What's it like putting words in Buffy's mouth? How do you go about inventing your own X-File, or coming up with a mission for the crew of the Enterprise? And most importantly, how do you get into the business, so you can leave being a mere fan behind, and actually write for your favourite show? Journalist Joe Nazzaro answers all these questions and more in this must-have collection of exclusive, in-depth interviews with writers and producers from TV's hottest SF and fantasy shows. Some of the biggest names in the business talk candidly about how they started out, their inspirations and influences, and what it's really like to create the incredible and impossible on a daily basis. A must for any fan of SF and fantasy TV.

Ramp up the tension and keep your readers hooked! Inside you'll find everything you need to know to spice up your story, move your plot forward, and keep your readers turning pages.

Expert thriller author and writing instructor James Scott Bell shows you how to craft scenes, create characters, and develop storylines that harness conflict and suspense to carry your story from the first word to the last.

• Learn from examples of successful novels and movies as you transform your work from ho-hum to high-tension.
• Pack the beginning, middle, and end of your book with the right amount of conflict.
• Tap into the suspenseful power of each character's inner conflict.
• Build conflict into your story's point of view.
• Balance subplots, flashbacks, and backstory to keep your story moving forward.
• Maximize the tension in your characters' dialogue.
• Amp up the suspense when you revise.

Conflict & Suspense offers proven techniques that help you craft fiction your readers won't be able to put down.

This book describes an alternative way to teach Creative Writing, one that replaces the silent writer taking criticism and advice from the teacher-led workshop with an active writer who reflects upon and publically questions the work-in-progress in order to solicit response, from a writers' group as well as from the teacher. Both accompany the writer, first as readers and fellow writers, only later as critics. Because writers ask, they listen, and dialogues with responders become an inner dialogue that guides later writing and revision. But when teachers accompany writers, teaching CW becomes even more a negotiation of the personal because this teacher who is listener and mentor is also a model for some students of the writer and even the person they would like to become - and still the Authority who gives the grades.

Pick up the Sunday paper and consider how many stories it takes to fill all those pages. How can any newspaper staff produce so many stories every day, every week, every month of the year and keep up with breaking news, too? They can't.They use freelancers. This book serves as a guide to newspaper freelancing both for beginners and for more experienced writers who want to expand their markets. Table of Contents: Newspapers as a Freelance Market Developing Newspaper Article Ideas Types of Newspaper Articles Queries: Pitching Your Ideas Researching Your Article Interviews Writing the Article Working with the Editor Through Rewrites and Proofs Get Paid and Get More Assignments The Business of Being a Freelance Writer

We either think our lives are so special that everyone should be interested in what's happened to us, or so ordinary that we can't imagine anyone would care. The truth lies somewhere in between: yes, we are all special, and no, people will not care-unless we write with them in mind. Joanne Fedler, a beloved writing teacher and mentor, has written Your Story to help all people, even those who don't necessarily identify as "writers," value their life stories and write them in such a way that they transcend the personal and speak into a universal story. She shows how to write from your life, but for the benefit of others. Filled with practical wisdom and tools, this book tackles: - mind-set issues that prevent us from writing - ways to develop trust (in yourself, the process, the mystery) - triggers or prompts to elicit our own stories - Joanne's original techniques for "lifewriting," developed over a decade of teaching and mentoring ... and much more "Joanne understands the writer's loneliness," says one such writer whose life she's touched, the award-winning author Nava Semel. "In this book she has created a menu of encouraging possibilities on how to overcome our fears and dig deep into our souls, so that our true voice can emerge."

The Script-Selling Game is like having a mentor in the business who answers your questions and provides you with not only valuable information, but real-life examples on how to maneuver your way through the Hollywood labyrinth. While the first edition focused mostly on film and television movies, the second edition includes a new chapter on animation and another on utilizing the Internet to market yourself and find new opportunities, plus an expansive section on submitting for television and cable.

During the ten years that Stuart Spencer has taught playwriting, he has struggled to find an effective playwriting handbook for his courses. Although most of the currently popular handbooks have good ideas in them, they all suffer from the same problems: they're poorly organized; are composed mostly of quirky, idiosyncratic advice on how specific playwrights have gone about writing their own work; and are full of abstract theorizing on the nature of art. As a result, they fail to offer any concrete information on how to construct a well-written play or any useful guidelines and exercises. Moreover, few of these books are actually written by working playwrights. Out of frustration, Spencer wrote his own book. The result, The Playwright's Guidebook, is a clear, concise, and engaging handbook. Spencer addresses the important principles of structure, includes insightful writing exercises that build upon one another, explores the creative process, and troubleshoots recurrent problems that playwrights actually face.

Wonderful World is an innovative six-level course for primary school children. It brings the world of English language learning to life through fun stories, breathtaking images and fascinating facts which will engage and entertain your learners, as they find out about the world around them. It incorporates: Stunning National Geographic photography Texts inspired by National Geographic content Authentic National Geographic DVD material

Christopher Hampton

Drama

Characters: 10 male, 5 female, plus extras

Various Sets

Revised version. Total Eclipse is an intelligent look at the relationship between Rimbaud and Verlaine and shows considerable insight into the bourgeois and artistic societies of the period as well as a moving understanding of homosexuality.

