Merriam-Webster, Inc.

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Colorado

Reading & Language Arts

"New! An A-Z guide to finding rhymes. Includes 55,000 words. The easy-to-use alphabetical listing of rhyming sounds will help create fresh expressions for the poet or language lover. Includes one-, two-, and three-syllable rhymes."

Merriam-Webster's Pocket Rhyming Dictionary

45e7dbd1-5f73-4870-8dab-e642770ab860-0

Nina Amir

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

An Interactive Guide for Bringing Your Book Ideas and Your Writing Career to Life

Explore Your Motivations. Replenish Your Creativity. Define Your Vision for Success. To become a more creative, confident, and productive writer, you need to focus your attention, visualize your desires, set clearly defined goals, and take action toward your dreams. Let Creative Visualization for Writers be your guide on this journey of self-discovery. You'll learn how to: • Evaluate your beliefs and shed self-defeating behaviors. • Determine your destination by visualizing your ideas and goals. • Develop an Author Attitude that will help you write, achieve, earn, and produce more. • Discover new ways to foster your creativity and productivity. • Affirm that you have what it takes to succeed. Featuring more than 100 exercises and prompts to spark new writing ideas and give you a creative boost, as well as coloring pages to encourage relaxation, Creative Visualization for Writers helps you transform your dreams into reality and find joy in the creative process.

Creative Visualization for Writers

cf4e280c-5dbf-40fe-ac27-fd2253f41015-0

Bonnie Neubauer

Jordan Rosenfeld

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

400 Exercises to Liberate Your Writing

Banish the Blank Page!You're seated at your desk, fingers poised above the keyboard, ready to write...but the words aren't coming. You're tapped out--or worse, burnt out. The blank page strikes again.Never fear. If you're battling writer's block, or if you're just looking for ways to flex your creative writing muscles, The Write-Brain Workbook Revised & Expanded will ensure that you never have to face another wordless day. Brimming with 400 stimulating writing prompts--including more than 60 exercises new to this edition--you'll create quirky characters, discover fresh twists on classic word games, sample new forms, and generate scores of ideas for poems, short stories, articles, and even novels. Write, scrawl, scribble, and dream on each page--the possibilities for creativity are endless! The Write-Brain Workbook will help you: Write without the pressure of preconceived expectations .Tailor your unique writing process. Build the momentum of a quick, daily writing practice. Apply the breakthroughs from your daily practice to your real writing. Expand how you see yourself as a writer. Experiment with different ways to approach writing. Affirm your commitment to being a writer. With Take the Next Step prompts for each exercise, repeating exercises you can return to again and again, and creativity-jolting illustrations, The Write-Brain Workbook is bigger and better than ever. Whether you love the pure joy of writing or are just getting started, these vibrant pages give you the means to hone your writing skills, conquer writer's block--and have fun in the process!

The Write-Brain Workbook Revised and Expanded

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Tracey Dils

Turn your dream of writing a successful children's book into a reality

From the author of the best-selling You Can Write Children's Books, this workbook provides you with hands-on instruction for finishing your manuscript, preparing it for publication, and getting it published.

Step-by-step instruction, 48 main exercises, and countless enlightening tasks will guide you through:

 * Identifying a project
 * Writing and revising a manuscript
 * Researching genre and marketplace
 * Targeting publishers
 * Preparing a professional submission

Take your writing aspirations to the next level. You Can Write Children's Books Workbook will give you the concrete instruction, experience, and inspiration you need to confidently submit your work and get it published.

You Can Write Childrens Books

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Louie Stowell

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

"This write-in activity book combines story prompts, writing tips and inspiring quotes from well-known authors, with tips on developing a plot, inventing characters, writing dialogue and setting the scene. There are blank pages to write your own stories and jot down ideas, plus an elastic closure to keep it all together."

