Teaching creative writing for the multicultural, global, and digital generation, this volume offers a fresh approach for enhancing core writing skills in the major forms of Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Drama. A Guide to Creative Writing and the Imagination aims to provide students with organic, active learning through imitation and examples which not only emphasize writing and reading but look to other art forms for inspiration. This volume's key features include: * Strengthening key underlying capabilities of what we mean by imagination: physical and mental alertness, clarity of perception, listening skills, attention to detail, sustained concentration, lateral thinking, and enhanced memory. * Taking direction from other art forms such as African American musical improvisation, Brancusi's sculptural idea of "finding form," key ideas from drawing such as foreground, background, and negative space-and some of the great lessons learned from National Geographic photography. * Incorporating techniques drawn from unusual sources such as advertising, military intelligence, ESL, working with the blind, stage magic, and oral traditions of remote indigenous cultures in Oceania and Africa. The work is intended for a global English market as a core or supplementary text at the undergraduate level and as a supporting frame at the M.F.A. level.

____________________________ We can all be more creative. John Cleese shows us how. Creativity is usually regarded as a mysterious, rare gift that only a few possess. John Cleese begs to differ, and in this short, immensely practical and often very amusing guide he shows it's a skill that anyone can acquire. Drawing on his lifelong experience as a writer, he shares his insights into the nature of the creative process, and offers advice on how to get your own inventive juices flowing. ____________________________ 'Humorous and practical ... Whether you're hoping to write a novel or paint a masterpiece, you're sure to feel inspired' OK Magazine 'His candor is endearing ... An upbeat guide to the creative process' Kirkus 'A jovial romp ... Cleese fans will enjoy, and writers and other artists will breeze through, picking up a few nuggets of wisdom along the way' The Festival Review 'A sincere and thoughtful guide to creativity, and a very useful book' Graham Norton 'Wise words on the serious business of being silly' Sunday Business Post

Metro is a unique multi-genre creative writing text that provides exercises and prompts to help students move beyond terms and concepts to active writing. By using "guided writing," the authors help students through the creative processes in fiction, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction. A mini-anthology with relevant exercises makes this sourcebook complete.

A frivolous argument or inflated claim is often dismissed with the reply, "That's just rhetoric!" But as Scott Crider explains in The Office of Assertion, the classical tradition of rhetoric is both a productive and a liberal art. The ability to employ rhetoric successfully can enable the student, as an effective communicator, to reflect qualities of soul through argument. In that sense, rhetoric is much more than a technical skill. Crider addresses the intelligent university student with respect and humor. This short but serious book is informed by both the ancient rhetorical tradition and recent discoveries concerning the writing process. Though practical, it is not simply a "how-to" manual; though philosophical, it never loses sight of writing itself. Crider combines practical guidance about how to improve an academic essay with reflection on the final purposes --educational, political, and philosophical--of such improvement.

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

If you're looking for a straightforward, practical, no-nonsense guide to scriptwriting that will hold your hand right the way through the process, read on! The Raindance Writers' Lab guides you through the tools that enable you to execute a strong treatment for a feature and be well on the way to the first draft of your script.
Written by the creator of the Raindance Film Festival himself, Elliot Grove uses a hands-on approach to screenwriting based on his many years of experience teaching the subject for Raindance training. He uses step-by-step processes illustrated with diagrams and charts to lend a visual structure to the teaching. Techniques are related to real-life examples throughout, from low budget to blockbuster films.
The Companion Website contains interviews with British writers and directors as well as a handy series of legal contracts, video clips and writing exercises.
In this brand new 2nd edition, Grove expands on his story structure theory, as well as how to write for the internet and short films.
The website also contains sample scripts and legal contracts, a writing exercise illustrated with a video clip, a folder full of useful hyperlinks for research, and a demo version of Final Draft screenwriting software.
* Written by the Founder and Director of the Raindance Film Festival - the largest independent film festival in Europe!
* Companion Website contains interviews with top directors, sample scripts, legal contracts, and writing exercises!
* A no-nonsense approach to writing and selling a HOT screenplay
* NEW screenplays to discuss including Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind and Borat

A streamlined, step-by-step instructional approach provides flexible lesson plans to help teachers plan and deliver their lessons, with the option to use suggested extension activities as needed. Includes best-practice routines and instructional support; multi-level strategies to support students at different levels of English proficiency; and optional extension activities for vocabulary, literacy, listening, speaking, and writing

* An original, accessible book on the unique challenges and benefits of teaching creative writing to nonnative English writers * Equal emphasis on teaching in ESL and EFL environments, to appeal to English immersion and EMI contexts in Asia and Europe * This book provides practical advice and assignments to help preservice teachers and instructors develop their classes, and offers guidance on evaluation and provides exercises tailored to the needs of L2 writers * This book breaks from tradition ideas of creative writing in the sense of genre and instead focuses on concrete writing skills

"We Belong in History" celebrates William Stafford's life as a writer, teacher, and Poet Laureate of Oregon. This collection presents excellent student writing inspired by his work, a selection of Stafford's work, and three sets of lesson plans written by teachers. This allows teachers everywhere to inspire their own students to write in response to Stafford's work. With an introduction by current poet laureate of Oregon, Paulann Petersen, teachers, student writers, Stafford-admirers, and poetry readers will enjoy "We Belong in History's" celebration of the joy of writing.

