Emotional Writing

There are three kinds of feelings when reading a story: boredom, interest, and wow! To become a successful writer, you must create the wow feeling on as many pages as possible, and this requires writing that engages the reader emotionally. In his best-selling book, screenwriter Karl Iglesias explored the working habits of A-list Hollywood scribes. Now, he breaks new ground by focusing on the psychology of the reader.

While writers might disagree over showing versus telling or plotting versus pantsing, none would argue this: If you want to write strong fiction, you must make your readers feel. The reader's experience must be an emotional journey of its own, one as involving as your characters' struggles, discoveries, and triumphs are for you. That's where The Emotional Craft of Fiction comes in. Veteran literary agent and expert fiction instructor Donald Maass shows you how to use story to provoke a visceral and emotional experience in readers.

UPDATED 2022 EDITION! These two bestselling writing and editing handbooks, “The Writer’s Guide to Character Emotion” and “The Writer’s Guide to Character Expression” have been updated and combined to create one remarkable single volume! This comprehensive edition contains descriptive writing tools to help writers craft a riveting novel that instantly grabs a reader’s attention. Writers will gain the essential skills needed to craft realistic emotions, visceral responses, and body language to deepen characterization that you can easily and quickly apply to your own writing. ...

Friendship is the love story you can count on. “Narrator Isabel Adomakoh Young conjures a pair of delightfully distinct voices for the women at the heart of this audiobook.” — Kirkus (Earphones Award Winner) Remy is lucky. Her debut novel, based on her three best friends, became an instant...

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 ...

Readers pick up nonfiction books to learn something. They pick up novels to feel something: love, fear, joy, grief, elation, frustration, happiness, desperation, anger, despair, determination...or all of the above. We write novels to give readers a vicarious emotional experience. They want to weep when our characters weep and rejoice when they rejoice.

From Attorney Ryan, the most well-known labor lawyer in America, the complete guide to workers’ rights that your boss doesn’t want you to read Life for working people is getting harder and more expensive. While employers clamp down with return-to-office mandates, productivity trackers, and...

Most writers struggle with creating a captivating story. The fastest way to improve your writing skills is by applying the Deep Point-of-View technique, which can transform your storytelling into riveting prose. This fiction writing guide includes hundreds of amazing ways to use “show don’t tell” to submerge readers so deeply into a scene they will experience the story along with the characters. Plus, this useful author resource includes a thesaurus with inspiring word choices! Writers will learn to: Revise Shallow Writing Deepen Characterization Craft Realistic Visceral Reactions ...

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...

Escape the turbulent cycle of disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (DMDD) and say goodbye to mood swings and emotional turmoil with the practical and evidence-based strategies in this groundbreaking book. Written specifically for parents by a natural health expert and father of a child with DMDD who knows, this definitive guide provides a roadmap to help your child overcome DMDD using natural solutions. Discover what factors cause DMDD and how your child’s brain processes emotions, sensory input, social cues, and situations differently than neurotypical children. Get practical advice ...

“Guide makes using AI seem easy” - Amazon Review “A Plotser’s Perfect Brainstorming Partner” - Amazon Review “Made me a romance writing AI ninja!” - Amazon Review Romance writers, take your romance writing to the next level with Artificial Intelligence and this guide from a USA Today Bestselling romance author of over 80+ romance novels. Hi, I’m author Rachelle Ayala, a prolific author and writing coach with my Romance In A Month method, and I’m here to lead you through the wonderful world of AI (Artificial Intelligence). I’ll show you the importance of prompting and how...

Stop carrying your life inside you untold. Put it on the page and find out what it means. You want to understand yourself more deeply. You want to heal what still weighs on you. You want to finally write the stories of your life. The Four Methods of Journal Writing: Finding Yourself Through Memoir is how. Not a book about recording daily thoughts. A guide to uncovering buried memories, hearing the deeper themes of your life, and listening to the wisdom that already lives in you. Melissa Burch has kept journals for over fifty years, practiced homeopathy for fifteen, and written her own ...

Nat Cassidy’s highly commercial, debut horror novel Mary, blends Midsommar with elements of American Psycho and a pinch of I'll Be Gone in the Dark. Mary is a quiet, middle-aged woman doing her best to blend into the background. Unremarkable. Invisible. Unknown even to herself. But lately...

NOW STREAMING ON NETFLIX “McAllister is the best at putting her characters in impossible situations and making her readers not only contemplate but feel what it would be like to find themselves in those situations.” — Emily Henry From the author of Reese’s Book Club Pick and New York...

This lucid, compassionate audiobook has introduced tens of thousands of listeners to expressive writing, a simple yet powerful self-help technique grounded in scientific research. Leading experts James W. Pennebaker and Joshua M. Smyth describe how taking just a few minutes to write about deeply felt personal experiences or problems may help improve our mental and physical health.

Unlock the Power Within: Transform Your Life and Reclaim Your Voice with Coercive Relationships: Find the Answers You Seek. You didn't lose yourself all at once. It happened slowly, quietly, until the person you used to be felt like a stranger. This compassionate, clinically grounded guide gives survivors of coercive control the tools to understand what happened, reclaim their identity, and begin real healing. Jennifer C. Parker, a seasoned social worker and therapist, walks you through the patterns of emotional abuse, the trauma symptoms behind your confusion, and the proven path forward. ...

"Narrators [Megan] Crais and [Connor] Wicks bring the Byrds to emotional heights, perfectly capturing the adult voices of thirtysomethings Wren and Ellis." — Library Journal An emotional, irresistible second-chance romance filled with sparkling humor, big feelings, and "melt your face off...

As seen on Good Morning America's SEPTEMBER 2020 READING LIST and FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2020! "We need to read stories about folks who have been through hell and kept going... Fascinating." —Glennon Doyle, A Favorite Book of 2020 on Good Morning America "Gildiner is nothing short of masterful—as...

Is your teen constantly procrastinating, forgetting assignments, losing track of time, getting distracted, or struggling to finish what they start? You know they can do it. They know they can do it. But somewhere between knowing what needs to happen and actually making it happen… things fall apart. That gap is where executive functioning skills come in. The Executive Functioning Skills Playbook for Teens turns these essential life skills into an engaging, gamified system of Levels, Missions, Side Quests, Brain Hacks, XPs, Power-Up Toolkits, and real-world challenges so your teen can learn...

Read by the author. 'Filled with practical, tactical advice, this book is indispensable' – Kim Scott, bestselling author of Radical Candor Stanford lecturer and host of the #1 business podcast Think Fast, Talk Smart, Matt Abrahams, reveals the secrets to finding the right words when it counts...