Download or read book Finding Your Plot in a Plotless World written by Daniel de Roulet and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2007-08-01 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world fell apart for author Daniel de Roulet the moment his son was diagnosed with autism. In Finding Your Plot in a Plotless World, de Roulet takes a closer look at those devastating moments in everyone's lives and the journey that follows. What do we do when our sense of God's plan for our lives crumbles around us? How do we find our plots in a seemingly plotless world? For answers, de Roulet looks to stories--those of our own culture and the Bible. Along the way, de Roulet encourages readers to be authentic as they tell their own stories and leaves them with hope that God reveals himself through our messy lives. EXCERPT Let me make something clear: I am convinced that for Christians, even in the darkest night, there is joy in the morning. God does work all things together--however unlikely the parts--for good for those who love him. But the roads of our progress from darkness to light will often be through murky or unpleasant waters, and our discoveries may not be as whole or as resounding as one could hope. But talking about the whole journey--darkness and light--is being honest to the condition of being human, and perhaps we can help others to begin to make the leap between the difficulties of the now and the promises of the not yet. Successful storytellers and teachers tend to meet their audiences where they are--not where they want them to be. There are times for all of us, Christian and non-Christian alike, when the world seems dark and senseless and morning seems far off, and these times are often when God's plot is the most relevant. And so this book talks about a journey from plotlessness to plot. Its chapters are meant to be guides for both reading God's stories: narratives that I think God uses to reach down into our own experiences and tell us about himself, and our own stories: the words that we use to tell our experiences to each other and, I believe, to God.
Download or read book Finding Your Plot in a Plotless World written by Daniel De Roulet and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we find meaning when our sense of God??'s plan for our lives falls apart? Daniel de Roulet walks with us on a journey toward purpose and meaning.
Download or read book Lee Smith written by Mary Ellen Snodgrass and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-02-28 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This literary companion surveys the works of Lee Smith, a Southern author lauded for her autobiographical familiarity with Appalachian settings and characters. Her dialogue captures the distinct voices of mountain people and their perceptions of local and world events, ranging from the Civil War to ecology and modernization. Mental and physical disability and the Southern cultural norm of including the disabled as both family and community members are recurring themes in Smith's writing. An A to Z arrangement of entries incorporates specific titles, and themes such as belonging, healing and death, humor, parenting and religion.
Download or read book Hold Still written by Lynn Steger Strong and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2017-03-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "wildly evocative" (Elle.com) family portrait that explores the depths and limits of a mother’s love. When Maya Taylor, an English professor with a tendency to hide in her books, sends her daughter to Florida to look after a friend’s child, she does so with the best of intentions; it’s a chance for Ellie, twenty and spiraling, to rebuild her life. But in the sprawling hours of one humid afternoon, Ellie makes a mistake she cannot take back. In two separate timelines—before and after the catastrophe—Maya and Ellie must try to repair their fractured relationship and find a way to transcend not only their differences but also their more troubling similarities. "[Melding] psychological insight, precise plotting and limpid prose" (Huffington Post), Lynn Steger Strong traces the anatomy of a mistake and the weight of culpability. Hold Still marks a taut and propulsive debut that "builds to a perfect crescendo, an ending that is both surprising and true" (Marcy Dermansky, author of The Red Car).
Download or read book To Tell the Sacred Tale written by Ruffing, Janet K., RSM and published by Paulist Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows the singular importance of narrative in the process of spiritual direction and reflects on this interactive process of sharing our sacred stories in pastoral contexts in order to hear and respond more deeply to the story God is telling in our lives.
