Research Writing

Compelling characters are what keeps readers turning pages and buying books—from fantasies to mysteries to the great literary novel. But how to do you create characters that feel three-dimensional and real on the page? Counsellor and author Eileen Cook shares common psychological techniques to help you build your characters and take your story to the next level. This book covers understanding your character's backstory and how it impacts their choices in your book by doing a structured counselling interview, personality structure, and the Stages of Change.

In the 1980s, Lawrence Block developed an interactional seminar that adapted elements of the human potential movement specifically for writers. For several years, he and his wife, Lynne, traveled the country conducting seminars that focused on the inner game of writing and designed to enable participants to get out of their own way and put their best work on paper.

Faulty grammar can slow you down and diminish your credibility as a business writer. Essential Grammar has just one objective: to help you use correct English in the documents you write for work. Correct writing is an excellent way to boost your professional credibility. Here are some of the skills the book helps you master: writing grammatically correct sentences, using the right forms of pronouns and verbs, distinguishing between commonly confused words, and knowing when and where to use punctuation marks.

Successful essayist, columnist, writing instructor, and editor Estelle Erasmus will show you how to find your voice, write stellar pieces, and get published.

When actress and activist Brittany Snow was a teenager, she read an article about another woman’s hardship that made her feel seen and less alone. She carried that story in her back pocket for a long time. This experience was a gift that Brittany then paid forward when she revealed her own experience in a published article. Brittany’s story resonated with a young reader, who kept that story in her back pocket, where it was when the two crossed paths serendipitously.

Unlike many advice-givers, Block doesn't tell you what book to write, or the one and only way to write it. He holds that every novel is different, and so is every novelist; his aim is to give you the tools to enable you to find your own way.

Media and law enforcement work at cross-purposes. Law enforcement want to solve a case as fast as possible and put the guilty behind bars. The media want a case to drag on as long as humanly possible and do all they can to extricate every last bit of drama, drop by bloody drop, in order to hold the attention of the millions of viewers who have gotten hooked. Law enforcement must abide by rules. The media make their own rules, and even then break them or find ways to work loopholes into them.

Specific tips and advice to help any aspiring writer but especially those with ADHD tendencies. Write on!

Author of the international best seller I'm with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie, Pamela Des Barres shares with women the art of memoir writing. For the last 14 years, Pamela Des Barres has been teaching an eight-week women's "femoir" writing workshop. She found that the music-loving ladies who showed up at her door had pent-up stories to tell. Many of them had read her two memoirs, which were wildly personal and deeply confessional, and felt comfortable opening up and experiencing that same freedom of expression.

In Plotting a Fantasy Novel, you’ll discover how to create a novel outline in five easy steps. Fantasies are our secret escape to utopia. And with the right tools and techniques, you can create many more escape gateways by writing compelling fantasy novels…novels your readers will be itching to get their hands on. If you dream of seeing your name among the masters of storytelling, it’s time to learn the secrets.

All fiction is character-driven, according to William Bernhardt, despite what you might have heard elsewhere. If your characters don’t interest readers, even the most exciting plots will fail. “Action is character,” Aristotle wrote, but what does that mean, and how can you use that fundamental principle to create dynamic fiction that will captivate readers? This audiobook explains the relationship between character and plot, and how the perfect melding of the two produces a mesmerizing story.

As anchor for the BBC's key political news programme, Newsnight, Emily Maitlis has interviewed some of the most powerful and controversial figures on the political scene. She plans each interview meticulously, knowing what she wants to ask and where she wants it to go, but as one of the most experienced journalists in her field she knows that no interview will ever go to plan....

From William Shakespeare and Jane Austen to Gabriel García Márquez and Toni Morrison, Writers explores more than 100 biographies of the world’s greatest writers. Writers introduces key ideas, themes, and literary techniques of each figure, revealing the imaginations, and personalities behind some of the world's greatest novels, short stories, poems, and plays. A diverse variety of authors are covered, from the Middle Ages to present day, providing a compelling glimpse into the lives of the people behind the page.

A practical and inspiring guide to transformational personal storytelling, The Story You Need to Tell is the product of Sandra Marinella’s pioneering work with veterans and cancer patients, her years of teaching writing, and her research into its profound healing properties. Riveting true stories illustrate Marinella’s methods for understanding, telling, and editing personal stories in ways that foster resilience and renewal. She also shares her own experience of using journaling and expressive writing to navigate challenges including breast cancer and postpartum depression.

Writing a novel will change your life. The process of getting to that point will light a spark in your creative soul and help you discover unexpected aspects of yourself. It will be one of the things you are most proud of in your life. This audiobook will help you get there. This book will help you write your first novel, or improve your creative process, so you can write more books and reach more readers. It covers mindset, ideas and research, aspects of craft, how to write a first draft, and work through an editing process to a finished book.

It's time to take control of your stories...The 24 Laws of Storytelling distills the lessons learned from stories past and present into a practical audiobook that you can use for any story you decide to write. This audiobook will teach you the principles you need to immerse your audience, deliver immensely satisfying drama, and educate better than any textbook or lecture can.

What About the Baby?: Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction gathers the best-selling novelist Alice McDermott’s pithiest wisdom about her chosen art, acquired over a lifetime as an acclaimed writer and teacher of writing.

The vast majority of writers begin the storytelling process with only a partial understanding of where to begin. Some labor their entire lives without ever learning that successful stories are as dependent upon good engineering as they are artistry. But the truth is, unless you are master of the form, function, and criteria of successful storytelling, sitting down and pounding out a first draft without planning is an ineffective way to begin. Story Engineering starts with the criteria and the architecture of storytelling, the engineering and design of a story....

Whether your book is being released through a commercial publisher or an academic press, or you are self-publishing it, as the author, you can and should play a crucial role in getting your title seen, talked about, and sold.

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.