Story Writers' Ideas Journal (was Notebook) IR

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Tom Dullemond

Jeanine Berry, FictionFactor.com, author of Dayspring Dawning and Daysprint Destiny The Complete Guide lives up to its name and goes beyond the ordinary. Written by new and established voices of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Alchemy With Words offers something for writers at all levels. Its sage advice will help you avoid many amateur mistakes. Explore World Building, Religions, Food, Fighting & Weaponry and much more, to craft an exceptional story.

The Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy, Volume One

938a8cf1-b7df-4f1d-9694-e2bfa81ec26a-1

Jerome Stern

A deft analysis and appreciation of fiction--what makes it work and what can make it fail.

Here is a book about the craft of writing fiction that is thoroughly useful from the first to the last page--whether the reader is a beginner, a seasoned writer, or a teacher of writing. You will see how a work takes form and shape once you grasp the principles of momentum, tension, and immediacy. "Tension," Stern says, "is the mother of fiction. When tension and immediacy combine, the story begins." Dialogue and action, beginnings and endings, the true meaning of "write what you know," and a memorable listing of don'ts for fiction writers are all covered. A special section features an Alphabet for Writers: entries range from Accuracy to Zigzag, with enlightening comments about such matters as Cliffhangers, Point of View, Irony, and Transitions.

Making Shapely Fiction

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Scott Edelstein

A Unique Stress-Free Approach for Anyone Who Has Ever Wanted to Write

For anyone who has ever wanted to begin writing, or for practiced writers whowant to improve their technique, this book offers a step-by-step, stress-freeprogram to loosen and develop the creative urge.

The No-Experience-Necessary Writer's Course

6f79c7d0-f26e-434c-8a53-e9a601a8259b-1

Larry Brooks

What makes a good story or a screenplay great?

The vast majority of writers begin the storytelling process with only a partial understanding where to begin. Some labor their entire lives without ever learning that successful stories are as dependent upon good engineering as they are artistry. But the truth is, unless you are master of the form, function and criteria of successful storytelling, sitting down and pounding out a first draft without planning is an ineffective way to begin.

Story Engineering starts with the criteria and the architecture of storytelling, the engineering and design of a story--and uses it as the basis for narrative. The greatest potential of any story is found in the way six specific aspects of storytelling combine and empower each other on the page. When rendered artfully, they become a sum in excess of their parts.

You'll learn to wrap your head around the big pictures of storytelling at a professional level through a new approach that shows how to combine these six core competencies which include:

   * Four elemental competencies of concept, character, theme, and story structure (plot)
   * Two executional competencies of scene construction and writing voice


The true magic of storytelling happens when these six core competencies work together in perfect harmony. And the best part? Anyone can do it!

Story Engineering

92c75ee8-a48f-46ba-bfbc-fee6c84adcef-1

Gabriela Pereira

Jacquelyn Mitchard

Write with Focus, Read with Purpose, Build Your Community

Get the Knowledge Without the College! You are a writer. You dream of sharing your words with the world, and you're willing to put in the hard work to achieve success. You may have even considered earning your MFA, but for whatever reason--tuition costs, the time commitment, or other responsibilities--you've never been able to do it. Or maybe you've been looking for a self-guided approach so you don't have to go back to school. This book is for you. DIY MFA is the do-it-yourself alternative to a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. By combining the three main components of a traditional MFA--writing, reading, and community--it teaches you how to craft compelling stories, engage your readers, and publish your work. Inside you'll learn how to: • Set customized goals for writing and learning. • Generate ideas on demand. • Outline your book from beginning to end. • Breathe life into your characters. • Master point of view, voice, dialogue, and more. • Read with a "writer's eye" to emulate the techniques of others. • Network like a pro, get the most out of writing workshops, and submit your work successfully. Writing belongs to everyone--not only those who earn a degree. With DIY MFA, you can take charge of your writing, produce high-quality work, get published, and build a writing career.

