Research Writing

Imagine writing a spellbinding world that not only enthralls listeners but also brings you joy during the creative process. Our quick guide, jam-packed with easy-to-follow prompts, tips, and techniques, will steer you through the fantasy writing process from start to finish.

International Emmy nominated writer Mark Boutros offers a guide to creating characters who are engaging, emotionally driven, and memorable. With experience writing comedy, drama, and novels, Mark shares a mixture of theory, exercises, and pitfalls, getting you thinking about the questions you should always have in your mind during character creation. This is an invaluable tool for beginner and experienced writers.

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.

Does your book bog down in the middle? Do you have pages on which nothing really happens? Do people skip or skim large portions of text? Then you're probably lacking tension. From years of teaching writing, novelist Angela Hunt knows that maintaining tension is one of the most difficult challenges a fiction writer faces. Learn some of the techniques you can use to maintain tension and hook readers so completely that they can't put your book down.

Journalists hate the term fake news, but there's a troubling reality: spin doctors routinely try to dupe them into reporting misleading and distorted stories. Award-winning journalist Cecil Rosner insists there is something we can do about this. We can pressure news organizations to stop blindly regurgitating the firehose of press releases and focus instead on determining what is actually true. Rosner empowers listeners by sharing his techniques for detecting misinformation and disinformation.

Throwing spaghetti at a wall. Sound familiar? That's what being stuck feels like sometimes. "Why is this happening and how do I fix it?" This is only one of the questions we ask ourselves when we feel stuck and frustrated and can't write.

In this book, I’ll guide you through the process of creating a business plan that will help you achieve your creative and financial goals. It's time to take your author career to the next level. Let's get started on your business plan.

It’s time to take your authorship to the next level. Navigate the intricacies of self-publishing and book marketing using the same methods clients pay her tens of thousands of dollars for. Get Self-Promote and Succeed and let this writer’s guide to promoting, marketing, and selling your nonfiction book be the reason your journey heads toward success.

Ayn Rand discusses how a writer combines abstract ideas with concrete action and description to achieve a unity of theme, plot, characterization, and style, the four essential elements of fiction. Here, too, are Rand's illuminating analyses of passages from famous writers, rewrites of scenes from her own works, and fascinating rules for building dramatic plots and characters with depth.

This writer's guide is packed full of insightful lessons on writing well. Gleaned from years of teaching writing workshops and crafting his own stories, Christopher Hawke teaches these lessons in a clear and concise way. While The Elements of Style and the Chicago Manual of Style are important for any author, this series is geared more toward the heart of writing—what makes a story really work and why.

It was the 1960s - a time of economic boom and social strife. Young women poured into the workplace, but the “Help Wanted” ads were segregated by gender and the “Mad Men” office culture was rife with sexual stereotyping and discrimination. Lynn Povich was one of the lucky ones, landing a job at Newsweek, renowned for its cutting-edge coverage of civil rights and the “Swinging Sixties.” Nora Ephron, Jane Bryant Quinn, Ellen Goodman, and Susan Brownmiller all started there as well. It was a top-notch job - for a girl - at an exciting place. But it was a dead end.

In this WMG Writer's Guide, international best-selling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch discusses the destructive ways peer workshops and the quest for perfection derail many writers' careers. Listening to critics and academics - amateur and professional - often strips out the joy of writing. And a failure to recognize writing as a business furthers the potential damage. But Rusch offers hope for writers who have suffered at the hands of critique - external and internal - and outlines a path to healing.

An urgent account of the revolution that has upended the news business, authored by one of the most accomplished journalists of our time.

David Quantick interviews some of the best writers in a variety of fields to provide a detailed overview for living your life as a writer on a daily, practical level. In conversation with Caitlin Moran, Jon Ronson, Suzanne Moore, Mark Billingham, Emma Donoghue, Dennis Kelly and many others, David asks: when do you get ideas? When do you write? How do you deal with your money? Who do you have lunch with? How do you keep going?

Like a seasoned sportscaster, Fish marvels at the adeptness of finely crafted sentences and breaks them down into digestible morsels, giving listeners an instant play-by-play. Drawing on a wide range of great writers, from Philip Roth to Antonin Scalia to Jane Austen, How to Write a Sentence is much more than a writing manual—it is a spirited love letter to the written word, and a key to understanding how great writing works. It is a book that will stand the test of time.

Rick Bragg closes his circle of family stories with an unforgettable tale about fathers and sons inspired by his own relationship with his 10-year-old stepson.

Though it is foundational to the craft of writing, the concept of voice is a mystery to many authors, and teachers of writing do not have a good working definition of it for use in the classroom. Written to address the vague and problematic advice given to writers to “find their voice,” Voice First: A Writer’s Manifesto recasts the term in the plural to give writers options, movement, and a way to understand the development of voice over time.

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.

Why do we want to write and what stops us? How do we fight the worry that no-one will care what we have to say? What can we do to overcome the obstacles in our way? Sunday Times bestselling author Cathy Rentzenbrink shows you how to tackle all this and more in Write It All Down, a guide to putting your life on the page.

Business owners, consumers, and employees have long relied on the news to make financial decisions—what to buy, who to hire, and what products to sell. In the 21st century, that news has shifted. Only the big businesses and executives can afford expensive subscriptions, while most consumers and small-business owners are left scrambling to find the news they need to succeed and thrive. The Future of Business Journalism explores how the field evolved into this divide and offers solutions on how business journalism can once again provide the stories and content that a broad society needs.