Download or read book Story Genius written by Lisa Cron and published by Ten Speed Press. This book was released on 2016-08-09 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Wired for Story written by Lisa Cron and published by Ten Speed Press. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This guide reveals how writers can utilize cognitive storytelling strategies to craft stories that ignite readers’ brains and captivate them through each plot element. Imagine knowing what the brain craves from every tale it encounters, what fuels the success of any great story, and what keeps readers transfixed. Wired for Story reveals these cognitive secrets—and it’s a game-changer for anyone who has ever set pen to paper. The vast majority of writing advice focuses on “writing well” as if it were the same as telling a great story. This is exactly where many aspiring writers fail—they strive for beautiful metaphors, authentic dialogue, and interesting characters, losing sight of the one thing that every engaging story must do: ignite the brain’s hardwired desire to learn what happens next. When writers tap into the evolutionary purpose of story and electrify our curiosity, it triggers a delicious dopamine rush that tells us to pay attention. Without it, even the most perfect prose won’t hold anyone’s interest. Backed by recent breakthroughs in neuroscience as well as examples from novels, screenplays, and short stories, Wired for Story offers a revolutionary look at story as the brain experiences it. Each chapter zeroes in on an aspect of the brain, its corresponding revelation about story, and the way to apply it to your storytelling right now.

Download or read book Outline written by Rachel Cusk and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2015-01-13 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Finalist for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. One of The New York Times' Top Ten Books of the Year. Named a A New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, Vogue, NPR, The Guardian, The Independent, Glamour, and The Globe and Mail A luminous, powerful novel that establishes Rachel Cusk as one of the finest writers in the English language A man and a woman are seated next to each other on a plane. They get to talking—about their destination, their careers, their families. Grievances are aired, family tragedies discussed, marriages and divorces analyzed. An intimacy is established as two strangers contrast their own fictions about their lives. Rachel Cusk's Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and stark, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing during one oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her students in storytelling exercises. She meets other visiting writers for dinner and discourse. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her neighbor from the plane. The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves: their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and longings. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast, a portrait of a woman learning to face a great loss. Outline takes a hard look at the things that are hardest to speak about. It brilliantly captures conversations, investigates people's motivations for storytelling, and questions their ability to ever do so honestly or unselfishly. In doing so it bares the deepest impulses behind the craft of fiction writing. This is Rachel Cusk's finest work yet, and one of the most startling, brilliant, original novels of recent years.

Download or read book Writing Without Bullshit written by Josh Bernoff and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joining the ranks of classics like The Elements of Style and On Writing Well, Writing Without Bullshit helps professionals get to the point to get ahead. It’s time for Writing Without Bullshit. Writing Without Bullshit is the first comprehensive guide to writing for today’s world: a noisy environment where everyone reads what you write on a screen. The average news story now gets only 36 seconds of attention. Unless you change how you write, your emails, reports, and Web copy don’t stand a chance. In this practical and witty book, you’ll learn to front-load your writing with pithy titles, subject lines, and opening sentences. You’ll acquire the courage and skill to purge weak and meaningless jargon, wimpy passive voice, and cowardly weasel words. And you’ll get used to writing directly to the reader to make every word count. At the center of it all is the Iron Imperative: treat the reader’s time as more valuable than your own. Embrace that, and your customers, your boss, and your colleagues will recognize the power and boldness of your thinking. Transcend the fear that makes your writing weak. Plan and execute writing projects with confidence. Manage edits and reviews flawlessly. And master every modern format from emails and social media to reports and press releases. Stop writing to fit in. Start writing to stand out. Boost your career by writing without bullshit.

Download or read book Process and Aesthetics written by Ondřej Dadejík and published by Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press. This book was released on 2021-04-01 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While Alfred North Whitehead did not dedicate any books or articles to aesthetics specifically, aesthetic motifs permeate his entire philosophical opus. Despite this, aestheticians have devoted little attention to Whitehead; most attempts to reconstruct Whitehead’s aesthetics have come from process philosophers, and even in that context aesthetics has never occupied a central position. In this book, four scholars of aesthetics provide another angle from which Whiteheadian aesthetics might be reconstructed. Paying special attention to the notion of aesthetic experience, the authors analyze abstraction versus concreteness, immediacy vs. mediation, and aesthetic contextualism vs. aesthetic isolationism. For their interpretation of Whiteheadian aesthetics, the concepts of creativity and rhythm are crucial. Using these concepts, the book interprets the motif of the processes by which experience is harmonized, the sensation of the quality of the whole, and directedness towards novelty. The first chapter introduces Whitehead’s philosophical method of descriptive generalization. This method assumes that every philosophical system is based on a particular entry point. We show that for Whitehead this entry point was aesthetics. Chapter Two compares Whitehead and Dewey’s philosophies to show that both viewed aesthetic experience in terms of complex rhythms; this helps us better understand the differences and the continuities between everyday experience and art. Chapter Three compares Whitehead’s ideas with those of Henri Bergson, showing the way art reveals the form of immediate experience and how the aesthetic experience of art relates to truth. The final chapter details the processes that constitute aesthetic experience in a narrower sense, analyzing aesthetic experience from the perspective of the types of abstractive processes it involves and the complex types of experience it produces.

