Discover how to create stories that build suspense, reveal character, and engage your audience with this ultimate guide to writing. When it comes to writing bestsellers, it’s all about the plot. Trouble is, plot is where most writers fall down—but you don’t have to be one of them. With this book, you’ll learn how to create stories that build suspense, reveal character, and engage readers—one scene at a time. Celebrated writing teacher and author Martha Alderson has devised a plotting system that’s as innovative as it is easy to implement. With her foolproof blueprint, you’ll learn to devise a successful storyline for any genre. She shows how to: -Use the power of the Universal Story -Create plot lines and subplots that work together -Effectively use a scene tracker for maximum impact -Insert energetic markers at the right points in your story -Show character transformation at the book’s climax This is the ultimate guide for you to write page-turners that sell!

Take a Deep Dive into Plot and Scene and Improve Your Writing Whether you're planning your first novel or have already written a first draft, you need to master the concepts of plot and scene to truly realize your story's potential. Writing Deep Scenes teaches you how to write strong, layered, and engaging scenes--the secret to memorable, page-turning plots. It's filled with practical tools for building layers and nuance into your scenes, employing the right scene types at the right junctures, and developing a profound understanding of how plot and scene intertwine. Inside you'll learn: • How scenes are comprised of three key layers: action, emotion, and theme. • How to recognize each layer and weave them seamlessly into a scene. • How to develop an intricate relationship between the action and emotion in every scene. • How thematic imagery embedded in scenes increases a story's tension and contributes to the story's meaning. Using contemporary examples from a variety of genres, Writing Deep Scenes provides an effective method for plotting at the scene level. Use these techniques and enrich your fiction and memoirs with page-turning suspense and pathos, and explore new depths in every story you write.

If you want to write a book that's going to sell to both publishers and readers, you need to know how to produce a marketable work and help it become successful. It starts the moment you have an idea. That's when you begin thinking about the first elements of the business plan that will make your project the best it can be. The reality is that you don't want to spend time and energy writing a book that will never get read. The way to avoid that is to create a business plan for your book, and evaluate it (and yourself) through the same lens that an agent or acquisitions editor would. The Author Training Manual will show you how to get more creative and start looking at your work with those high standards in mind. Whether you're writing fiction or non-fiction, or intend to publish traditionally or self-publish, author Nina Amir will teach you how to conduct an effective competitive analysis for your work and do a better job at delivering the goods to readers than similar books that are already on the shelf. Packed with step-by-step instructions, idea evaluations, sample business plans, editor and agent commentaries, and much more, The Author Training Manual provides the information you need to transform from aspiring writer to career author.

How to Blog a Book teaches you how to create a blog book with a well-honed and uniquely angled subject and targeted posts—and how to build the audience necessary to convince agents and publishers to make your blog into a book. Inside you'll find: • Basic information on how to set up your blog and the essential plug-ins and other options necessary to get the most out of each post • Steps for writing a book easily from scratch using blog posts • Advice on how to write blog posts • Tips on gaining visibility and promoting your work both online and off • Tools for driving traffic to your blog • Information on how to monetize an existing blog into a book or other types of products • Profiles with authors who received blog-to-book deals Author Nina Amir explains how writing a book in cyberspace allows you to get your book written easily, while promoting it and building an author's platform. It's a fun, effective way to start writing, publishing, and promoting a book, one post at a time.

Eve Martins is a woman who knows the streets all too well and runs them with an iron fist. Love never exists in her world but when she meets Steve all that she stands and believes in feels irrelevant. This proves to be a great distraction because she has a new enemy in town who is threatening to set her empire up in flames. Giving up everything she has always believed in for love feels foolhardy but at the same time nothing makes sense to her any more. Will she choose love? Or riches?

This open access collection of essays examines the literary advice industry since its emergence in Anglo-American literary culture in the mid-nineteenth century within the context of the professionalization of the literary field and the continued debate on creative writing as art and craft. Often dismissed as commercial and stereotypical by authors and specialists alike, literary advice has nonetheless remained a flourishing business, embodying the unquestioned values of a literary system, but also functioning as a sign of a literary system in transition. Exploring the rise of new online amateur writing cultures in the twenty-first century, this collection of essays considers how literary advice proliferates globally, leading to new forms and genres.

San Francisco, 1993. Choreographer Calvin Tropp is jerked out of artistic lethargy when he hears a predawn whisper: We are going to make a new dance, and the theme is prayer. Cal is not a religious man and knows nothing about prayer, but his creative fire is reignited. Opening night is sixty-three days away. He knows that its crazy to think he can get the ballet created and ready in that amount of time, especially once he realizes that new music must be commissioned, and the only available, aptly talented composer is the cantankerous Evana Arthur. Shes so hard to work with hes almost glad he has only nine weeks! The book structure counts down: nine weeks, eight weeks, etc., to opening night. Along with building the ballet and learning about prayer, Cal finally deals with the loss of his wife thirteen years earlier. Three dancers bring the Prayer ballet to life amidst trials of their own; for everyone involved, the new ballet transforms lives and reshapes the world.

The best resource for getting your fiction published! Novel & Short Story Writer's Market 2017 is the only resource you need to get your short stories, novellas, and novels published. As with past editions, Novel & Short Story Writer's Market offers hundreds of listings for book publishers, literary agents, fiction publications, contests, and more. Each listing includes contact information, submission guidelines, and other essential tips. Novel & Short Story Writer's Market also includes valuable advice to elevate your fiction: • Discover creative ways to conquer writer's block. • Wield exposition and summary effectively in your story. • Amplify your author brand with 8 simple ingredients. • Gain insight from best-selling and award-winning authors, including Garth Stein, Patrick Rothfuss, and more. You also receive a one-year subscription to WritersMarket.com's searchable online database of fiction publishers, as well as a free digital download of Writer's Yearbook, featuring the 100 Best Markets: WritersDigest.com/WritersDigest-Yearbook-16. Includes exclusive access to the webinar "Create Edge-of-Your-Seat Suspense" by Jane K. Cleland.

"[Explore] how to use the power of the Universal Story, create plot lines and subplots that work together, effectively use a scene tracker for maximum impact, insert energetic markers at the right points in your story, show character transformation at the book's climax"--P. [4] of cover.