Diy Mfa

8de60dae-68b8-49e6-82e6-2f5cecef4f20-1

Donald Maass

How to Craft Novels That Stand Out and Sell

The must-have reference for novel writers! If you're serious about transforming your writing into vibrant, engaging, and marketable fiction, you've found the right book. The Breakout Novelist gives you the craft and business know-how you need to make your stories stand out. Veteran literary agent Donald Maass brings together the best innovative and practical information from his previous books and workshops to help you set your novel apart from the competition. Maass shares examples from successful and contemporary writers across all genres to equip you with strategies for crafting compelling fiction--from core elements like character, setting, description, and plot, to more advanced techniques including theme, tension, and suspense. Plus, you'll find over 70 practical exercises to help you evaluate your writing to the breakout level. You'll also learn from Maass's experiences from more than three decades in the publishing industry. Get straight talk from an insider about agents, contracts, industry changes, and how to be the kind of author who builds a successful career book after book. If your goal is to craft powerful stories that capture your audience's attention from the first page to the last, then The Breakout Novelist is an indispensable reference.

The Breakout Novelist

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Karen Benke

Adventures in Creative Writing to Stretch and Surprise Your One-Of-a-Kind Mind

Invite your jittery mind into quiet slips of timed or untimed writing experiments that are designed to encourage your timid heart to forge forgotten feelings and entice your shy-self to make friends with emerging emotions. With a bounty of prompts to select from, you’ll be inspired to explore all the wacky, confusing, brave, soul-stirring wonderings and wanderings of your emerging life’s inner treasure in a way that’s sure to unleash what you most need to say. In this book you’ll find: • On-the-Spot Drops that offer quick “free-fall” prompts on different themes, such as short-winded poems and seven-line stories. • Mini Memoirs to unlock personal narrative to share, or not. • Suddenly a Story suggestions to explore feelings and states of being like fear, reluctance, compassion, kindness, anxiety, anger, jealousy, happiness, and more. • Surprise Yourself Surveys for those who think they know everything about themselves. • Untie-Your-Mind Word Lists to jump-start stalled imaginations. • Definition Decoders to introduce new ideas and styles of writing. Created especially for tweens, teens, and other earthlings, this book provides you with a chance to create imaginative poems, stories, fragments, and real-life on-the-spot sketches. All that’s required is that you take a breath, relax, reset, and leap write in!

Leap Write In!

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Robin Houghton

Designed for bloggers of all experience levels, The Golden Rules of Blogging takes a hard look at the blogosphere's golden rules and shows you when, why and how to break them. Illustrated with real-live blogger stories and examples, along with expert advice from those who've learned the hard way, this book offers a fresh perspective on blogging.

The Golden Rules of Blogging

e63a0fd4-86da-4fb9-9a9a-fb1ea5db725b-1

Gail Carson Levine

Creating Stories That Fly

Bestselling author of Ella Enchanted and fairy-tale master Gail Carson Levine helps you make magic with your writing! In Writing Magic, Newbery Honor author Gail Carson Levine shares her tricks of the trade. She shows how you can get terrific ideas for stories, invent great beginnings and endings, write sparkling dialogue, develop memorable characters—and much, much more. She advises you about what to do when you feel stuck—and how to use helpful criticism. Best of all, she offers writing exercises that will set your imagination on fire. With humor, honesty, and wisdom, Gail Carson Levine shows you that you, too, can make magic with your writing.

Writing Magic

e0b72769-1549-47fa-98db-7fba0f20fa02-1

Elaine Marie Alphin

From fiction to nonfiction, short stories to full-length books, the key to creating engaging stories for kids is developing vivid characters. Veteran children's author Elaine Alphin gives readers concrete tips for bringing your characters to life, including: How to observe real kids and bring their life onto the page; How to remember your own childhood and make it a part of your story; How to use the elements of characterization as the basis for conflict and action. With examples from successful children's books and exercises throughout, this book is a must-have for both the beginning writer and those more experienced in the children's book field.

