Editing

One of the biggest struggles for writers is how to convey emotion to readers in a unique and compelling way. When showing our characters’ feelings, we often use the first idea that comes to mind, and they end up smiling, nodding, and frowning too much.

All of us at Canterbury Writers are fans of this book.

Is your setting description pulling its weight in the story, or is it just sort of…there? Do more with your settings, activating their power to characterize the story’s cast, deepen emotional moments, deliver backstory without info dumps, and more. This guide does all this and more, in addition to providing you with lists of sensory description for over 120 modern locations.

One of the most powerful storytelling elements is your setting…but are you using it as well as you should? This guide not only lists sensory details for over 100 natural and personal settings, it provides options for conflict in each location and shows you how to build mood, steer the plot, and apply symbolism for deeper, more meaningful scenes.

Fiction is action. Activate is an author's thesaurus of dramatic possibilities that will galvanize your characterization and dramatization. Verbalizing any narrative requires specific juicy language with the vibrancy readers crave. This handy writing reference focuses on language's powerhouse: verbs, featuring 5,300 potent options sorted into three useful contexts.

Publisher's note: Naughty Words for Nice Writers was originally published in 2015. It has since been updated with 800 more synonyms and a dozen new categories and writing guides. This is the updated version.If finding the right words for your romantic sex scene is challenging, Naughty Words for Nice...

Reinvigorate Your Fiction! You've written the first draft of your novel or screenplay, and you've released it into the world: to your critique group, to your most trusted beta readers, or even to an agent or an editor. But something's wrong. You're not getting the glowing response you had expected, o...

Authoritative and up to date, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary offers unsurpassed coverage of English, perfect for anyone who needs a handy, reliable resource for home, school, or office.The Concise Oxford English Dictionary is one of the most popular choices in Oxford's renowned dictionary lin...

BOOKS

Features more than 225,000 definitions and over 42,000 usage examples. Includes newly added words and meanings across a variety of fields, including technology, entertainment, health, science and society. Special sections include: A Handbook of Style, Foreign Words & Phrases, Biographical Names and ...

Find the right word to enrich communication! Alphabetical lists include more than 340,000 synonyms, antonyms, related and contrasted words, and idioms. Brief definitions describe the meanings shared by synonyms.Compatible with Kindle Voyage, Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle, Kindle Fire with Fire OS 4+, Ki...

One of the English language’s most skilled and beloved writers guides us all toward precise, mistake-free usage. As usual Bill Bryson says it best: “English is a dazzlingly idiosyncratic tongue, full of quirks and irregularities that often seem willfully at odds with logic and common sense. This ...

Discover the Proven Blueprint for Creating Stories That Sell! Award-winning author K.M. Weiland’s previous book, the award-winning Structuring Your Novel, showed writers how to create stories with strong and compelling plot structure. Now it’s time to put those lessons to use!

The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation is a concise, entertaining workbook and guide to English grammar, punctuation, and usage. This user-friendly resource includes simple explanations of grammar, punctuation, and usage; scores of helpful examples; dozens of reproducible worksheets; and pre- and post-tests to help teach grammar to students of all ages. Appropriate for virtually any age range, this authoritative guide makes learning English grammar and usage simple and fun. This updated Eleventh Edition reflects the latest updates to English usage and grammar and features a fully revised two-color design and lay-flat binding for easy photocopying.

It may have been written for screenwriters, but the story structure that is presented seems to work for almost every story in existence. Get some solid advice to help with the pacing of your writing.

The first novel-writing guide from the best-selling Save the Cat! story-structure series, which reveals the 15 essential plot points needed to make any novel a success.Novelist Jessica Brody presents a comprehensive story-structure guide for novelists that applies the famed Save the Cat! screenwriti...

We all write, all the time: books, blogs, emails. Lots and lots of emails. And we all want to write better. Benjamin Dreyer is here to help.

This witty guide to grammar, punctuation and style is designed for writers, highlighting where the rules are sometimes just meant to be broken.

Be advised that there is a US English and UK English version of this book. The UK English version is specified in the title of the store listing as to which version you are looking at. For the most part, the two versions are the same, but with subtle differences for punctuation.

Inside Story Physics, you'll learn how to:

• Understand and harness the six storytelling forces that are constantly at work in your fiction.
• Transform your story idea into a dramatically compelling concept.
• Optimize the choices you make in terms of character, conflict, subplot, subtext, and more to render the best possible outcome.

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.

Super Structure represents over two decades of research on what makes a novel or screenplay entertaining, commercial, original, and irresistible. Contrary to what some may think, structure is not a nasty inhibitor of creativity. Quite the opposite. Properly understood and utilized, structure is what translates story into a form readers are wired to receive it.

And it is only when readers truly connect with your story that they turn from casual readers into fans.

This book delves into the story structure model that James Scott Bell uses himself to write his novels... and it's slightly different to the traditional three-act structure.

The Conflict Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Obstacles, Adversaries, and Inner Struggles (Volume 2) explores more ways to activate story conflict and tension and serves up 115 more scenarios that lead to power struggles, lost advantages, dangers, threats, ego-related conflicts, and more. Use this guide to plot fresh challenges and story problems that will trip your characters up and force them to strive harder to win.