Writers are spellbinders, wizards, witches, working their magic with words, entrancing and enchanting us. Not for nothing does the word `spell' mean a sequence of letters and a form of words used as a magical charm or incantation. In these tales, the sorcery has been restricted so that its glamour has to work in the space of fifty, five hundred or a thousand words: and work it does, as you will see. From disturbing darkness to light-hearted laughter, the authors within weave their wizardry, making you weep and laugh, feel and think, shiver and gasp, always wanting to turn the page.

This book is a powerful tool for understanding fiction and for transforming creative writing and taking it to new levels of clarity, energy and effectiveness. Learn what a story really is and what it is actually doing to and for readers, how all successful fiction follows universal patterns to attract and grip readers, the magnetic power that draws readers into a work of fiction even before the introduction of any character, what the thing called a 'character' actually is, and the secrets of how to rapidly build a convincing one that attracts readers, the things called 'plots', what they are and how they are actually made (rather than how you might suppose they are made). Find out about the writing model which, if followed, will create a machine generating unimaginable numbers of readers and heightened reader satisfaction for you, based on some of the most successful pieces of literature in the English-speaking world.