots, while commercial novelists will be able to achieve literary quality writing and win critical respect. Examine examples,...
| Author | Monica Wood |
| ISBN | 1582973229 |
The Barnes & Noble Review
Sparkling with delightful, witty, thought-provoking morsels for today's writers, Monica Wood's dreamy yet realistic writer's companion will encourage your muse to take flight. The stimulating visuals laced throughout the book uniquely capture the...
Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
| Author | Natalie Goldberg |
| ISBN | 1590303164 |
For more than twenty years Natalie Goldberg has been challenging and cheering on writers with her books and workshops. In her groundbreaking first book, she brings together Zen meditation and writing in a new way. Writing practice, as she calls it, is no different from other forms of Zen practice--"it...
| Author | Theo Pauline Nestor |
| ISBN | 1451665091 |
"Theo Nestor is a writer who, I am positive, will be heard from," wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning author Frank McCourt, and hear from her we do in this enthralling memoir that doubles as a witty and richly told writing guide. Yet the real promise in Writing Is My Drink lies in Nestor's uncanny ability as a...
| Author | Jessica Page Morrell |
| ISBN | 1582974845 |
Get to Know Your Character's Sinister Side
A truly memorable antagonist is not a one-dimensional super villain bent on world domination for no particular reason. Realistic, credible bad guys create essential story complications, personalize conflict, add immediacy to a story line, and force...
The Artist's Way Every Day: A Year of Creative Living
| Author | Julia Cameron |
| ISBN | 1585427470 |
This new book from the author of the international bestseller The Artist's Way guides readers through a year of cultivating a deeper connection to their creative selves.
The Artist's Way has touched the lives of millions of people around the world. Now, for the first time, fans will have a beautifully...
| Author | Fred White |
| ISBN | 1582975299 |
Make Writing a Part of Your Daily Routine
It isn't always easy to carve out time to devote meaningful thought and energy to your writing. Hectic schedules, distractions, and creative blocks all too often interrupt the dream - postpone it for another day.
But with 366 provocative entries...
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
| Author | Stephen King |
| ISBN | 0743455967 |
"Long live the King" hailed Entertainment Weekly upon the publication of Stephen King's On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer's craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every...
Discover the Difference Between a So-So Manuscript and a Novel Readers Can't Forget
We've all read them: novels by our favorite authors that disappoint. Uninspired and lifeless, we wonder what happened. Was the author in a hurry? Did she have a bad year? Has he lost interest altogether?
Something...
| Author | Dwight V. Swain |
| ISBN | 0806139188 |
A jargon-free manual on the basics of developing interesting fictional characters
Vibrant, believable characters help drive a fictional story. Along with a clever plot, well-drawn characters make us want to continue reading a novel or finish watching a movie. In Creating Characters,...
Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction
| Author | Tracy Kidder |
| ISBN | 1400069750 |
Good Prose is an inspiring book about writing—about the creation of good prose—and the record of a warm and productive literary friendship. The story begins in 1973, in the offices of The Atlantic Monthly, in Boston, where a young freelance writer named Tracy Kidder came looking for an assignment....
First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process
| Author | Robert D. Richardson Jr. |
| ISBN | 1587297930 |
Writing was the central passion of Emerson’s life. While his thoughts on the craft are well developed in “The Poet,” “The American Scholar,” Nature, “Goethe,” and “Persian Poetry,” less well known are the many pages in his private journals devoted to the relationship between...
| Author | Dwight V. Swain |
| ISBN | 0806111917 |
Techniques of the Selling Writer provides solid instruction for people who want to write and sell fiction, not just to talk and study about it. It gives the background, insights, and specific procedures needed by all beginning writers. Here one can learn how to group words into copy that moves, movement...
| Author | Natalie Goldberg |
| ISBN | 0553347756 |
Natalie Goldberg, author of the bestselling Writing Down The Bones, teaches a method of writing that can take you beyond craft to the true source of creative power: The mind that is "raw, full of energy, alive and hungry."
Here is compassionate, practical,...
| Author | Natalie Goldberg |
| ISBN | 0553374966 |
In this long-awaited sequel to her bestselling books Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind, Natalie Goldberg, one of the most sought-after writing teachers of our time, takes us to the next step in the writing process.
You’ve filled your notebooks, done your writing practice, discovered...
Once More* *with footnotes
| Author | Terry Pratchett |
| ISBN | 1886778574 |
I really liked most of these stories and essays...though I felt a lot better about myself before I realized that in addition to being funny, Terry Pratchett is also a LOT smarter than I am.
And I found my new favorite quote: "That reminds me why I gave up Dungeons and Dragons. There were too many...
