NCW Libraries

"A literary agent and freelance editor recommends simple fixes for common mistakes that cause book proposals to be rejected. A wide range of topics are covered, including genre conventions, narrative structure, manuscript formatting, and editing for both fiction and non-fiction books"--

Ideal for teachers who have been searching for a way to inspire students with a love for writing-and reading-contemporary poetry. It is a book about shaping your memories and passions, your pleasures, obsessions, dreams, secrets, and sorrows into the poems you have always wanted to write. If you long to create poetry that is magical and moving, this is the book you've been looking for. Here are chapters on the language and music of poetry, the art...

Prompted by a neverending stream of letters pleading for advice on how to be a better writer, successful children's authors Anne Mazer and Ellen Potter put their heads together to create this useful guide. With dozens of books and decades of experience between them, the authors brought their distinct personal styles to the advice they had to offer. Now they have done the same for this audio version, with each author narrating her own sections. Along...

"What's the harm in a pseudonym? Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn't write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American--in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author R. F. Kuang in the vein of White Ivy and The Other Black Girl. Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars: same year at Yale, same debut...

Behind every acclaimed work of literature is a trove of heartfelt decisions. The best authors put painstaking-sometimes obsessive-effort into each element of their stories, from plot and character development to dialogue and point of view. Veteran editor and teacher Richard Cohen draws on his vast reservoir of a lifetime's reading and his insight into what makes good prose soar. Here are Gabriel Garcia Márquez's thoughts on how to start a novel...

A widely admired writer and teacher of writing, Verlyn Klinkenborg now gives us a distillation of that experience in an distinctive book that will help anyone who wants to write, write better, or have a clearer understanding of what it means for them to be writing. Klinkenborg believes that most of our received wisdom about how writing works is not only wrong but an obstacle to our ability to write. Here he sets out to help us unlearn that "wisdom"--about...

There is no precise formula for writing a bestseller, but there are secrets, skills and techniques that will dramatically improve your odds of publishing a bestselling novel. Whatever your motivation - whether sick of rejections, getting ready to approach a publisher, or with an idea you think is unbeatable - you need to read this book before you do anything else. It gives you insight into what makes a bestseller, the trends and the genre conventions,...

"Good Prose" is an inspiring book about writing--about the creation of good prose--and the record of a warm and productive literary friendship.

"Gives writers pointers and guidelines on how to improve their action scenes by implementing some of the same techniques used in film-making. Loaded with new terminology and definitions, an introduction to the basic concepts of an Action Scene, and application of the concepts, this book gives writers the tools to write their own expert-level action scenes." -- Back cover