Creative writing and creative writing guides Books

An examination of how The Kansas City Star’s style guide shaped Hemingway’s unmistakable writing style.Acclaimed for his lean, succinct prose, Write Like Hemingway connects the dots between Ernest Hemingway’s earliest writing job and his most memorable...

Winner of the H.R.F. Keating Award for best biographical/critical book related to crime fiction, and nominated for the Edgar Allen Poe and Macavity Awards for Best Critical/Biographical book. Ninety crime writers from the world’s oldest and most famous...

A charming, clever, and original collection of more than 100 spine poems–a popular form of found poetry composed by arranging book spines—illustrated with 110 full-color photographs.Easy to create and share online, spine poems—also known as collage...

The home of trusted English dictionaries and thesauruses for school use.A fantastic mini school thesaurus for age 11 and above in the best-selling Gem format to help you find the right word every time. Written specially to help with school work and...

The must-have Back to School thesaurus for Year 7. This English School Thesaurus is the essential word finder for all students of English. Developed with teachers to support the requirements of the school National Curriculum, this English student...

8 books condensed into one, this compendium writing guide is for everyone looking to improve their writing skills, grammar, spelling and punctuation in one easy step. Whether you want to write a novel, draft a report, create a compelling CV, write a...

Navigating obsessions, commemorating loved ones, cooking a meal, drinking with friends, picking at our bodies, reckoning with our choices, finding ways to connect, finding ways to exist in a world that doesn't always accommodate us. Rituals give shape to...

The strangely familiar. The alien within the home. Therepressed impulse. Bloodsucking counts in castles. Dismembered limbs. Waxmodels of famous figures. Trying to find a lost car in a parking lot. Beinggiven seat E21 at the cinema when you live at 21...

Academic Writing Is ... demystifies many of the practices of academic writing for students in an Australian university. This is an indispensable guide for any students undertaking university studies in Australia who want to develop their academic writing...

Providing comfort food and inspiration for the aspiring novelist, How To Write a Novel in 20 Pies offers novelist and writing coach Amy Wallen’s insider secrets on living the writing life. Filled with chapters about writing, revising, submitting to an...

From 70 of the most successful mystery writers in the business, an invaluable guide to crafting mysteries—from character development and plot to procedurals and thrillers—“this is a writing guide that readers and writers will turn to again and again”...

Become a poet and write poetry with ease with help from this clear and simple guide in the popular 101 series. Poetry never goes out of style. An ancient writing form found in civilizations across the world, poetry continues to inform the way we write...

Learn the basic techniques every successful playwright knows! Amid the hundreds of "how-to" books out there, there have been very few which attempted to analyze the mysteries of play construction. Lajos Egri's classic, The Art of Dramatic Writing, does...

A selection of the greatest sentences by the master, Ernest Hemingway. Sentences that can take a reader's breath away and are not easily forgotten. Each sentence has been selected and examined by authors such as Elizabeth Strout, Sherman Alexie, Paula...

Packed with more than 16,000 imaginative, colourful phrases -- from abandoned as a used Kleenex to quiet as an eel swimming in oil -- this reference will help any politician, writer, or lover of language find the perfect simile, be it original or banal,...

When you write a book, your work doesn't end on publication day. In fact, a key part of your job as an author is to get your book into the hands of readers...and that means you need to promote it. But how to do that?In this interactive...

A fascinating book exploring the early modern authors who helped to shape Shakespeare's beloved plays.Shakespeare's plays have influenced generations of writers, but who were the early modern playwrights who influenced him? Using the latest techniques in...

"Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow is one of the best books on writing I've ever read. It's also the funniest by a country mile." -Richard Russo, author of the North Bath trilogyThe long-awaited craft book from Steve Almond, based on three decades of...

Want to make a living as a freelance writer? Here are the resources, answers, and real talk you need about what it takes to make a living as a writer for hire.Drawing on her own varied and successful years of freelance copywriting experience, Jessie Kwak...

"I was a writer before I knew what a writer was." -Joseph DoughertyJoseph Dougherty has been a successful playwright and television writer, producer, and director for more than thirty years. He's written for breakthrough series that have changed the way...

Winner of the 30th Annual Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry"From these rituals come notes; from those notes come poems; and from those poems comes not just a view into his process, but an entrance into another present." -Boston GlobeAfter his...

Widely studied, frequently staged-verbatim theatre is everywhere. In this new book, Mark Wheeller, the author of verbatim hitsToo Much Punch for Judy,Hard to Swallow,Missing Dan NolanandGame Over, and the most performed living playwrights in the UK,...

Writing and Selling Romantic Comedy Screenplays offers a fresh approach to creating narratives for this ever-changing genre. Moving away from rigid and limited definitions that have evolved out of mainstream genre films, the book embraces a...