Bringing together 25 essential works of creative writing criticism in a single volume, this is a comprehensive introduction to the key debates in creative writing today, from the ethics of appropriation to the politics of literary evaluation. Critical Creative Writing covers such topics as: * Craft & Politics * Language & Community * Identity & Authorship * Representation & Counternarrative * Appropriation & Intertextuality * Evaluation & Genre The book anthologizes critical essays written by international literary writers. Each essay is contextualized with an introduction as well as sample questions, writing prompts and suggested readings. The book also has a companion website (www.criticalcreativewriting.org) offering supplemental materials such as lesson plans and course materials. Includes writings by: Ayana Mathis, Leslie Marmon Silko, Craig Santos Perez, Natasha Saje, Porochista Khakpour, Taiye Selasi, Michael Nardone, Conchitina Cruz, Benjamin Paloff, Dorothy Wang, and many more.

This is a book about discovering how you do creative writing. How you begin, how you structure, how your writing process works, how a work embodies movement and change, what influences you, and, ultimately, how you end. Discovering Creative Writing points you toward clues that can assist you in understanding your own creative writing as well as the creative writing of others. This book is both a practical guide and a critical examination that empowers the reader to find things out and use that information to develop and support their own creative writing. This book will enable students of creative writing at both undergraduate and postgraduate level to deepen their understanding of their practice, and will be a valuable guide and inspiration for anyone wishing to begin, continue, or improve their writing.

This textbook takes a new approach to teaching creative writing that centers the concerns of multicultural students. It focuses on the experiences of those who wish to write through their diverse identities, including ethnic, cultural, racial, national, regional, and international identity as well as gender identity, sexual preference, class position, and disability. Combining the study of culturally diverse literature with the process of writing, students are encouraged to engage with various texts and to use them to inspire their own work. Organized around a series of writing prompts and discussions of literary readings that address identity, place, perception, family, community, encounters, inheritance, and resistance, this book offers both writers and teachers a way to engage with the practice of writing from a multicultural perspective.

This writing textbook bridges factual, critical, and expressive modes of writing to help students develop a reflective sense of why and how to write for university, professional, and public audiences. Exploring the ways in which writing builds tools for argument both in and beyond the university, it enables students to break out of the dusty and formulaic patterns of writing that too often threaten to render academic studies irrelevant. In a playful, personal, essayistic style, it examines existing academic writing methods and develops new modes of narrative-based expression rooted in the humanities. Reflective analysis invites emerging writers to self-consciously craft convincing and impassioned writing practices using an expanded methodological toolbox. It aims to imbue academic writing with the expressive potential of artistic research by transforming existing methods of articulating analysis within a broader expressive system, developing skills more typical of creative writing, such as providing a setting, considering frame, engaging emotions, expansion, and concision. If we believe in the value of our thoughts, discoveries, and arguments, we must enable them to sing. Loving Writing can be used as a textbook for advanced or introductory college writing courses and provides innovative guidance to liberal arts students seeking to develop their writing abilities.

Healing Victims of Sexual Assault Through Transformative Journaling "This is the most essential book on writing practice I know ... Every writing teacher, writing coach, writing workshop or group leader and every person with a history of any kind of trauma needs this book." -Pat Schneider, author of How the Light Gets In and founder of the Amherst Writers & Artists method #1 Best Seller in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Study Aids One in six women is the victim of sexual assault. Using her own hard-won wisdom, author Jen Cross shows how to heal through journaling and personal writing Rape victims and victims of other sexual abuse. Writing Ourselves Whole is a collection of essays and creative writing encouragements for sexual trauma survivors who want to risk writing a different story. Each short chapter offers encouragement, experience, and exercises. A book that could change your life. When you can find language for the stories that are locked inside, you can change your life. Talk therapy can only go so far for the millions of Americans struggling in the aftermath of sexual abuse and sexual assault. Sexual assault survivors can heal themselves. Sexual trauma survivor communities (and their allies) have the capacity to hold and hear one another's stories-we do not have to relegate ourselves solely to the individual isolation of the therapist's office. What You'll Learn Inside Writing Ourselves Whole: How to reconnect with your creative instinct through freewriting How freewriting can help you reclaim the parts of yourself and your history How "restorying" the old myths about sexual trauma survivors can set you free If you have read books such as The Body Keeps the Score, The Artist's Way, Writing Down the Bones, or Writing as a Way of Healing, you will want to read Writing Ourselves Whole. Also try Jen Cross's self-care journal, Write to Restore.