"The first six scenes develop the contrast between the two men...and their mutual need for each other as they move through and away from the literary life of the time and from Verlaine's wife and her family. A remarkable cafe dialogue with the two poets drunk and drugged subtly suggests the private, timeless world they built together and ends on a note of violence to show how fragile it was...A compelling evening in the theatre." - New Statesman

In The Upside-Down Buddha: Parables & Fables: Third Series, Steven Carter continues to breathe new life into two of the world's oldest art forms. By turns hilarious, poignant, and profound, the entries in The Upside-Down Buddha are certain to instruct and entertain a diverse modern audience.

Part textbook and part handbook, From "Huh?" to "Hurray!": Righting Your Creative Writing leads creative writers of all levels and all genres through the entire writing process. This accessible guide offers helpful suggestions to prompt and encourage even the most blocked writers to explore and develop their written word. Whether readers are working independently, with a class, or in a writers' group, the easy exercises contained within are created to inspire each to achieve his or her fullest potential. Structured around the basic elements of all good creative writing, From "Huh?" to "Hurray!" takes its readers through the process of creation and composition in brief and comprehensible sections. Each chapter offers an overview and several specific examples of its topic, followed by a set of clear exercises designed for writers of all varieties, from the novice to the pro, from the poet to the novelist. This text will certainly take a writer's work from huh? to hurray!

In his best-selling book, Save the Cat! (R) Goes to the Movies, Blake Snyder provided 50 "beat sheets" to 50 films, mostly studio-made. Now his student, Salva Rubio, applies Blake's principles to 50 celebrated non-studio films (again with 5 beat sheets for each of Blake's 10 genres). From international sensations like The Blair Witch Project to promising debuts like Pi, from small films that acquired cult status like Texas Chain Saw Massacre to Euro-blockbusters like The Full Monty , from unexpected gems like Before Sunrise to textbook classics such as The 400 Blows, from Dogville to Drive and Boogie Nights to Cinema Paradiso, here are 50 movies that fit both the "independent" label and Blake Snyder's 15 beats. You'll find beat sheets for works from Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, David Lynch, Roman Polanski, Danny Boyle, David Mamet, Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufman, Sofia Coppola, Stephen Frears, David Hare, Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, Wes Anderson, and the Coen Brothers, among other renowned writers and directors. You will see how "hitting the beats" creates a story that resonates for audiences the world over. Why is this important? Because it gives both writers and moviegoers a language to analyse film and understand how filmmakers can effectively reach audiences. And especially if you are a writer, this book reveals how screenwriters who came before you tackled the same challenges you are facing with the film you want to write -- or the one you are currently working on.

This book explores the effectiveness of the workshop in the Creative Writing classroom, and looks beyond the question of whether or not the workshop works to address the issue of what an altered pedagogical model might look like. In visualising what else is possible in the workshop space, the sixteen chapters collected in 'Does the Writing Workshop Still Work?' cover a range of theoretical and pedagogical topics and explore the inner workings and conflicts of the workshop model. The needs of a growing and diverse student population are central to the chapter authors' consideration of non-normative pedagogies. The book is a must-read for all teachers of Creative Writing, as well as for researchers in Creative Writing Studies.

What is Creative Writing? Millions of people do it, but how do we do it, really? What evidence of its human undertaking does Creative Writing produce? How do we explore Creative Writing, as both an art form and a mode of communication? How do we come to understand Creative Writing, creatively and critically? Posing questions about the nature of Creative Writing, On Creative Writing asks us to consider what Creative Writing actually is, and in doing so encourages us to reflect on how our knowledge of Creative Writing can be increased. Emphasizing Creative Writing as an act and actions, On Creative Writing considers what lies at the core of the activity called Creative Writing.

What is Creative Writing? Millions of people do it, but how do we do it, really? What evidence of its human undertaking does Creative Writing produce? How do we explore Creative Writing, as both an art form and a mode of communication? How do we come to understand Creative Writing, creatively and critically? Posing questions about the nature of Creative Writing, On Creative Writing asks us to consider what Creative Writing actually is, and in doing so encourages us to reflect on how our knowledge of Creative Writing can be increased. Emphasizing Creative Writing as an act and actions, On Creative Writing considers what lies at the core of the activity called Creative Writing.

In this epic history-cum-anthology, Megan Vaughan tells the story of the theatre blogosphere from the dawn of the carefully crafted longform post to today's digital newsletters and social media threads. Contextualising the key debates of fifteen years of theatre history, and featuring the writings of over 40 theatre bloggers, Theatre Blogging brings past and present practitioners into conversation with one another. Starting with Encore Theatre Magazine and Chris Goode in London, George Hunka and Laura Axelrod in New York, Jill Dolan at Princeton University, and Alison Croggon in Melbourne, the work of these influential early adopters is considered alongside those who followed them. Vaughan explores issues that have affected both arts journalism and the theatre industry, profiling the activist bloggers arguing for broader representation and better working conditions, highlighting the innovative dramaturgical practices that have been developed and piloted by bloggers, and offering powerful insights into the precarious systems of labour and economics in which these writers exist. She concludes by considering current threats to the theatre blogosphere, and how the form continues to evolve in response to them.

The Virgin’s Promise demystifies the complexities of archetypes and clearly outlines the steps of a Virgin’s Journey to realize her dream. Audiences need to see more than brave, self-sacrificing Heroes. They need to see Virgins who bring their talents and self-fulfilling joys to life. The Virgin’s Promise describes this journey with beats that feel incredibly familiar but have not been illustrated in any other screenwriting book. It explores the yin and yang of the Virgin and Hero journeys to take up their power as individuals, and includes a practical guide to putting this new theory into action.