Research Writing

Where do writers learn their best moves? They use a technique that Roy Peter Clark calls X-ray reading, a form of reading that lets you penetrate beyond the surface of a text to see how meaning is actually being made. In The Art of X-Ray Reading, Clark invites you to don your X-ray reading glasses and join him on a guided tour through some of the most exquisite and masterful literary works of all time, from The Great Gatsby to Lolita to The Bluest Eye and many more.

This seminal work of nonfiction recounts the new, journalistic mass movement of today. Compiled from more than a decade of investigative reporting, coupled with a vast reference of philosophical research, American Muckraker is the definitive guide of truth-telling in the video age.

This easy-listen audiobook will teach you all the essentials of copywriting, from understanding products, audiences, and benefits to closing the sale. It’s packed with real-life examples that will show you exactly how the ideas work in the real world. Plus there's a whole chapter of handy tips on writing ads, websites, broadcast media, direct mail, social media, and print.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Ruta Sepetys is known for creating vivid characters and harrowing plots. After five award-winning works of historical fiction and countless hours of meticulous research, she can affirm that the secret to strong writing is embedded within your life experience. You: The Story is a powerful how-to book for aspiring writers that encourages you to look inward and excavate your own memories in order to discover the authentic voices and compelling details that are waiting to be put on the page.

More than three decades after his death, John Steinbeck remains one of the nation's most beloved authors. Yet few know of his career as a journalist who covered world events from the Great Depression to Vietnam. Now, this original collection offers a portrait of the artist as citizen, deeply engaged in the world around him. In addition to the complete text of Steinbeck's last published book, America and Americans, this volume brings together for the first time more than 50 of Steinbeck's finest essays and journalistic pieces.

Todd Rogers and Jessica Lasky-Fink offer the most valuable practical writing advice today. Building on their own research in behavioral science, they outline cognitive facts about how people actually read and distill them into six principles that will transform the power of your writing. Including many real-world examples, a checklist and other tools, this guide will make you a more successful and productive communicator. Rogers and Lasky-Fink bring Strunk and White’s core ideas into the twenty-first century’s attention marketplace.

A book for any Canadian who has wanted to self-publish. Get an overview of publishing a book, and answers to some Canadian-specific questions. What is withholding? How do I stop it? What's an ISBN and will I need to mortgage my house to buy one? Should I use Canadian spellings in my book? What publishing platforms are out there? If you’re a Canadian who has always wanted to write and self-publish, this book will give you a great overview of the industry, answer some of the most common questions people have, and get your career off on the right foot.

In this unique book, author and editor Jean Marie Stine shows writers how to avoid the errors that keep most self-help books from finding publishers and off the best-seller lists if they are published.

Creative writing can enhance wellbeing, which can enhance creative writing, which can enhance wellbeing. Become a better writer with over 100 inspiring prompts, insights and exercises specially devised by an award-winning author and creative writing teacher. Discover how the practice of creative writing - being expressive, exploring ideas, crafting words, shaping stories - can also deepen your appreciation of life.

When it comes to writing books, are you a "plotter" or a "pantser"? Is one method really better than the other? In this instructional book, author Libbie Hawker explains the benefits and technique of planning a story before you begin to write. She'll show you how to develop a foolproof character arc and plot, how to pace any book for a can't-put-down reading experience, and how to ensure that your stories are complete and satisfying without wasting any time or words.

Whether you are a writer, creator, entrepreneur, executive, public speaker, investor, or industry thought leader, Snow Leopard is your guide for becoming known for a niche you own.

Lionel Barber was editor of the Financial Times for the tech boom, the global financial crisis, the rise of China, Brexit and mainstream media's fight for survival in the age of fake news. In this unparalleled, no-holds-barred diary of life behind the headlines, he reveals the private meetings and exchanges with political leaders on the eve of referendums, the conversations with billionaire bankers facing economic meltdown, exchanges with Silicon Valley tech gurus and pleas from foreign emissaries desperate for inside knowledge.

Are you an author interested in preparing your book for audiobook narration? Do you need advice on narrator-friendly writing and editing for voiceover and audio production? This practical guide to radio writing techniques will help you prepare your book for a voice artist or your own narration. Discover how to: edit with your narrator in mind; use audio flow words and phrases; convey information with clarity; write from an audio-first viewpoint; and much more.

The goal of this book is simple: Help you write faster and at a higher quality. Let's face it, if you're in business for yourself - an author, speaker or trainer, coach, consultant, or entrepreneur, or if you realize the great need for large quantities of fantastic content fast - then you need to know how to speed write. It goes without saying that if you're a writer or publisher and you can already crank out content at a brisk clip, even a small increase in production can give you a slight edge.

Whether or not one has lived an exceptional or dramatic life, we inherently understand that writing memoir—whether it’s a book, blog, or just a letter to a child - is the single greatest portal to self-examination. Stop treading water in writing exercises or hiding behind “writer’s block” and learn how to write with intent. Marion Roach Smith’s disarmingly frank but wildly fun tactics offer you simple and effective guidelines that work. Your legacy beings now.

Drawing from her twenty years of teaching experience and her bestselling Substack newsletter, For Dear Life, Maggie Smith breaks down creativity into ten essential elements: attention, wonder, vision, play, surprise, vulnerability, restlessness, tenacity, connection, and hope. Each element is explored through short, inspiring, and craft-focused essays, followed by generative writing prompts. Dear Writer provides tools that artists of all experience levels can apply to their own creative practices and carry with them into all genres and all areas of life.

In their 2014 best seller, Write. Publish. Repeat, authors Platt and Truant told a generation of indies the path to self-publishing success. In this long-awaited follow-up, they'll tell you what they've learned since, plus all the fiction-specific stuff they didn't include the first time around.

How does one pull from one's own boring, agitated self the truth-speaker who will tell the story a personal narrative needs to tell? That is the question The Situation and the Story asks—and answers. Taking us on a tour of some of the best memoirs and essays of the past hundred years, Gornick traces the changing idea of self that has dominated the century, and demonstrates the enduring truth-speaker to be found in the work of writers as diverse as Edmund Gosse, Joan Didion, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, or Marguerite Duras.

Can you learn how to write comedy? Absolutely - anyone can. Scott Dikkers will tell you how. He's co-founder and longest-serving editor-in-chief of The Onion, the world's most popular humor publication, and founder of The Onion Training Center at the Second City in Chicago. He's also a number one best-selling humor author and winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. In How to Write Funnier, he tells you everything you need to know to start writing funny stories, how to write funny scenes, and how to write funny sketches.

In 1974 in Kinshasa, Zaïre, two African American boxers were paid five million dollars apiece to fight each other. One was Muhammad Ali, the aging but irrepressible "professor of boxing." The other was George Foreman, who was as taciturn as Ali was voluble. Observing them was Norman Mailer, a commentator of unparalleled energy, acumen, and audacity.