This new edition combines Pamela Cleaver's bestselling Writing a Children's Book with her Ideas for Children's Writers. In it you will learn about plotting and planning, beginnings, middles and endings, how to research and how to revise and how to find a publisher. There are: * Lists of attributes to help you create interesting and believable characters * Lists of plots and themes * Genres - what's hot and what's not * Locations and how much description to use * List of do's and don'ts regarding submitting manuscripts * Symbols for correcting your proofs * Tips on how to publicise your book. There is no one right way to write a children's book but if you are armed with a knowledge of certain techniques that have worked for other writers you will be more likely to succeed. Contents: Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Limbering Up; 2. Plotting; 3. Story People: the Characters in Your Book; 4. Genres; 5. Where and When?; 6. Starting the Story; 7. Telling the Tale; 8. Writing for the Younger Set; 9. Happy Ever After?; 10. Research and Revision; 11. Writing a Non-Fiction Book; 12. Getting Published; 13. If Your Book is Accepted; 14. If Your Book is Rejected; Useful Information for Writing Children's Book; Index.

This second edition of Writing for Animation, Comics, and Games expounds on the previous edition with more information on how to construct narratives for these three forms of visual storytelling media. Christy Marx's book offers an in-depth look into scriptwriting and how to break into each of the featured industries. The text goes into detail on visual storytelling: how to compose exterior storytelling (animation, games) and interior/exterior storytelling (comics and graphic novels); as well as considerations for non-linear videogames. The advice within these pages can be used to build a transmedia career across animation, comics, graphic novels, and videogames. Key Features An insider's perspective on career rules of the road on writing for comics, videogames, and animation Written for beginners and professionals alike A nuts-and-bolts guide to script formats, terminology, networking, and valuable advice on writing for each medium Author Bio Based in Northern California, Christy Marx is an award-winning writer, story editor, TV series developer, game designer, and narrative designer. Her many credits include Babylon 5; Captain Power and Soldiers of the Future; The Twilight Zone; G.I. Joe; Jem and the Holograms; Spider-Man; He-Man; X-Men Evolution; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; Conan the Adventurer; Birds of Prey; Amethyst; The Sisterhood of Steel; Sierra On-Line adventure games; PC, MMO, and console games; Zynga mobile games; and more. For full credits, visit www.christymarx.com.

A novel is a relationship, a place outside of time where both reader and writer are challenged and validated, stretched and rewarded.

Richard Skinner believes it is your duty as a novelist to bring your whole self to the page; to find your story, not force it; to meet your reader in a spirit of openness.

In Writing a Novel he offers up frameworks, strategies and stimuli to help you meet that duty, drawingon his deep experience as one of the UK's leading creative writing teachers. He covers the essentials - narrators, character, setting - with charm and rigour. But Writing a Novel is not a set of instructions: it is a way of thinking, a conversation, a relationship in itself.

Read the beginning of a story-the rest is up to you! "After many years of teaching writing, these amazing Totally Weird Activity books will captivate even the most reluctant student! Filled with a wide variety of topics and interests to get a story started, the books will ignite a passion for the craft." -Laura Baker, elementary school teacher and winner of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching "Super Stranger Story Starters by T.M. Murphy, illus. by Mark Penta, [is] a collection of story prompts kicking off the Totally Weird Activity Books series." -Publishers Weekly, Fall 2022 Children's Sneak Previews With 22 unique prompts plus colorful illustrations, this creative writing book is ready to go in any direction you want. Each story starter prompt includes space inside to write down and explore ideas of what happens next. There is no wrong way to tell a story, so find inspiration in the artwork details, throw in plot twists, reveal secret desires, make happy endings (or not), introduce new characters. . . the possibilities are endless! Part of the Totally Weird Activity Book series created by childhood friends Mark and Ted, Super Strange Story Starters is perfect for aspiring writers, avid readers, and creative kids who have a story to tell.

Long recognized as a master teacher at writing programs like VONA, the Loft, and the Stonecoast MFA, with A Stranger's Journey, David Mura has written a book on creative writing that addresses our increasingly diverse American literature. Mura argues for a more inclusive and expansive definition of craft, particularly in relationship to race, even as he elucidates timeless rules of narrative construction in fiction and memoir. His essays offer technique-focused readings of writers such as Junot Diaz, ZZ Packer, Maxine Hong Kingston, Mary Karr, and Sherman Alexie, while making compelling connections to Mura's own life and work as a Japanese American writer. In A Stranger's Journey, Mura poses two central questions. The first involves identity: How is writing an exploration of who one is and one's place in the world? Mura examines how the myriad identities in our changing contemporary canon have led to new challenges regarding both craft and pedagogy. Here, like Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark or Jeff Chang's Who We Be, A Stranger's Journey breaks new ground in our understanding of the relationship between the issues of race, literature, and culture. The book's second central question involves structure: How does one tell a story? Mura provides clear, insightful narrative tools that any writer may use, taking in techniques from fiction, screenplays, playwriting, and myth. Through this process, Mura candidly explores the newly evolved aesthetic principles of memoir and how questions of identity occupy a central place in contemporary memoir.