Learn Writing

Conceived nearly a century ago by a man who died believing himself a failure, it's now a revered classic and a rite of passage in the reading lives of millions. But how well do we really know The Great Gatsby? As Maureen Corrigan, Gatsby lover extraordinaire, points out, while Fitzgerald's masterpiece may be one of the most popular novels in America, many of us first read it when we were too young to fully comprehend its power.

Writing a short book for children ought to be easy, right? Not if you don't know what you're doing. The picture book is an art form with a definite blueprint, and you deviate from it at your peril. Like all of the writing lessons from the Front books, this book is brief. There are other books with philosophies and backgrounds and lots of full color illustrations on glossy pages, and this isn’t one of them.

Let outlines help you write a better book! Writers often look upon outlines with fear and trembling. But when properly understood and correctly wielded, the outline is one of the most powerful weapons in a writer's arsenal.

Packed with interviews from best-selling authors, leading book editors from Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette, and more, Get Signed is the indispensable roadmap you need right now to get noticed and become a published author.

Space is a world devoid of the things we need to live and thrive: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh produce, privacy, beer. Space exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human. How much can a person give up? How much weirdness can they take? What happens to you when you can’t walk for a year? Have sex? Smell flowers? What happens if you vomit in your helmet during a space walk? Is it possible for the human body to survive a bailout at 17,000 miles per hour?

In her entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters and discover why their work has endured. Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire listeners to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart.

Moving from her childhood in Oakland and growing up with her Chinese parents through her success as a novelist, Amy Tan delves into her creative interests in music, the paralysis of beginning a new project, journal writing, and travelling. Where the Past Begins chronicles the making of a writer. With characteristic humor and poignant observation, Tan weaves a nontraditional introspective narrative that is as complex and vibrant as this beloved American novelist's fiction.

Robert Olen Butler, author of Perfume River, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, and A Small Hotel, teaches graduate fiction at Florida State University—his version of literary boot camp. In From Where You Dream, Butler reimagines the process of writing as emotional rather than intellectual and tells writers how to achieve the dream space necessary for composing honest, inspired fiction.

Do you work and live with people who are hard to convince? Who dismiss ideas before even thinking about them? Do you want to know how to influence people, without being manipulative? Want to find out how people get motivated, make decisions, how to be more persuasive with everyone? Shelle Rose Charvet, best-selling author, shows you how to match your language to people around you (in your work, with your colleagues, your boss and your clients, and at home, with your partner, family and other relationships).

As the author of 24 novels, Elizabeth George is one of the most successful - and prolific - novelists today. In Mastering the Process, George offers listeners a master class in the art and science of crafting a novel. This is a subject she knows well, having taught creative writing both nationally and internationally for over 30 years. Drawing from her personal photos, early notes, character analyses, and rough drafts, George shows us every stage of how she wrote her novel Careless in Red.

Hey kids! Do you want learning to be fun? This book will help you to jump to the front of the class by learning your ABCs, 123s, learning how to spell, frequently used words, and at the end, having some fun with a few games. Listen to this book often to boost yourself to being the best student you can be.

Most high school students never have received any instruction in how to write a personal essay. Yet at a time when getting admitted to their dream college is more competitive than ever, the admissions essay may turn out to be the single most important thing they will ever write. The stakes are high. In Writing Tools for the College Essay, veteran journalist and writing coach Roy Peter Clark shows how any student can showcase their unique achievements, intellect, and attributes to stand out from the crowd.

How does one pull from one's own boring, agitated self the truth-speaker who will tell the story a personal narrative needs to tell? That is the question The Situation and the Story asks—and answers. Taking us on a tour of some of the best memoirs and essays of the past hundred years, Gornick traces the changing idea of self that has dominated the century, and demonstrates the enduring truth-speaker to be found in the work of writers as diverse as Edmund Gosse, Joan Didion, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, or Marguerite Duras.

Terrified of speaking in front of a group? Or simply looking to polish your skills? No matter where you are on the spectrum, this guide will give you the confidence and the tools you need to get results.

In this highly anticipated follow-up to the Sunday Times bestseller THE SCIENCE OF STORYTELLING, acclaimed story guru Will Storr shows you how to engage and influence your audience to create irresistible pitches, build rock solid brand loyalty, motivate teams and lead with charisma and authenticity. With examples ranging from Aztec rituals to Apple's legendary advertising successes (and long-forgotten fails), A STORY IS A DEAL lays out a revolutionary new method for creating the most persuasive messaging: by harnessing the power of our storytelling brains.

Why do some stories work and others don't? The answer is structure. In this IPPY and NIEA Award-winning guide from the author of the bestselling Outlining Your Novel, you will discover the universal underpinnings that guarantee powerful plot and character arcs. An understanding of proper story and scene structure will help you to not only perfectly time your story's major events, but will also provide you with an unerring standard to use in evaluating your novel's pacing and progression.

Finally—a book of writing advice that accounts for all of the messy, perverse, practical, and inexplicable parts of being a human who writes.

The Elements of Style is an American English writing style guide originally composed by William Strunk Jr. in 1918, and published by Harcourt in 1920, comprising eight elementary rules of usage, 10 elementary principles of composition, a few matters of form, a list of 49 words and expressions commonly misused, and a list of 57 words often misspelled. William Strunk concentrated on specific questions of usage, and the cultivation of good writing, with the recommendation "Make every word tell".

If you aren’t suffering, you aren’t creating. Right? Wrong! Writing can and should be joyful, fulfilling… even fun! Applicable to writers in all genres and disciplines—from screenwriters to novelists, journalists to picture book authors, aspiring to many-times published—The Happy Writer is a heartfelt and optimistic guide that will show you the way to a happier writing journey.

Curso de escritura creativa convierte en libro las clases que Brandon Sanderson lleva 16 años impartiendo anualmente en la Universidad Brigham Young, donde estudió. Él mismo dice que nunca ha dejado de darlas porque es un recurso que necesita para seguir creciendo como escritor. El curso se centra en los engranajes de la escritura y tiene un enfoque muy práctico; en él nos habla de la trama, la ambientación y los personajes, pero también de la parte empresarial.