Learn Writing

This is the book I wish I had when I got started in game design. And while it's loaded with tons of information on how to make games and get them published, the overall goal is transformation. Over the last 6 years, I've brought 15 games to market, and I have dozens more on the way. I've run 18 successful crowdfunding campaigns and generated over $1 million in sales.

In 2012, Ali Smith delivered the Weidenfeld lectures on European comparative literature at St. Anne’s College, Oxford. Those lectures, presented here, took the shape of discursive stories that refused to be tied down to either fiction or the essay form. Thus, Artful is narrated by a character who is haunted - literally - by a former lover, the writer of a series of lectures about art and literature. A hypnotic dialogue unfolds between storytelling and a meditation on art that encompasses love, grief, memory, and revitalization.

Audible editor Katie O’Connor explores the craft of writing for the audio format with Audible Originals authors Samantha Allen, Lauren Blakely, Dennis Mahoney, and Ben H. Winters. Listen in as the authors discuss how they changed their approach to their work with audio in mind. You’ll also hear from two Audible Originals editors - Lara Blackman and Steve Feldberg - about how they collaborate with their authors and where they think the future of audio is going.

One of the world’s foremost writing teachers invites listeners on a joyful journey into the reading and origins of haiku.

Without words, apps would be an unusable jumble of shapes and icons, while voice interfaces and chatbots wouldn't even exist. Words make software human-centered, and require just as much thought as the branding and code.

We have reached a state of utter absurdity, where journalism schools teach students that their own personal truth or chosen narratives matter more than reality. In Slanted, Attkisson digs into the language of propagandists, the persistence of false media narratives, the driving forces behind today's dangerous blend of facts and opinion, the abandonment of journalism ethics, and the new, Orwellian definition of what it means to report the news.

With seven unpublished novels wasting away on his hard drive, Tony Vanderwarker is astonished when John Grisham offers to take him under his wing and teach him the secrets of thriller writing. The beginning and the end are easy,” Grisham tells him. It’s the three hundred pages in the middle that’s the hard part.” To ensure his plot doesn’t run out of gas, Grisham puts Tony though his outline process. Tony does one, and then Grisham asks for another and another and another.

Ayn Rand discusses how a writer combines abstract ideas with concrete action and description to achieve a unity of theme, plot, characterization, and style, the four essential elements of fiction. Here, too, are Rand's illuminating analyses of passages from famous writers, rewrites of scenes from her own works, and fascinating rules for building dramatic plots and characters with depth.

In this highly useful guide, international literary agent Jennifer Lyons leads more than 30 expert contributors in demystifying the business side of writing for aspiring authors.Whether you’re unclear on what to expect from your first book deal or just a little puzzled by your editor’s whims, The Business of Writing is the book for you. In it, Lyons empowers aspiring and experienced writers with everything they need to know about the business of selling books, from publicity to the legal and financial aspects of the trade.

For over a century, The New York Times has been an iconic institution in American journalism, one whose history is intertwined with the events that it chronicles—a newspaper read by millions of people every day to stay informed about events that have taken place across the globe. In The Times, Adam Nagourney, who’s worked at The New York Times since 1996, examines four decades of the newspaper’s history, from the final years of Arthur “Punch” Sulzberger’s reign as publisher to the election of Donald Trump in November 2016.

In 1943 John Steinbeck was on assignment for The New York Herald Tribune, writing from Italy and North Africa, and from England in the midst of the London blitz. In his dispatches he focuses on the human-scale effect of the war, portraying everyone from the guys in a bomber crew to Bob Hope on his USO tour and even fighting alongside soldiers behind enemy lines. Taken together, these writings create an indelible portrait of life in wartime.

Dynamic dialogue can turn an otherwise ordinary novel into a delightful read, but dull, uninspired dialogue will cause readers to lose interest and try something else. In this book, bestselling author William Bernhardt, renowned for his handling of dialogue, explains his techniques for making characters come to life through their words. He explains the importance of matching character and dialogue, of avoiding dialogue that's “on-the-nose,” and the value of using dialogue to suggest what no one will say aloud.

You are invited to embark on a sacred writing journey. Along the way, author Beth Kempton will teach you how to free your mind so your body can create, transform your relationship to fear, write anytime, anywhere, and share your words with confidence. Being a fearless writer has little to do with validation and accolades. Rather it is about ritual, commitment, developing an acute awareness of beauty, dancing with inspiration, listening to the world outside yourself and going deep within. The Way of the Fearless Writer is your guide to this creative, transformational journey.

This audiobook is your last obstacle to finally getting all those ideas out of your head. It will help you "die empty".

Discussions in the West around diversity in the arts often focus on the identities of characters and creators. Speculative fiction author and writing instructor Henry Lien makes the pathbreaking argument that diversity is about more than just plopping different faces into stories that are 100 percent Western in spirit; it can—and should—encompass diverse structures, themes, and values.

This self-teaching instruction workbook helps with pronouncing consonants (including letter blends), vowels (long, short, and vowel groups), and words with multiple syllables; describes the relationship between phonics and spelling; gives examples of tricky proper nouns; and more. This book avoids technical jargon (like diphthongs and phonemes) so that people of all ages and backgrounds can understand the ideas.

The project that Kuralt was working on when he died was An American Moment with Charles Kuralt, a series of brief television essays about the people, places, and ideas that define the national spirit: the man who handcrafts the President's shoes; the origin of buffalo wings; Paul Bunyan's hometown of Bemidji, Minnesota; the Pony Express Museum; Pike Place Market in Seattle; Ferris wheels; and more.

For everyone who's ever wanted to write a memoir but is having trouble starting, finishing, or is stuck somewhere in between. Here's the place to get the answers to your questions (and to the questions you didn't know to ask) in one concise volume.

America is suffering from an information glut. Most Americans are no longer clear about what news is worth remembering or how any of it connects to anything else. Thus, Americans are rapidly becoming the least knowledgeable people in the industrial world. Author and academic Neil Postman and television journalist Steve Powers tell you how to become a discerning viewer.

Things are scary right now. We’re all being swept along by a tidal wave of history, and it’s easy to feel helpless. But we’re not helpless: We have minds, and imaginations, and the ability to visualize other worlds and valiant struggles. And writing can be an act of resistance that reminds us that other futures and other ways of living are possible. Full of memoir, personal anecdote, and insight about how to flourish during the present emergency, Never Say You Can’t Survive is the perfect manual for creativity in unprecedented times.