Download or read book First Things written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Golden State written by Lydia Kiesling and published by MCD. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION 5 UNDER 35 PICK. LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION'S FIRST NOVEL PRIZE. Named one of the Best Books of 2018 by NPR, Bookforum and Bustle. One of Entertainment Weekly's 10 Best Debut Novels of 2018. An Amazon Best Book of the Month and named a fall read by Buzzfeed, Nylon, Entertainment Weekly, Elle, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Refinery29 and Mind Body Green A gorgeous, raw debut novel about a young woman braving the ups and downs of motherhood in a fractured America In Lydia Kiesling’s razor-sharp debut novel, The Golden State, we accompany Daphne, a young mother on the edge of a breakdown, as she flees her sensible but strained life in San Francisco for the high desert of Altavista with her toddler, Honey. Bucking under the weight of being a single parent—her Turkish husband is unable to return to the United States because of a “processing error”—Daphne takes refuge in a mobile home left to her by her grandparents in hopes that the quiet will bring clarity. But clarity proves elusive. Over the next ten days Daphne is anxious, she behaves a little erratically, she drinks too much. She wanders the town looking for anyone and anything to punctuate the long hours alone with the baby. Among others, she meets Cindy, a neighbor who is active in a secessionist movement, and befriends the elderly Alice, who has traveled to Altavista as she approaches the end of her life. When her relationships with these women culminate in a dangerous standoff, Daphne must reconcile her inner narrative with the reality of a deeply divided world. Keenly observed, bristling with humor, and set against the beauty of a little-known part of California, The Golden State is about class and cultural breakdowns, and desperate attempts to bridge old and new worlds. But more than anything, it is about motherhood: its voracious worry, frequent tedium, and enthralling, wondrous love.
Download or read book How to Write a Short Story written by N A Turner and published by . This book was released on 2019-07-28 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You always wanted to write short stories but you have no idea where to begin.Do you want to become better at writing fiction?Perhaps you find it hard to come up with ideas for a story or to devise a plot. Maybe you have difficulty developing your own style or is your dialogue rusty.N.A. Turner is here to help you navigate the land of short story writing from outlining your story to attracting readers. Every aspiring writer dreams of people reading his or her work. Short story writing is a way of both developing your writing style and to introduce your talent to potential readers. At the start of their career, the likes of Stephen King and Charles Bukowski made a name for themselves by writing and publishing short stories.Learn more about N.A. Turner's writing tips based on his experience and research.This guide teaches you: - How to write well-structured short stories- How to determine your theme- How to plot your story- How to create engaging, interesting characters- How to build a fictional world- How to write scenes and clear dialogue- How to get to that first draft and edit your story- How to publish your short stories in the current market- And much moreThis guidebook will show you a step-by-step process to successfully write and publish short stories. From developing an idea to attracting readers online. This comprehensive, step-by-step guide is all you need to get started.
Download or read book Family Life A Novel written by Akhil Sharma and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014-04-07 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2016 International Dublin Literary Award "Gorgeously tender at its core…beautiful, heartstopping…Family Life really blazes." —Sonali Deraniyagala, New York Times Book Review Hailed as a "supreme storyteller" (Philadelphia Inquirer) for his "cunning, dismaying and beautifully conceived" fiction (New York Times), Akhil Sharma is possessed of a narrative voice "as hypnotic as those found in the pages of Dostoyevsky" (The Nation). In his highly anticipated second novel, Family Life, he delivers a story of astonishing intensity and emotional precision. We meet the Mishra family in Delhi in 1978, where eight-year-old Ajay and his older brother Birju play cricket in the streets, waiting for the day when their plane tickets will arrive and they and their mother can fly across the world and join their father in America. America to the Mishras is, indeed, everything they could have imagined and more: when automatic glass doors open before them, they feel that surely they must have been mistaken for somebody important. Pressing an elevator button and the elevator closing its doors and rising, they have a feeling of power at the fact that the elevator is obeying them. Life is extraordinary until tragedy strikes, leaving one brother severely brain-damaged and the other lost and virtually orphaned in a strange land. Ajay, the family’s younger son, prays to a God he envisions as Superman, longing to find his place amid the ruins of his family’s new life. Heart-wrenching and darkly funny, Family Life is a universal story of a boy torn between duty and his own survival.
Download or read book Fiction Writing Master Class written by William Cane and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-02-18 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Want to find your voice? Learn from the best! In your development as a writer, you've likely been told to develop your own unique writing style, as if it were as simple as pulling it out of thin air. But finding your voice isn't easy--it requires time, practice, and a thorough understanding of how great fiction is written. Fiction Writing Master Class analyzes the writing styles of twenty-one superior novelists including Charles Dickens, Edith Wharton, Franz Kafka, Flannery O'Connor, Ray Bradbury, and many others. This fascinating and insightful guide mines the writing secrets of these exceptional authors and shows you how to use them to develop a writing style that stands out in a crowd. You'll discover how to: • Create characters as memorable as Herman Melville's Captain Ahab • Master point of view with techniques from Fyodor Dostoevsky • Pick up the pace by keeping your sentences lean like Ernest Hemingway • Incorporate sensual details like James Bond creator Ian Fleming • Add suspense to your story by following the lead of horror master Stephen King And that's not all, Fiction Writing Master Class is your key to understanding and implementing the proven techniques of history's greatest authors, taking your writing to a whole new level of excellence in the process.