Wrede on Writing: Tips, Hints, and Opinions on Writing
| Author | Patricia C. Wrede |
| ISBN | 1626812225 |
How do I turn an idea into a novel? How do I build a character? How do I decide how to tell a story?
Patricia C. Wrede has been a stalwart of the sci-fi/fantasy world for decades, publishing dozens of books across multiple series, storming bestseller lists and corralling accolades from critics and...
Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting Dynamic Characters and Effective Viewpoints
| Author | Nancy Kress |
| ISBN | 1582973164 |
Create Complex Characters
How do you create a main character readers won't forget? How do you write a book in multiple-third-person point of view without confusing your readers (or yourself)? How do you plant essential information about a character's past into a story?
Write Great...
Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need
| Author | Blake Snyder |
| ISBN | 1932907009 |
This book is often hyped as the bible of screenwriting, but I would take it a step further and call it the definitive go-to for all storytelling. Trade secrets are fully revealed and once you read them you can't watch a movie without seeing the formula scroll right in front of your eyes. Exactly--to the...
How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One
| Author | Stanley Fish |
| ISBN | 0061840548 |
In this entertaining and erudite New York Times bestseller, beloved professor Stanley Fish offers both sentence craft and sentence pleasure. Drawing on a wide range of great writers, from Philip Roth to Antonin Scalia to Jane Austen, How to Write a Sentence is much more than a writing manual—it...
| Author | Wayne C. Booth |
| ISBN | 0226065588 |
The first edition of The Rhetoric of Fiction transformed the criticism of fiction and soon became a classic in the field. One of the most widely used texts in fiction courses, it is a standard reference point in advanced discussions of how fictional form works, how authors make novels accessible, and...
| Author | Jane Yolen |
| ISBN | 1582973857 |
Are you a writer longing to rediscover the joy that you once had in the craft (or even find it for the first time)? In this inspiring guide, Jane Yolen, an author who has been called America's Hans Christian Andersen, shows writers how to focus on aspects of the craft that bring them joy. She remarks in the...
| Author | Alice W. Flaherty |
| ISBN | 0618485414 |
Why is it that some writers struggle for months to come up with the perfect sentence or phrase while others, hunched over a keyboard deep into the night, seem unable to stop writing? In The Midnight Disease, neurologist Alice W. Flaherty explores the mysteries of literary creativity: the drive to write,...
| Author | Flannery O'Connor |
| ISBN | 0374508046 |
Alternate Cover Edition can be found here.
At her death in 1964, O'Connor left behind a body of unpublished essays and lectures as well as a number of critical articles that had appeared in scattered publications during her too-short lifetime. The keen writings comprising Mystery and Manners,...
| Author | John Gardner |
| ISBN | 0393320030 |
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,...
| Author | E.M. Forster |
| ISBN | 0156091801 |
E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel is an innovative and effusive treatise on a literary form that, at the time of publication, had only recently begun to enjoy serious academic consideration. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction by Oliver Stallybrass, and features a new preface...
Vivid and memorable characters aren't born: they have to be made.
This book is a set of tools: literary crowbars, chisels, mallets, pliers and tongs. Use them to pry, chip, yank and sift good characters out of the place where they live in your memory, your imagination and your soul.
Award-winning...
The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers
| Author | John Gardner |
| ISBN | 0679734031 |
This classic guide, from the renowned novelist and professor, has helped transform generations of aspiring writers into masterful writers—and will continue to do so for many years to come.
John Gardner was almost as famous as a teacher of creative writing as he was for his own works....
Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
| Author | Robert McKee |
| ISBN | 0060391685 |
Robert McKee's screenwriting workshops have earned him an international reputation for inspiring novices, refining works in progress and putting major screenwriting careers back on track. Quincy Jones, Diane Keaton, Gloria Steinem, Julia Roberts, John Cleese and David Bowie are just a few of...
| Author | James N. Frey |
| ISBN | 0312010443 |
Written in a clear, crisp, accessible style, this book is perfect for beginners as well as professional writers who need a crash course in the down-to-earth basics of storytelling. Talent and inspiration can't be taught, but Frey does provide scores of helpful suggestions and sensible rules and principles.
An...
Writing the Breakout Novel
Take your fiction to the next level!
Maybe you're a first-time novelist looking for practical guidance. 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...
No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days
| Author | Chris Baty |
| ISBN | 0811845052 |
You've always wanted to write, but . . . just haven't gotten around to it. No Plot? No Problem! is the kick in the pants you've been waiting for.
Let Chris Baty, founder of the rockin' literary marathon National Novel Writing Month (a.k.a. NaNoWriMo), guide you through four exciting weeks of...
