The Story of Writing


Book Description

The story of the invention of writing and how it developed over the centuries as people's lives and communication needs changed.




Story Genius


Book Description

Following on the heels of Lisa Cron's breakout first book, Wired for Story, this writing guide reveals how to use cognitive storytelling strategies to build a scene-by-scene blueprint for a riveting story. It’s every novelist’s greatest fear: pouring their blood, sweat, and tears into writing hundreds of pages only to realize that their story has no sense of urgency, no internal logic, and so is a page one rewrite. The prevailing wisdom in the writing community is that there are just two ways around this problem: pantsing (winging it) and plotting (focusing on the external plot). Story coach Lisa Cron has spent her career discovering why these methods don’t work and coming up with a powerful alternative, based on the science behind what our brains are wired to crave in every story we read (and it’s not what you think). In Story Genius Cron takes you, step-by-step, through the creation of a novel from the first glimmer of an idea, to a complete multilayered blueprint—including fully realized scenes—that evolves into a first draft with the authority, richness, and command of a riveting sixth or seventh draft.




Out of Love


Book Description

One of E! News' 13 Books to Read This September | One of Bookish's Debuts to Read in the Second Half of 2021 | One of Medium's Best Releases Out Today “Hazel Hayes writes with such honesty and casual confidence and flowing dialogue, you feel you are overhearing it rather than reading it. The writing sparkles with wit and a poignant emotional reality. I love it.”—Matt Haig, bestselling author of The Midnight Library “A smart, touching, time-bending romance. Funny and affecting.”—David Nicholls, bestselling author of One Day and Sweet Sorrow For anyone who has loved and lost, and lived to tell the tale, this gorgeously written debut is a love story told in reverse, a modern novel with the heart of a classic: truthful, tragic, and ultimately full of hope. Out of Love begins at the end. A couple call it quits after nearly five years, and while holding a box of her ex-boyfriend’s belongings, the young woman wonders: How could they have spent so long together? When did they fall out of love? Were there good times before the bad? These are the questions we obsess over when a relationship ends, even when obsessing can do no good. But instead of moving forward through the emotional fallout of a break-up, Out of Love moves backward in time, weaving together an already unraveled tapestry, from tragic ending to magical first kiss. Each chapter jumps further into the past, mining their history for the days and details that might help us understand love; how it happens and why it sometimes falls apart. Readers of Normal People; Goodbye, Vitamin; and One Day will adore this bittersweet romance, a sparkling debut that you won’t want to miss.




Writing for Story


Book Description

It's the new nonfiction: the creative hybrid combining the readability and excitement of fiction with the best of expository prose; the innovative genre that has been awarded virtually every Pulitzer Prize for literary journalism since 1979. In this book, an undisputed master of the great American nonfiction short story shares his secrets.




The Golden Thread


Book Description

From the simple representative shapes used to record transactions of goods and services in ancient Mesopotamia, to the sophisticated typographical resources available to the twenty–first–century users of desktop computers, the story of writing is the story of human civilization itself. Calligraphy expert Ewan Clayton traces the history of an invention which—ever since our ancestors made the transition from a nomadic to an agrarian way of life in the eighth century BC—has been the method of codification and dissemination of ideas in every field of human endeavour, and a motor of cultural, scientific and political progress. He explores the social and cultural impact of, among other stages, the invention of the alphabet; the replacement of the papyrus scroll with the codex in the late Roman period; the perfecting of printing using moveable type in the fifteenth century and the ensuing spread of literacy; the industrialization of printing during the Industrial Revolution; the impact of artistic Modernism on the written word in the early twentieth century—and of the digital switchover at the century's close. The Golden Thread also raises issues of urgent interest for a society living in an era of unprecedented change to the tools and technologies of written communication. Chief among these is the fundamental question: "What does it mean to be literate in the early twenty–first century?" The book belongs on the bookshelves of anyone who is inquisitive not just about the centrality of writing in the history of humanity, but also about its future; it is sure to appeal to lovers of language, books and cultural history.




Writing Radar


Book Description

Acclaimed author Jack Gantos's guide to becoming the best brilliant writer.




Show Me a Story


Book Description

Explains how to write a children's picture book, using the fictional story Webster's wish as an example. In the story, Webster, a goose who knows the alphabet, is tired of flying in V formation and tries to get the other geese to fly in the shape of another letter.




The Writing Revolution


Book Description

In a world of rapid technological advancements, it can be easy to forget that writing is the original Information Technology, created to transcend the limitations of human memory and to defy time and space. The Writing Revolution picks apart the development of this communication tool to show how it has conquered the world. Explores how writing has liberated the world, making possible everything from complex bureaucracy, literature, and science, to instruction manuals and love letters Draws on an engaging range of examples, from the first cuneiform clay tablet, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Japanese syllabaries, to the printing press and the text messaging Weaves together ideas from a number of fields, including history, cultural studies and archaeology, as well as linguistics and literature, to create an interdisciplinary volume Traces the origins of each of the world’s major written traditions, along with their applications, adaptations, and cultural influences




Several Short Sentences About Writing


Book Description

An indispensable and distinctive book that will help anyone who wants to write, write better, or have a clearer understanding of what it means for them to be writing, from widely admired writer and teacher Verlyn Klinkenborg. Klinkenborg believes that most of our received wisdom about how writing works is not only wrong but an obstacle to our ability to write. In Several Short Sentences About Writing, he sets out to help us unlearn that “wisdom”—about genius, about creativity, about writer’s block, topic sentences, and outline—and understand that writing is just as much about thinking, noticing, and learning what it means to be involved in the act of writing. There is no gospel, no orthodoxy, no dogma in this book. Instead it is a gathering of starting points in a journey toward lively, lucid, satisfying self-expression.




The Story of Writing


Book Description