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From rags-to-riches-to-rags tell-alls to personal health sagas to literary journalism everyone seems to want to try their hand at creative nonfiction. Now, Lee Gutkind, the go-to expert for all things creative nonfiction, taps into one of the fastest-growing genres with this new writing guide. Frank and to-the-point, with depth and clarity, Gutkind describes and illustrates each and every aspect of the genre, from defining a concept and establishing a writing process to the final product. Offering new ways of understanding genre and invaluable tools for writers to learn and experiment with, You Can't Make This Stuff Up allows writers of all skill levels to thoroughly expand and stylize their work.

In this book, James A. Inman explores the landscape of the contemporary computers and writing community. Its six chapters engage critical issues, including redefining the community's generally accepted history, connecting its contemporary innovators with its long-standing spirit of innovation, advocating for increased access and diversity, and more. Between chapters, readers will find "Community Voices" sections, which provide a snapshot of the contemporary computers and writing community and introduce, in a non-hierarchical form, more than 100 of its members from around the world, in their own voices.
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Computers and Writing: The Cyborg Era" features a simultaneous emphasis on individuals, communities, and contexts they share; a creative rethinking of the character and values of the computers and writing community; a holistic exploration of meaning-making; and an activist approach to pedagogy. It is a must-read book for anyone interested in rhetoric, technology, and pedagogy, including faculty, graduate students, and colleagues in professions outside the academy.

We are on the verge of creating an exciting new kind of interactive story form that will involve audiences as active participants. This book provides a solid foundation in the fundamentals of classical story structure and classical game structure and explains why it has been surprisingly difficult to bring these two activities together. With this foundation in place, the book presents several ideas for ways to move forward in this appealing quest. The author has a conversational and friendly style, making reading a pleasure.

A revolutionary approach to writing inspired by ancient Eastern wisdom, from the bestselling author of Wabi Sabi Join author and Japanologist Beth Kempton on a sacred journey to uncover the secrets of fearless writing which have lain buried in Eastern philosophy for two thousand years. In a radical departure from standard advice and widely-held assumptions about the effort and suffering required for creative success, The Way of the Fearless Writer will show you there is another way to thrive - a path of trust, ease, freedom and joy. Learn how to free your mind so your body can create, transform your relationship with fear, dissolve self-doubt, shift writer's block, access your true voice and bravely share your words with the world. This profound book reveals the deep connections between mind, body, spirit, breath and words. Offering a rare insight into the writing life and a host of fresh and original exercises, it will open your eyes to writing as a direct connection to life itself. Welcome to The Way of the Fearless Writer.

Creativity and Writing Pedagogy offers a unique view of creative practices and pedagogy in writing from the perspective of writing teachers, creativity researchers and scholars, and writers themselves. The volume, collected and edited by a poet and a scholar who are both involved in the teaching of writing, seeks to bridge between the creative writing and the academic writing communities in building a case for creativity as central to all writing programs and showcasing creative practices in writing. With this goal in mind, the book combines a practical emphasis on creativity in writing pedagogy and curriculum with research and reflections on writing practices. The collection should be of interest to all writers and teachers of writing who want to expand their knowledge of creativity and creative practices in writing and the teaching of writing.

Creativity and Writing Pedagogy offers a unique view of creative practices and pedagogy in writing from the perspective of writing teachers, creativity researchers and scholars, and writers themselves. The volume, collected and edited by a poet and a scholar who are both involved in the teaching of writing, seeks to bridge between the creative writing and the academic writing communities in building a case for creativity as central to all writing programs and showcasing creative practices in writing. With this goal in mind, the book combines a practical emphasis on creativity in writing pedagogy and curriculum with research and reflections on writing practices. The collection should be of interest to all writers and teachers of writing who want to expand their knowledge of creativity and creative practices in writing and the teaching of writing.

Grand themes and complex plots are just the beginning of a great piece of fiction. Mastering the nuts and bolts of grammar and prose mechanics is also an essential part of becoming a literary artist. This indispensable guide, created just for writers of fiction, will show you how to take your writing to the next level by exploring the finer points of language. Funny, readable, and wise, this book explores the tools of the fiction writer's trade, from verb tenses to pronouns to commas and beyond. Filled with examples from the best-seller lists of today and yesterday, it will help you consider the hows and whys of language, and how mastery of them can be used to achieve clarity and grace of expression in your own work.
Here, you'll find
Encouragement and advice to face the big questions: Past or present tense? Comma or semicolon? Italic or roman? Should your dialogue be phonetically rendered, or follow standard rules of grammar? (And where does that pesky quotation mark go, again?)
Warning signs of the betrayal of language, and ways to avoid it: Unwitting rhymes, repetition, redundancy, cliche, and the inevitable failure of vocabulary
How-to (and how-not-to) examples: The grammatical "mistakes" of Charles Dickens; ambiguous pronoun usage by Nathaniel Hawthorne; the minefield of paragraph fragments found in one of today's most successful authors

The latest volume in the Michigan Modern Dramatists series offers an authoritative but accessible look at Harold Pinter, one of the greatest and most influential postwar British playwrights and author of classic works such as "The Birthday Party" and "The Homecoming." Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005 for his remarkable body of work and plays that "uncover the precipice under everyday prattle and force entry into oppression's closed rooms."