Download or read book Million Dollar Outlines written by David Farland and published by WordFire +ORM. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the secrets to crafting a successful novel in this guide by a master writer & instructor and New York Times–bestselling author. Bestselling author David Farland taught dozens of writers who went on to staggering literary success, including such #1 New York Times Bestsellers as Brandon Mull (Fablehaven), Brandon Sanderson (Wheel of Time), James Dashner (The Maze Runner) and Stephenie Mayer (Twilight). In this book, Dave teaches how to analyze an audience and outline a novel to appeal to a wide readership. The secrets found in his unconventional approach will help you understand why so many of his authors went on to prominence. Hailed as “the wizard of storytelling,” Dave was an award-winning, international best-selling author with more than fifty novels in print, and a tireless mentor and instructor of new writers. His book Million Dollar Outlines is a seminal work teaching authors how to create a blueprint for a novel that can lead to bestseller success.

Download or read book The Journey Beyond Fear Leverage the Three Pillars of Positivity to Build Your Success written by John Hagel III and published by McGraw Hill Professional. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conquer your fear, achieve your potential, and make a positive difference in the lives of everyone around you Whether you’re running a business, building a career, raising a family, or attending school, uncertainty has been the name of the game for years—and the feeling reached an all-time high when COVID-19 hit. Even the savviest, smartest, toughest people are understandably feeling enormous pressure and often feeling paralyzed by fear. The Journey Beyond Fear provides everything you need to identify your fears, face your fears, move beyond your fears—and cultivate emotions that motivate you to pursue valuable business opportunities, realize your full potential, and create opportunities that benefit all. Business strategy guru John Hagel provides an effective, easy-to-grasp three-step approach: Develop an inspiring long-term view of the opportunities ahead Cultivate your personal passion to motivate you and those around you Harness the potential of platforms to bring people together and scale impact at an accelerating rate Never underestimate the power of fear—and never underestimate your ability to conquer it. With The Journey Beyond Fear, you’ll learn how to move forward in spite of fear, take your career and life to the next level, improve your organization and your broader environment, and achieve more of your true potential.

Download or read book Build Beyond Zero written by Bruce King and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2022-06-16 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Net Zero” has been an effective rallying cry for the green building movement, signaling a goal of having every building generate at least as much energy as it uses. Enormous strides have been made in improving the performance of every type of new building, and even more importantly, renovating the vast and energy-inefficient collection of existing buildings in every country. If we can get every building to net-zero energy use in the next few decades, it will be a huge success, but it will not be enough. In Build Beyond Zero, carbon pioneers Bruce King and Chris Magwood re-envision buildings as one of our most practical and affordable climate solutions instead of leading drivers of climate change. They provide a snapshot of a beginning and map towards a carbon-smart built environment that acts as a CO2 filter. Professional engineers, designers, and developers are invited to imagine the very real potential for our built environment to be a site of net carbon storage, a massive drawdown pool that could help to heal our climate. The authors, with the help of other industry experts, show the importance of examining what components of an efficient building (from windows to solar photovoltaics) are made with, and how the supply chains deliver all those products and materials to a jobsite. Build Beyond Zero looks at the good and the bad of how we track carbon (Life Cycle Assessment), then takes a deep dive into materials (with a focus on steel and concrete) and biological architecture, and wraps up with education, policy and governance, circular economy, and where we go in the next three decades. In Build Beyond Zero, King and Magwood show how buildings are culprits but stand poised to act as climate healers. They offer an exciting vision of climate-friendly architecture, along with practical advice for professionals working to address the carbon footprint of our built environment.

Download or read book Outlining Your Novel written by K. M. Weiland and published by Penforasword Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2011-07 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This bestselling guide will help you choose the right type of outline to unleash your creativity as a writer, guide you in brainstorming plot ideas, and aid you in discovering your characters.

