Creative Writing Craft

CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF WRITING with fresh testimonials from fellow writers about why they love Stephen King and On Writing—and a few new words on the joy of writing from King himself. *ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE’S TOP 100 NONFICTION BOOKS OF ALL TIME* Immensely helpful and illuminating to any...

Learn Fun and Creative Ways to Enhance Your Descriptions! The advice, tools, and reference lists in this writing guide for fiction authors will inspire writers to create original and vibrant descriptions of characters, locations, weather, and mood that can greatly enhance anyone’s storytelling, whether you’re writing adult fiction, young adult fiction, or children’s books. Fictional and real settings are much more effective, dramatic, and evocative when they’re visible, auditory, olfactory, and tactile. Character depictions are much more imaginative, lifelike, and vivid for readers ...

An intimate memoir portraying a life spent trying to describe the indescribable, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hours and Day. Go ahead. Try using language to slit the skin of mortality to see what’s on the other side. At the age of three, Michael Cunningham began obsessively...

#1 New York Timesbestselling author Harlan Coben offers a look behind the curtain at his own writing process in an inspiring, candid memoir filled with indispensable insights and techniques. “For aspiring writers, Harlan’s advice, stories, and anecdotes are wise, proven, and valuable. For...

A creative writer's shelf should hold at least three essential books: a dictionary, a style guide, and Writing Fiction. Janet Burroway's best-selling classic is the most widely used creative writing text in America, and for more than three decades, it has helped hundreds of thousands of students learn the craft.  

“Still Writing offers up a cornucopia of wisdom, insights, and practical lessons gleaned from Dani Shapiro's long experience as a celebrated writer and teacher of writing. The beneficiaries are beginning writers, veteran writers and everyone in between.” —Jennifer Egan From Dani Shapiro...

This national bestseller is "a significant contribution to discussions of the art of fiction and a necessary challenge to received views about whose stories are told, how they are told and for whom they are intended" (Laila Lalami, The New York Times Book Review). The traditional writing...

As practical as it is inspiring, The Art of Creative Writing remains a timeless, illuminating guide that teaches every writer, and aspiring writer, how to create works that are both compelling and enduring. 

Dark Psychology for Fiction Writers shows writers how to build dark characters without flattening them, write victims with agency, use objects, silence, language, memory, and pressure to deepen plot, and keep moral complexity clear. Across the chapters, an original story is gradually seeded and developed: The House That Whispered, a tale of a daughter returning home after her father’s funeral, a closed parlor, a mother’s careful version of the past, and a house full of objects waiting to be understood. By the end of the book, those seeds gather into a completed short story, showing how ...

Everybody wants to write a book, but most authors fall short. If only there was a clear, systematic, structured approach to crafting bestsellers that would... help you organize your creative ideas unravel the messy writing process save months of editing and revision increase engagement and get more book reviews keep readers glued to each page with dramatic tension impress your mom (and everyone else) with your genius When I started out as an author, I read every book on craft, plotting and writing techniques I could find - but they left me more confused than ever. I ended up quitting, and ...

Finally finish the first draft of your novel with a method that maximizes efficiency, speed, and joy—from the author of Save the Cat! Writes a Novel. After months (or years) of writing, are you left with nothing but a folder full of false starts? Do you have a novel you were once excited to...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER The ultimate guide to writing a great screenplay and building a screenwriting career, from the creators of the hit podcast Scriptnotes—featuring contributions from film and TV legends Christopher Nolan, Greta Gerwig, Michael Schur, Rian Johnson, Aline Brosh McKenna...

Mignon Fogarty, a.k.a. Grammar Girl, is determined to wipe out bad grammar—but she's also determined to make the process as painless as possible. One year ago, she created a weekly podcast to tackle some of the most common mistakes people make while communicating. More than seven million...

Master the Art of Clear, Powerful Writing — in Just 20 Focused Lessons Whether you’re a student, professional, or aspiring author, The Craft of Writing: 20 Lessons in Composition & Style will transform the way you think about—and practice—the written word. Inspired by timeless classics such as The Elements of Style (Strunk & White), Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (Joseph M. Williams), and On Writing Well (William Zinsser), this book distills the essential principles of good writing into twenty practical, self-contained lessons. Each chapter blends clear explanations, fresh ...

There are several aspects to writing fiction. Rendering what John Gardner in The Art of Fiction describes as a 'vivid and continuous dream' is a complicated affair. Story is created from the imagination of a writer, who in turn must translate it onto a page of symbols so that another person can read, absorb, and experience the story in a similar fashion. It's a remarkable process when you think about it. In On Creative Writing the process of writing fiction is demystified and cut in palatable bites to help any writer who has the passion and mad desire to tell a story. Reviews: Bitten by ...

★Great Dialogue Can Mean the Difference Between a Bestseller and a Bomb!★ Sharpen your storytelling by learning How to Craft Killer Dialogue. Ever wonder what techniques Elmore Leonard and Quentin Tarantino use to master the dialogue for their slick and highly quotable crime stories? Want to create the heart-warming introspection often found in the minds of characters like the ones in books by Judy Blume? Or maybe, you prefer to plumb the depths of layered subtext as powerfully displayed in the works of artists like Toni Morrison? With this comprehensive guide, you will find all those ...

In this spellbinding blend of memoir and insight, bestselling author Chuck Palahniuk shares stories and generous advice on what makes for powerful writing. With advice grounded in years of careful study and a keenly observed life, Palahniuk combines practical advice and concrete examples from...

Learn to Improve Emotional Descriptions, Create Believable Settings, and Craft Powerful Descriptive Writing. This guidebook is a companion to the first volume in the Fiction Writing Tools series, "The Writer's Guide to Character Emotion" on descriptive writing and Deep POV, with Immersive Writing Techniques. Within this in-depth writing craft book are practical tools on how to apply descriptive writing to create realistic settings, visceral responses, and lifelike characters. Included are lists and advice on: Setting Descriptors Character Personality Traits Character Development Descriptive...

Make every page give the reader a reason to continue. A novel can have a compelling premise and beautiful prose, yet still lose momentum when scenes begin too early, questions arrive without purpose, or chapter endings provide no meaningful change. This practical guide shows how to shape the small and large decisions that keep attention moving forward. Designed for novelists, editors, and serious revisers, this book treats pacing as a craft that can be observed, tested, and improved without reducing fiction to a formula. You will learn how to connect hooks, character desire, questions, ...

Write Emotion That Hurts and Lingers. Whether you're crafting a death scene, writing a character in quiet despair, or capturing the final breath of a broken relationship—this book helps you do it with emotional truth, not cliché. Heartbreak and Sorrow in Fiction Writing is a comprehensive emotional craft guide and phrase thesaurus designed specifically for fiction writers. With 22 rich chapters, it goes far beyond generic writing advice. You’ll find detailed techniques, emotional theory, original examples, practical writing tools, and hundreds of ready-to-use phrases that show—not ...