This book shows you how to take timeless storytelling structures and make them immediate, now, for fiction that's universal in how it speaks to the reader's heart and contemporary in detail and impact. Each chapter includes brief excerpts and descriptions of fiction from many times, many genres - myth and fairy tale, genre and mainstream fiction, film plots of all types, short story and novel. Find 20 fundamental plots that recur through all fiction - with analysis and examples - that outline benefits and warnings, for writers to adapt and elaborate in their own fiction.

Give your story a solid foundation—a plot that engages readers from start to finish! The best stories linger in the hearts and minds of readers for decades. These tales gain their power through plots that connect with the audience on both an emotional and intellectual level. Inside Ronald B. Tobias details these 20 time-tested plots. Each is discussed and analyzed, illustrating how a successful plot integrates all the elements of a story. Tobias then shows you how to use these plots effectively in your own work. Tobias then goes to the next level, showing you how to choose and develop plot in fiction. He shows you how to craft plot for any subject matter, so that you develop your work evenly and effectively. As a result, your fiction will be more cohesive and convincing, making your story unforgettable for readers everywhere. "Plot isn't an accessory that conveniently organizes your material according to some ritualistic magic. You don't just plug in plot like a household appliance and expect it to do its job. Plot is organic. It takes hold of the writer and the work from the beginning." —Ronald Tobias

In Master Plots, Jared Gardner examines the tangled intersection of racial and national discourses in early American narrative. While it is well known that the writers of the early national period were preoccupied with differentiating their work from European models, Gardner argues that the national literature of the United States was equally motivated by the desire to differentiate white Americans from blacks and Indians. To achieve these ends, early American writers were drawn to fantasies of an "American race," and an American literature came to be defined not only by its desire for cultural uniqueness but also by its defense of racial purity.

This book shows how to work with stories and narrative approaches in almost all fields of action of a company, and demonstrates the added value resulting from a holistic narrative perspective. The authors take thereby a practice-based perspective from the viewpoint of managing directors, the C-suite, organizational developers, corporate communicators and advisers with a rich description of the methods and implementation. By the employment of these narrative methods, leadership styles, communication, knowledge and change management can be planned in such a way that on the one hand the identity-core of the enterprise remains always apparent and on the other, the organization can develop in an agile fashion into the future.

A U.S. destroyer is torpedoed by an Iranian submarine and Captain Murray Wilson of the U.S.S. Michigan is flown to the Pentagon to meet with the Secretary of the Navy (SecNav). There Wilson learns that the Iranian submarine is just a cover story. One of the United States' own fully automated unmanned underwater vehicles has gone rogue, its programming corrupted in some way. Murray is charged with hunting it down and taking it out before the virus that's infected its operating system can infect the rest of the fleet. At the same time, the head of the SEAL detachment aboard the U.S.S Michigan is killed and Lonnie Mixell, a former U.S. operative, now assassin for hire, is responsible. And that is only the first SEAL to be hunted down and killed. Jake Harrison, fellow SEAL, discovers that these SEALs had one mission in common - they were all on the team that killed Bin Laden. Or so the world was told. As Wilson discovers that his mission is actually meant to cover up dangerous acts of corruption, even treason, Harrison discovers that the assassin is out to protect the same forces. Forces too powerful for either of them to take on alone.

Appalachian literature is filled with silent or non-discursive characters. The reasons for their wordlessness vary. Some are mute or pretend to be, some choose not to speak or are silenced by grief, trauma or fear. Others mutter monosyllables, stutter, grunt and point, speak in tongues or idiosyncratic language. They capture the reader's attention by what they don't say.

The mission of the International Journal of Educational Reform (IJER) is to keep readers up-to-date with worldwide developments in education reform by providing scholarly information and practical analysis from recognized international authorities. As the only peer-reviewed scholarly publication that combines authors’ voices without regard for the political affiliations perspectives, or research methodologies, IJER provides readers with a balanced view of all sides of the political and educational mainstream. To this end, IJER includes, but is not limited to, inquiry based and opinion pieces on developments in such areas as policy, administration, curriculum, instruction, law, and research. IJER should thus be of interest to professional educators with decision-making roles and policymakers at all levels turn since it provides a broad-based conversation between and among policymakers, practitioners, and academicians about reform goals, objectives, and methods for success throughout the world. Readers can call on IJER to learn from an international group of reform implementers by discovering what they can do that has actually worked. IJER can also help readers to understand the pitfalls of current reforms in order to avoid making similar mistakes. Finally, it is the mission of IJER to help readers to learn about key issues in school reform from movers and shakers who help to study and shape the power base directing educational reform in the U.S. and the world.

Peripheral Visions for Writing Centers aims to inspire a re-conception and re-envisioning of the boundaries of writing center work. Moving beyond the grand narrative of the writing center—that it is solely a comfortable, yet iconoclastic place where all students go to get one-to-one tutoring on their writing—McKinney shines light on other representations of writing center work. McKinney argues that this grand narrative neglects the extent to which writing center work is theoretically and pedagogically complex, with ever-changing work and conditions, and results in a straitjacket for writing center scholars, practitioners, students, and outsiders alike. Peripheral Visions for Writing Centers makes the case for a broader narrative of writing center work that recognizes and theorizes the various spaces of writing center labor, allows for professionalization of administrators, and sees tutoring as just one way to perform writing center work. McKinney explores possibilities that lie outside the grand narrative, allowing scholars and practitioners to open the field to a fuller, richer, and more realistic representation of their material labor and intellectual work.

This book presents new approaches that offer a better characterization of the interrelationship between crystalline and amorphous phases. In recent years, the use of dielectric spectroscopy has significantly improved our understanding of crystallization. The combination of modern scattering methods, using either synchrotron light or neutrons and infrared spectroscopy with dielectrics, is now helping to reveal modifications of both crystalline and amorphous phases. In turn, this yields insights into the underlying physics of the crystallization process in various materials, e.g. polymers, liquid crystals and diverse liquids. The book offers an excellent introduction to a valuable application of dielectric spectroscopy, and a helpful guide for every scientist who wants to study crystallization processes by means of dielectric spectroscopy.

TWO NOVELS IN THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING SERIES IN ONE VOLUME¾INCLUDING THE FIRST COMPLETE AND UNCUT PUBLICATION OF THE NOVEL INSURRECTION The Shiva Option: The war wasn't going well. The alien Arachnids were an enemy whose like no civilized race had ever confronted, overrunning planet after planet. The "Bugs" regarded any sentient species as a handy protein source. Defeat was not an option. The Grand Alliance of Humans and other races has been driven to the wall. Whatever they do, the Bugs just keep coming. Reluctantly, they now must reactivate General Directive 18, however horrible it may be. Because when the only possible outcomes are victory or racial extermination, only one option is acceptable: The Shiva Option. Insurrection: And peace isn't always wonderful. Once the enemy was defeated, the central governments of the Inner Worlds were anything but willing to relinquish their wartime powers. To insure that their grip on the reins of power remained firm, the establishment plans to allow the non-human beings of the Khanate to join the Federation, thus reducing the Fringe Worlds voting bloc to impotent minority status. The ruthless bureaucrats of the Corporate Worlds are smugly confident that this power play will keep the colonial upstarts in their place. But the Fringers have only one answer to that: Insurrection At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).