Download or read book Gold Fools written by Gilbert Sorrentino and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most recent novel by the noted American novelist Gilbert Sorrentino.
Download or read book The Writer s Portable Mentor written by Priscilla Long and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designed to mentor writers at all levels, from beginning to quite advanced, The Writer's Portable Mentor offers a wealth of insight and crafting models from the author's twenty-plus years of teaching and creative thought. The book provides tools for structuring a book, story, or essay. It trains writers in observation and in developing a poet's ear for sound in prose. It scrutinizes the sentence strategies of the masters and offers advice on how to publish. This second edition is updated to account for changes in the publishing industry and provides hundreds of new craft models to inspire, guide, and develop every writer's work.
Download or read book All My Puny Sorrows written by Miriam Toews and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of Women Talking, a "wrenchingly honest, darkly funny novel" (Entertainment Weekly). Elf and Yoli are sisters. While on the surface Elfrieda's life is enviable (she's a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, and happily married) and Yolandi's a mess (she's divorced and broke, with two teenagers growing up too quickly), they are fiercely close-raised in a Mennonite household and sharing the hardship of Elf's desire to end her life. After Elf's latest attempt, Yoli must quickly determine how to keep her family from falling apart while facing a profound question: what do you do for a loved one who truly wants to die? All My Puny Sorrows is a deeply personal story that is as much comedy as it is tragedy, a goodbye grin from the friend who taught you how to live.
Download or read book Story Engineering written by Larry Brooks and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-01-27 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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!
Download or read book The Art of Fiction written by Ayn Rand and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1958, Ayn Rand, already the world-famous author of such bestselling books as Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, gave a private series of extemporaneous lectures in her own living room on the art of fiction. Tore Boeckmann and Leonard Peikoff for the first time now bring readers the edited transcript of these exciting personal statements. The Art of Fiction offers invaluable lessons, in which Rand analyzes the four essential elements of fiction: theme, plot, characterization, and style. She demonstrates her ideas by dissecting her best-known works, as well as those of other famous authors, such as Thomas Wolfe, Sinclair Lewis, and Victor Hugo. An historic accomplishment, this compendium will be a unique and fascinating resource for both writers and readers of fiction.
Download or read book Bad Habits written by Amy Gentry and published by Mariner Books. This book was released on 2021 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A whip-smart psychological thriller from the author of Good as Gone (a New York Times Notable Book) in which a grad student becomes embroiled in a deadly rivalry that changes her into someone unrecognizable to her struggling family, her ambitious academic friends, and even herself
Download or read book Fantasy Fiction written by Jennifer Pullen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-12-14 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first fantasy-writing textbook to combine a historical genre overview with an anthology and comprehensive craft guide, this book explores the blue prints of one of the most popular forms of genre fiction. The first section will acquaint readers with the vast canon of existing fantasy fiction and outline the many sub-genres encompassed within it before examining the important relationship between fantasy and creative writing, the academy and publishing. A craft guide follows which equips students with the key concepts of storytelling as they are impacted by writing through a fantastical lens. These include: - Character and dialogue - Point of view - Plot and structure - Worldbuilding settings, ideologies and cultures - Style and revision The third section guides students through the spectrum of styles as they are classified in fantasy fiction from Epic and high fantasy, through Lovecraftian and Weird fiction, to magical realism and hybrid fantasy. An accompanying anthology will provide students with a greater awareness of the range of possibilities open to them as fantasy writers and will feature such writers as Ursula Le Guin, China Miéville, Theodora Goss, Emrys Donaldson, Ken Liu, C.S.E. Cooney, Vandana Singh, Sofia Samatar, Rebecca Roanhorse, Jessie Ulmer, Yxta Maya Murray, and Rachael K. Jones. With writing exercises, prompts, additional online resources and cues for further reading throughout, this is an essential resource for anyone wanting to write fantastical fiction.