The Craft of Professional Writing is the most complete book ever written about the real-life work of being a writer. It covers topics ranging from business writing (advertising, PR) to commercial work (news reporting, feature writing, blogging,...

A practical and compact guide to writing for professionalsWriting is an essential skill in today's workplace. From messaging platforms and social media to traditional forms of communication like memos and reports, we rely on words more than ever. Given...

**Winner, Screen Research Network Outstanding Monograph Award, 2022**Telling a story is simple, right? You take a 'hero' and send them on a 'journey'. There's a beginning, middle and an end.But what if your story doesn't fit into that basic...

This is a practical-and encouraging-how-to book from a long-time teacher of personal and family history writing. Katie Funk Wiebe helps beginning memoir writers get started collecting the stories of their lives. She gives hints for recalling distant...

Create your liberated literary utopia When your dream and creative passion is to write, how do you succeed without selling out or selling yourself short? Ariel Gore has spent her life solving this puzzle, writing and organising her way towards a creative...

Structure a writing process by learning about brainstorming and drafting Want to write a book? Half the battle is finding a practice that works for you. Successful author and creativity expert Jessie Kwak is here to help you do just that-and have fun...

Nora Ephron was one of the most popular, accomplished, and beloved writers in American journalism and film.Nora Ephron: A Biographyis the first comprehensive portrait of the Manhattan-born girlwho forged a path of her own, earning accolades and adoration...

A Sense of Dread features three main sections. 1) A detailed examination of the biological, psychological, and cultural bases of fear. What fears do we share with animals? What fears are uniquely human? What fears have we learned from our culture? From...

Through a "Crazy" approach in writing the feature screenplay, the first half of the book guides the reader in how to create and develop: Story Idea, Characters, One Page Step Outline, and the solid script. In the second half, the book covers professional...

This groundbreaking guide describes six seemingly different popular movies and genres (Skyfall, The Avengers, The Hangover, A Beautiful Mind, The Conjuring, Gone Girl) and shows screenwriters how they all follow the exact same 120 Universal Story Beats...

Master of the Cinematic Universe is a guide to the future of trans-media storytelling. Content creators of every flavor are constantly needing to expand the mediums they can work in. This volume serves as a resource for using the timeless truths of story...

In (Don't) Stop Me If You've Heard This Before, Peter Turchi combines personal narrative and close reading of a wide range of stories and novels to reveal how writers create the fiction that matters to us. Building on his much-loved Maps of the...

Learn to turn a simple screenplay into a visual masterpiece! Top production designers share their real-life experiences to explain the aesthetic, narrative, and technical aspects of the craft. Step by step, aspiring filmmakers will discover sound...

A TIME Magazine Most Anticipated Book of Fall 2021A Los Angeles Times Most Anticipated Book of Fall 2021A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2021 A collection of literary letters and mementos on the art of remembering across generations.For poet...

"Old Poets is an indispensable jewel." -Washington Post"An astonishing array of encounters...Hall's observations are shrewd and generous." -Boston GlobeIntimate portraits of great poets in old age, giving new insight into their work and their lives, and...

Praise for John Dermot Woods: Electric Literature 25 Best Novels of 2014 "Poignant and unsettling, and much like a good short story collection these tales resonate long after the book is closed."-Largehearted Boy "An accomplished artist and writer, in...

Winner, Pulitzer Prize for Drama, 2018Other awards for Cost of Living: Edgerton New Play Prize (2016), Jean Kennedy Smith Prize-The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (2016), Women's Invitational-Ashland New Plays Festival2016 NY Times...

"One of the most spectacularly original plays in recent memory."-Entertainment Weekly"Fascinating and hilarious . . . With each of its three acts, Mr. Burns grows grander."-Village Voice"When was the last time you met a new play that was so smart it made...

A reconsideration of Virginia Woolf's groundbreaking A Room of One's Own through a very modern lens, revisiting Woolf's now archaic politics and mining the text for lessons on how to be a writer. The central message of A Room of One's Own is that, to...

A story is a living thing. And you don't work on a living thing, you work with it. This is the way of the screenwriter, and it is something that writer and director Amnon Buchbinder believes all masterful screenwriters understand intuitively: learning...

The hilarious and poignant third play by award-winning actor, playwright, and writer Jesse Eisenberg, The Spoils continues Eisenberg's exploration of the privilege of the young straight white male. Nobody likes Ben. Ben doesn't...

The Revisionist, the second play by the award-winning actor and regular New Yorker contributor Jesse Eisenberg, is a stunning exploration of obsession, secrets, and the nature of family. The play had its world premiere at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New...

An essential guide to cultivating joy in your professional and personal writingWriting should be a pleasurable challenge, not a painful chore. Writing with Pleasure empowers academic, professional, and creative writers to reframe their negative emotions...