Creating Characters Kids Will Love

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John Dufresne

An Illustrated Guide to Writing Ficiton

A smart and funny guide to writing fiction, with engaging infographics that bring storytelling techniques to life. Whether you are daunted by a blinking cursor or frustrated trying to get the people in your head onto the page, writing stories can be intimidating. It takes passion, tenacity, patience, and a knowledge of?and faith in?the often-digressive writing process. A do-it-yourself manual for the apprentice fiction writer, Storyville! demystifies that process; its bold graphics take you inside the writer’s comfortingly chaotic mind and show you how stories are made. In Storyville!, seasoned guide John Dufresne?whose approach “will anchor the newbie and entertain the veteran” (San Francisco Chronicle)?provides practical insight into the building blocks of fiction, including how to make the reader see your characters, create a suspenseful plot, and revise, revise, revise. Storyville! is a combination handbook and notebook, with original prompts and exercises crafted with Dufresne’s singular dry wit and Evan Wondolowski’s playful and illuminating graphics on every page.

Storyville!

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Creative Writing Journal 

Lucy Courtenay

Do you have an irresistible idea for a children's book with pictures? Are you inspired by writers like Julia Donaldson and Lauren Child? Get Started in Writing and Illustrating A Children's Book is designed for anyone who wants to write in this genre of fiction, whatever the category or age range. Designed to build confidence and help fire up creativity, it is also an essential guide to mastering the practicalities of working with illustrators and illustrated concepts, from creating ideas for toddler board books to writing high concept middle grade projects. It carries the distinctive learning features of the flagship Teach Yourself Creative Writing series, with Snapshots designed to get you writing quickly, Key Idea to help crystallize thought, and a wealth of supplementary material, including insights into the publishing world and the role of the agent.

Get Started in Writing and Illustrating a Children's Book

eec7f491-45b8-4570-980b-2c5da92bf252-0

Marc McCutcheon

Using this reference, readers can create characters who think, hope, love, cry, cause or feel pain, save the day - and seize readers by emotion. Mark McCutcheon eases the process of building convincing characters for stories and novels. He starts by conducting an inspiring and informative roundtable where six novelists reveal their approaches to characterization. Next, he provides a character questionnaire more detailed than the nosiest survey. Readers will fill it out and they'll know fictional people as though they'd grown up with them. Finally, there is a thesaurus of human characteristics - physical and psychological. Fit them together artfully and characters will climb right off the page.

The Writer's Digest Sourcebook for Building Believable Characters

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Nancy Lamb

English

Create Unforgettable Stories for Kids!

You dream of writing stories that children respond to-the kind they come back to again and again. Nancy Lamb can help you achieve that dream. She mixes insightful advice for mastering storytelling with dozens of examples that illustrate a variety of plot-building techniques.

Nancy's instruction covers everything from format and content to setting and characterization. She also draws from a range of children's classics, including Where the Wild Things Are, Charlotte's Web and Bridge to Tarabithia to explore and illuminate the unique nature of children's literature.

Nancy also shares writing tips and tricks accumulated through years of successful storytelling-invaluable advice for crafting fiction that resonates with children of all ages, from 4 to 14 and beyond.

The Writer's Guide to Crafting Stories for Children

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Fred White

An Interactive Guide for Developing Ideas for Novels and Short Stories

Endless ideas at your fingertips, and at the turn of a page...

Need an idea for a short story or novel? Look no further than The Writer's Idea Thesaurus. It's far more than a collection of simple writing prompts. You'll find a vast treasury of story ideas inside, organized by subject, theme, and situation categories, and listed alphabetically for easy reference.

Author and award-winning writing instructor Fred White shows you how to build out and customize these ideas to create unique plots that reflect your personal storytelling sensibilities, making The Writer's Idea Thesaurus an invaluable tool for generating creative ideas and vanquishing writer's block--for good.