Download or read book Fool Proof Outline written by Christopher Downing and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2018-03-30 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Build an outstanding outline every time! The Fool Proof Outline can help anyone quickly go from idea to 1st Draft. How? By elaborating parts of a story that matter most to you and your readers. By offering an organizational system that keeps your head clutter-free. By taking the fear and frustration out of writing. The Fool Proof Outline is filled with just the right amount of brainstorming prompts, both challenging you to engage readers emotionally and propelling your novel toward completion. Character, plot, and scene questionnaires are also included to keep you focused one step at a time. Even the most seasoned writer will appreciate the Fool Proof Outline, yet it offers an ease-of-use that will benefit writers of every level. The ebook contains a link to the Fool Proof Outline in both Scrivener and Excel. If you've been considering Scrivener, this is a wonderful place to start! You'll also get access to the Fool Proof Outline's online site, where you can ask questions and share your success. No registration necessary. The Fool Proof Outline is the result of an incredible evolution far beyond my earlier outline template, The Ultimate Novel Template. Those familiar with that early version will shout with joy at the improvements. I do!

Download or read book Writing Irresistible Kidlit written by Mary Kole and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-12-04 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Captivate the hearts and minds of young adult readers! Writing for young adult (YA) and middle grade (MG) audiences isn't just "kid's stuff" anymore--it's kidlit! The YA and MG book markets are healthier and more robust than ever, and that means the competition is fiercer, too. In Writing Irresistible Kidlit, literary agent Mary Kole shares her expertise on writing novels for young adult and middle grade readers and teaches you how to: • Recognize the differences between middle grade and young adult audiences and how it impacts your writing. • Tailor your manuscript's tone, length, and content to your readership. • Avoid common mistakes and cliches that are prevalent in YA and MG fiction, in respect to characters, story ideas, plot structure and more. • Develop themes and ideas in your novel that will strike emotional chords. Mary Kole's candid commentary and insightful observations, as well as a collection of book excerpts and personal insights from bestselling authors and editors who specialize in the children's book market, are invaluable tools for your kidlit career. If you want the skills, techniques, and know-how you need to craft memorable stories for teens and tweens, Writing Irresistible Kidlit can give them to you.

Download or read book Beyond Fear written by Bruce Schneier and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-05-10 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of us, especially since 9/11, have become personally concerned about issues of security, and this is no surprise. Security is near the top of government and corporate agendas around the globe. Security-related stories appear on the front page everyday. How well though, do any of us truly understand what achieving real security involves? In Beyond Fear, Bruce Schneier invites us to take a critical look at not just the threats to our security, but the ways in which we're encouraged to think about security by law enforcement agencies, businesses of all shapes and sizes, and our national governments and militaries. Schneier believes we all can and should be better security consumers, and that the trade-offs we make in the name of security - in terms of cash outlays, taxes, inconvenience, and diminished freedoms - should be part of an ongoing negotiation in our personal, professional, and civic lives, and the subject of an open and informed national discussion. With a well-deserved reputation for original and sometimes iconoclastic thought, Schneier has a lot to say that is provocative, counter-intuitive, and just plain good sense. He explains in detail, for example, why we need to design security systems that don't just work well, but fail well, and why secrecy on the part of government often undermines security. He also believes, for instance, that national ID cards are an exceptionally bad idea: technically unsound, and even destructive of security. And, contrary to a lot of current nay-sayers, he thinks online shopping is fundamentally safe, and that many of the new airline security measure (though by no means all) are actually quite effective. A skeptic of much that's promised by highly touted technologies like biometrics, Schneier is also a refreshingly positive, problem-solving force in the often self-dramatizing and fear-mongering world of security pundits. Schneier helps the reader to understand the issues at stake, and how to best come to one's own conclusions, including the vast infrastructure we already have in place, and the vaster systems--some useful, others useless or worse--that we're being asked to submit to and pay for. Bruce Schneier is the author of seven books, including Applied Cryptography (which Wired called "the one book the National Security Agency wanted never to be published") and Secrets and Lies (described in Fortune as "startlingly lively...¦[a] jewel box of little surprises you can actually use."). He is also Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Counterpane Internet Security, Inc., and publishes Crypto-Gram, one of the most widely read newsletters in the field of online security.

Download or read book Beyond Politics written by Michael P. Vandenbergh and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-21 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Private sector action provides one of the most promising opportunities to reduce the risks of climate change, buying time while governments move slowly or even oppose climate mitigation. Starting with the insight that much of the resistance to climate mitigation is grounded in concern about the role of government, this books draws on law, policy, social science, and climate science to demonstrate how private initiatives are already bypassing government inaction in the US and around the globe. It makes a persuasive case that private governance can reduce global carbon emissions by a billion tons per year over the next decade. Combining an examination of the growth of private climate initiatives over the last decade, a theory of why private actors are motivated to reduce emissions, and a review of viable next steps, this book speaks to scholars, business and advocacy group managers, philanthropists, policymakers, and anyone interested in climate change.

