Help books for aspiring writers
Discover the best help books for aspiring writers, featuring essential guides like Orson Scott Card’s *How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy* and classic storytelling wisdom from *The Hero with a Thousand Faces*. Perfect for honing your craft and mastering plot, character, and creativity.
Book
How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy
by Orson Scott Card
Learn to write science fiction and fantasy from a master You've always dreamed of writing science fiction and fantasy tales that pull readers into extraordinary new worlds and fantastic conflicts. Best-selling author Orson Scott Card shows you how it's done, distilling years of writing experience and publishing success into concise, no-nonsense advice. You'll learn how to: • utilize story elements that define the science fiction and fantasy genres • build, populate, and dramatize a credible, inviting world your readers will want to explore • develop the "rules" of time, space and magic that affect your world and its inhabitants • construct a compelling story by developing ideas, characters, and events that keep readers turning pages • find the markets for speculative fiction, reach them, and get published • submit queries, write cover letters, find an agent, and live the life of a writer The boundaries of your imagination are infinite. Explore them with Orson Scott Card and create fiction that casts a spell over agents, publishers, and readers from every world.
Book
Elements of Fiction Writing - Characters & Viewpoint
by Orson Scott Card
Vivid and memorable characters aren't born: they have to be made. &break;&break;This book is a set of tools: literary crowbars, chisels, mallets, pliers and tongs. Use them to pry, chip, yank and sift good characters out of the place where they live in your memory, your imagination and your soul. &break;&break;Award-winning author Orson Scott Card explains in depth the techniques of inventing, developing and presenting characters, plus handling viewpoint in novels and short stories. With specific examples, he spells out your narrative options–the choices you'll make in creating fictional people so "real" that readers will feel they know them like members of their own families. &break;&break;You'll learn how to: &break; draw the characters from a variety of sources, including a story's basic idea, real life–even a character's social circumstances&break; make characters show who they are by the things they do and say, and by their individual "style"&break; develop characters readers will love–or love to hate&break; distinguish among major characters, minor characters and walk-ons, and develop each one appropriately&break; choose the most effective viewpoint to reveal the characters and move the storytelling&break; decide how deeply you should explore your characters' thoughts, emotions and attitudes
Book
Elements of Fiction Writing - Plot
by Ansen Dibell
"There are ways to create, fix, steer and discover plots—ways which, over a writing life, you'd eventually puzzle out for yourself," writes Ansen Dibell. "They aren't laws. They're an array of choices, things to try, once you've put a name to the particular problem you're facing now." That's what this book is about: identifying those choices (whose viewpoint? stop and explain now, or wait? how can this lead to that?), then learning what narrative problems they are apt to create and how to choose an effective strategy for solving them. The result? Strong, solid stories and novels that move. Inside you'll discover how to: test a story idea (using four simple questions) to see if it works convince your reader that not only is something happening, but that something's going to happen and it all matters intensely handle viewpoint shifts, flashbacks, and other radical jumps in your storyline weave plots with subplots get ready for and write your Big Scenes balance scene and summary narration to produce good pacing handle the extremes of melodrama by "faking out" your readers—making them watch your right hand while your left hand is doing something sneaky form subtle patterns with mirror characters and echoing incidents choose the best type of ending—linear or circular, happy or downbeat, or (with caution!) a trick ending Whether your fiction is short or long, subtle or direct, you'll learn to build strong plots that drive compelling, unforgettable stories your readers will love.
Book
The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes
by Jack Bickham
The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes When you write fiction, you march onto a minefield. This book gives you a map. Oh, what tricky terrain you're traveling! You must reckon with: Character, Conflict, Point of View, Dialogue, Editors, Editors, and Editors, who--by returning stories they see as problem-plagued--can burst your hopes of publication. Where are the problems? Editors rarely take the time to map them out, so Jack Bickham has. In this book, he spotlights the 38 most common fiction writing land mines--writing mistakes that can turn even dynamite story ideas into slush pile rejects. And he guides you in overcoming them. In to-the-point style, he shows you how to: conquer procrastination--and put ink on paper regularly dump wimpy characters--and build characters ready to act look for trouble--and create conflicts for your characters cut coincidence--and put better-than-life logic into fiction escape the fog--and find and stick to your story's direction free feelings--and fire your fiction with passion and emotion In short, Bickham helps you take a giant step toward publication. Read this book. Strengthen your writing. And start setting off explosions where they belong: on the sales charts.
Book
Homer - The Lliad - The Odyssey
by Homer
A boxed set of the classic books 'The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey' by Homer. Translated by Robert Fagles, with an introduction and notes by Bernard Knox.
Book
The Star Wars Trilogy
by George Lucas
Luke Skywalker dreamed of advantues out among the stars and alien worlds. But when he intercepted a message from a beautiful captive princess, he got more than he had bargained for--and that was how the adventure of his life began....
Book
War and Peace
by graf Leo Tolstoy
Presents the classical epic of the Napoleonic Wars and their effects on four Russian families