Inside you'll find:

   * 2,000 unique and dynamic story ideas perfect for novels and short stories of any genre or writing style
   * Twenty major idea categories, such as The Invasion of X, The Transformation of X into Y, Escape from X, The Curse of X, and more
   * Multiple situations that further refine the major categories, such as The Creation of Artificial Life, The Descent Into Madness, Love in the Workplace, The Journey to a Forgotten Realm, and more
   * Invaluable advice on how to customize each idea.
The Writer's Idea Thesaurus is an interactive story generator that opens the door to thousands of new story arcs and plotlines.

The Writer's Idea Thesaurus

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Stephen Wilbers

How to Write with Clarity, Emphasis, and Style

Make Every Word Memorable! To be remembered for your words, you need to write with skill and style. Whether you're crafting a novel, composing an e-mail, or creating a technical report, Mastering the Craft of Writing presents 52 practical techniques to improve your prose. Spend a week with each technique, or use this book as a go-to reference. Either way, you'll have the tools to enliven your writing and delight your readers. • Write with economy: Eliminate wordiness, use strong verbs to drive your sentences, and don't trust modifiers. • Write with emphasis: Use punctuation for effect, structure sentences and paragraphs for coherency and flow, and employ repetition to make your point. • Write with distinction: Use your imagination to create the unexpected, add a light-hearted touch to your writing, and go beyond clarity to eloquence and grace. With exercises, entertaining asides, and a wealth of useful information, Mastering the Craft of Writing is an invaluable resource for any writer. Once you master these techniques, you'll want to use them in everything you write.

Mastering the Craft of Writing

9bb5dddd-36fc-4ca1-b51b-5eb4b5a04f0a-0

Jeff Gerke

How to Craft an Extraordinary Story That Engages Readers from Start to Finish

Discover Your Voice and Enthrall Readers! The craft of writing is filled with various debates: Should I include a prologue? Should I delete all adverbs from my manuscript? Just how much backstory--if any--can I include in my story? These questions--and their often-contradictory answers--can cause confusion, frustration, and even paralysis in the writer. The Irresistible Novel frees you from the limits of so-called "rules" and instead provides you with a singular goal: You must engage your readers from beginning to end. Filled with down-to-earth discussions on the various debates of writing, as well as innovative research on neuroscience and reader response, this book shows you how to: • Navigate the various debates on writing fiction--showing versus telling, purple prose, outlining, writing description, and more--to decide what kind of novelist you want to be. • Hack your reader's brain to hook her interest and trigger emotional engagement from the very first page. • Incorporate enduring elements of storytelling from masters like Joseph Campbell, Aristotle, and Carl Jung. Readers want to be swept away by your stories. When you eschew the rules and focus on your readers' desires, you're free to write truly irresistible fiction.

The Irresistible Novel

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Cheryl St.John

Techniques for Crafting an Expressive and Compelling Novel

Craft an Emotionally Charged Story That Will Resonate with Readers Emotional impact shouldn't be dropped into your novel as an afterthought or forced upon your story with a pair of pliers and an iron grip. It should be carefully sewn into the fabric of the story to create tension-filled moments that will keep readers turning pages. In Writing with Emotion, Tension, & Conflict, you'll learn how to layer emotional moments and deep connections to create a tapestry filled with conflict, pathos, and genuine feeling. • Create emotional depth, conflict, and tension in your novel by carefully crafting your plot, characters, setting, word choice, and more. • Learn what makes readers "tick"--and what will elicit the strongest emotional responses. • Write believable, emotional scenes and dialogue--and trim away the sappiness. When writing a novel, your ultimate goal is to make readers smile, weep, rage, and laugh right along with your characters. Writing with Emotion, Tension, & Conflict will show you how to evoke a multitude of feelings in your readers--and keep them coming back for more.

Writing with Emotion, Tension, and Conflict

aa27bea9-2321-4acd-8ce9-f1657f0f2a25

Russ Allen

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