Download or read book How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method written by Randy Ingermanson and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2014-07-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Snowflake Method-ten battle-tested steps that jump-start your creativity and help you quickly map out your story.

Download or read book Beyond the Bounds written by John Piper and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2003-01-30 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Everyone who believes in God at all believes that He knows what you and I are going to do tomorrow." –C. S. Lewis This understanding of God's foreknowledge has united the church for twenty centuries. But advocates of "open theism" are presenting a different vision of God and a different view of the future. The rise of open theism within evangelicalism has raised a host of questions. Was classical theism decisively tainted by Greek philosophy? How should we understand passages that tell us that God repents? Are essentials of biblical Christianity–like the inerrancy of Scripture, the trustworthiness of God, and the Gospel of Christ–at stake in this debate? Where, when, and why should we draw new boundaries–and is open theism beyond them? Beyond the Bounds brings together a respected team of scholars to examine the latest literature, address these questions, and give guidance to the church in this time of controversy. Contributors include: John Piper Wayne Grudem Michael S. Horton Bruce A. Ware Mark R. Talbot A. B. Caneday Stephen J. Wellum Justin Taylor Paul Kjoss Helseth Chad Brand William C. Davis Russell Fuller "We have prepared this book to address the issue of boundaries and, we pray, bring some remedy to the present and impending pain of embracing open theism as a legitimate Christian vision of God. . . . As a pastor, who longs to be biblical and God-centered and Christ-exalting and eternally helpful to my people, I see open theism as theologically ruinous, dishonoring to God, belittling to Christ, and pastorally hurtful. My prayer is that Christian leaders will come to see it this way, and thus love the church by counting open theism beyond the bounds of orthodox Christian teaching." –From the Foreword by John Piper

Download or read book Beyond the Champion written by Gina Colarelli O'Connor and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-09 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Large, mature companies often struggle when it comes to the uncertain process of breakthrough innovation. But innovation is an imperative in today's cutthroat business environment. To fulfill its potential, there has to be a better way—and there is. Beyond the Champion argues that innovation is a talent all its own that requires distinct skills and expertise, just like finance or marketing. Viewing innovation as a discipline in its own right, it is easy to see that breakthrough wins require an organizational design with clearly delineated roles, responsibilities, and career tracks for those who shoulder the responsibility for new products. Drawing on the results of a four-year study and two decades of related research, this book outlines three fundamental competencies necessary for innovation: discovery, incubation, and acceleration. Mapping these skills onto roles and opportunities for advancement, the authors deliver a pioneering blueprint for sustainable innovation.

Download or read book Outline of History written by H. G. Wells and published by Jazzybee Verlag. This book was released on 2013-12-06 with total page 1121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the annotated edition including the rare biographical essay by Edwin E. Slosson called "H. G. Wells - A Major Prophet Of His Time". No book is provoking a more animated discussion among students of the social sciences at the present time than H. G. Wells' Outline of History. The author's task, as he himself sets it, is to tell, "truly and clearly, in one continuous narrative, the whole story of life and mankind so far as it is known today." But while these two volumes are plainly for the general reader rather than for the special student of history, it does not follow that they contain nothing beyond an endless parade of names and dates. Their chief value, indeed, is in the author's interpretation of what he writes about. Events are appraised and men are weighed in the balance as he goes along. Historians in general will not agree with some of these appraisals, nor will they credit Mr. Wells with an approach to infallibility in his judgment of the men who flit across his pages; but his estimates of the relative value of facts and forces can scarcely be brushed aside because they do not command general indorsement. On some matters, unhappily, Mr. Wells has allowed his iconoclastic proclivities to run away with him. Napoleon I, for example, cannot be disposed of as a second-grade "pestilence" because "he killed fewer people than the influenza epidemic of 1918" (II, p. 384); nor will the world believe, so long as it retains its senses, that Napoleon III was " a much more intelligent man" than his uncle (II, p. 438). Even the pinchbeck himself would have rebuked this insinuation. But when all is said, these two stout volumes embody a remarkable achievement. They contain astonishingly few historical inaccuracies of the customary type. The author's advisers, and a competent galaxy of scholars they are, have kept him clear of the pitfalls. The style is terse and forceful. Mr. Wells certainly has the gift of cogent exposition.