"Harold Pinter: The Theatre of Power" focuses on the playwright's continuously innovative experiments in theatrical form while tracing the recurrence of a consistent set of ethical and epistemological concerns. Exploring important plays from across this prolific writer's career, author Robert Gordon argues that the motivating force in almost all of Pinter's drama is the ceaseless desire for power, represented in his work as a compulsive drive to achieve or maintain dominance--whether it be the struggle to defend one's own territory from intruders, the father's battle with his sons to assert his patriarchal position in the family, the manipulation of erotic feelings in the gender warfare that motivates sexual relationships, the abuse of brute force by dictatorships and democracies, or simply the masculine obsession to dominate. Gordon demonstrates the adventurousness of Pinter's experimentation with form while at the same time exposing the ethical, epistemological, and aesthetic preoccupations that have persisted with remarkable consistency throughout his career.

In this innovative fusion of practice and criticism, Jeremy Scott shows how insights from stylistics and linguistics can enrich the craft of creative writing. Focusing on crucial methodological issues that confront the practicing writer, this book introduces writers to key topics from stylistics, provides in-depth analysis of a wide range of writing examples and includes practical exercises to help develop creative writing skills. Thoroughly revised and expanded throughout, this updated edition more clearly lays out specialist ideas and technical terms within the field of linguistics, and features both greater focus on the creative process and more practical exercises to help writers engage with ideas in their work. Clear and accessible, this invaluable guide will give both students and writers a greater critical awareness of the creative possibilities of language.

Launched in middle schools in the fall of 2005, the "Writers Matter" approach was designed to discover ways to improve the fit between actual English curricula, district/state standards and, more recently, the Common Core Curriculum Standards for writing instruction. Adapted from Erin Gruwell's successful Freedom Writers Program, "Writers Matter" develops students' skills in the context of personal growth, understanding others, and making broader connections to the world. Empowering Young Writers explains and expands on the practical aspects of the "Writers Matter" approach, emphasizing a focus on free expression and establishing connections between the curriculum and students' personal lives. Program creator Robert Vogel, and his co-authors offer proven ways to motivate adolescents to write, work diligently to improve their writing skills, and think more critically about the world. This comprehensive book will help teachers, administrators, and education students apply and reproduce the "Writers Matter" approach more broadly, which can have a profound impact on their students' lives and social development.

Regardless of what genre they've chosen, suspense remains one of the writer's most powerful tools for making readers sweat and keeping them on the edges of their seats. Suspense, Structure, and Plot features thirteen practical, targeted techniques for building suspense in every story. Readers will be able to quicken their story's pace, tighten its structure, add complexity to the plot, enhance character motivation, choose words for sensual specificity, balance narrative with action and dialogue, and improve both their productivity and their professionalism. In short, they'll learn how to craft captivating, complex stories that sell. Complete with examples, case studies, checklists, exercises, and FAQs to help writers make the tools and techniques their own, Suspense, Structure, and Plot provides everything needed to craft a make-'em-sweat page-turner.

There are so many different graduate creative writing programs out there! How do I find the right one for me? Bringing together data from both Master's and doctoral creative writing programs and interviews with program applicants, students, and faculty, this is a complete practical guide to choosing a graduate creative writing program and putting together a successful application. The Insider's Guide to Graduate Degrees in Creative Writing answers frequently asked questions on such topics as: * Application prerequisites * Program sizes and durations * Funding * Acceptance rates * Cost of living * Program curricula and demographics * Workshopping techniques * Student-faculty ratios * Residency options * Postgraduate fellowship placement * Postgraduate job placement * Programs' reputations and histories The book also includes comprehensive and up-to-date hard data on the hundreds of terminal-degree graduate creative writing programs available throughout the US, UK, and internationally, making this an essential read for anyone planning to pursue a low- or full-residency graduate creative writing degree.

The beloved teacher and author of the million-and-a-half copy bestseller Writing Down the Bones reveals a new method of writing in "a priceless distillation of her accumulated wisdom and experience as a writer, coach, and instructor on mindfulness" (Abraham Verghese).Sit. Walk. Write. These are the barest bones of Natalie Goldberg's revolutionary writing and life practice, presented here in book form for the first time. The True Secret of Writing provides a whole new method of writing that Goldberg developed since the publication of her classic, Writing Down the Bones. The capstone to forty years of teaching, The True Secret of Writing is Gold-berg's Zen boot camp. Stories of her own search for truth and clarity as well as her students' breakthroughs and insights give moving testament to how brilliantly her unique, tough-love method works. As Goldberg says, "To write is to be empow-ered. . . . Writing is not just for someone who wants to write the great American novel." Learning "the true secret" allows you to mine the rich awareness in your mind and to ground and empower yourself in a way that leads to deep, eloquent self-expression. Goldberg's beautiful homages to the work of other great teachers and observers of mind, life, and love provide further secrets and inspiration to which you will return again and again. In her inimitable way, Goldberg will inspire you to pick up the pen, get writ-ing, and keep going. The True Secret of Writing helps you with your writing--and your life.

At the heart of writing - at the apex of storytelling - there is only one principle, and it winds like a golden thread across all the books and courses. But it gets lost in the ever-spreading panoply of detail that the creative writing industry relies on to keep its wheels turning. This book pulls out that thread, polishes it and reveals the way it penetrates storytelling. It will be invaluable to anyone creating fictional worlds - but most particularly to novelists, who are most in danger of forgetting it. Or not noticing it in the first place. Tim Lott knows he can't teach anyone to write a novel (that's one of the lies propagated by the novel-writing industry). But he can teach someone how to build a firm platform on which they can stand in order to explore whether they have the talent, will and determination that writing a novel takes.

This is the first book to critically examine the recruitment and working practices of screenwriters. Drawing on interviews with screenwriters and those that employ them, Natalie Wreyford provides a deep and detailed understanding of entrenched gender inequality in the UK film industry and answers the question: what is preventing women from working as screenwriters? She considers how socialised recruitment and gendered taste result in exclusion, and uncovers subtle forms of sexism that cause women's stories and voices to be discounted. Gender Inequality in Screenwriting Work also reveals the hidden labour market of the UK film industry, built on personal connections, homophily and the myth of meritocracy. It is essential reading for students and scholars of gender, creative industries, film and cultural studies, as well as anyone who wants to understand why women remain excluded from many key roles in filmmaking.

A simple journal that offers one question per day, to be answered on the same day for five years in a row. The questions range from the prosaic ("What did you have-for lunch today?") to the contemplative ("Can people really change?")', giving readers a comprehensive look back at their thoughts and feelings over a five year span. For anybody who has ever given up journaling after being intimidated when facing a blank page, this book makes it easy to take a snapshot of your inner life in just a few minutes each day. The beauty of this journal is that it enables readers to track their emotional growth as well as keep track of memories, and provides an interesting walk down memory lane a few years later. The simple one question prompts make this book to journaling as adult colouring books are to art - a gateway product with built-in creative inspiration. The specially sized package features a printed flexi-bound cover, four-colour endpapers, quality paper, and bookmark ribbon.

This is a guide to the basic storytelling principles essential for producing truly memorable video games. It provides developers with comprehensive, but easy-to-follow advice. It comes from video game writer and game writing instructor Evan Skolnick. Video Game Storytelling provides developers with comprehensive, but easy-to-follow advice for facilitating the creation of compelling storylines in today's most popular and narratively successful video games. Video game writer and game writing instructor Evan Skolnick offers a clear and concise development reference guide for aspiring and professional developers, showing how each role (from character designer to animator to audio engineer and more) is impacted by and can affect the story/narrative of a game. This book aims to instill an understanding and appreciation of the basic storytelling principles that are essential for producing truly memorable video games that will bring today's savvy gamers back time and time again.

Reading and Writing a Screenplay takes you on a journey through the many possible ways of writing, reading and imagining fiction and documentary projects for cinema, television and new media. It explores the critical role of a script as a document to be written and read with both future readers and the future film it will be giving life to in mind.

The book explores the screenplay and the screenwriting process by approaching the film script in three different ways: how it is written, how it is read and how it can be rewritten. Combining contemporary screenwriting practices with historical and academic context, Isabelle Raynauld provides key analytical tools and reading strategies for conceptualizing and scripting projects based on the impact different writing styles can have on readers, with various examples ranging from early cinema to new media and new platforms throughout.

This title offers an alternative, thought-provoking and inspiring approach to reading and writing a screenplay that is ideal for directors, producers, actors, students, aspiring screenwriters and readers interested in understanding how an effective screenplay is created.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The screenplay as text

1. What constitutes a "good" screenplay?

2. The screenplay as text

3. Ideas, writing in stages and types of documents

4. What does screenwriting share with editing principles?

5. Structures

6. Point of view: telling a story from a certain perspective

7. The scene

8. The character

9. Writing sound

10. Writing for documentary

11. New media, new forms of writing: towards expanded screenwriting practices

12. Reading a screenplay: reading modes from analysis to writing

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

Sometimes you want to write, but you don't know what to write about. Sometimes you know what to write about, but not how to make it work. This book will bring you a year's advice and inspiration to move your writing forward. Each two-page spread opens with learning points and advice, followed by interesting exercises to help you put this into practice. In 365 days you'll learn to: - create believable characters - write realistic dialogue - let your reading improve your writing - use personal experience to inspire fiction find the factors that get a story going - choose the right tense and person for your stories - show, rather than tell - work out which writing rules really matter - and follow them