How to Write a Damn Good Mystery

How to Write a Damn Good Mystery

Author: James N. Frey

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2007-04-01

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1429974133

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Edgar award nominee James N. Frey, author of the internationally best-selling books on the craft of writing, How to Write a Damn Good Novel, How to Write a Damn Good Novel II: Advanced Techniques, and The Key: How to Write Damn Good Fiction Using the Power of Myth, has now written what is certain to become the standard "how to" book for mystery writing, How to Write a Damn Good Mystery. Frey urges writers to aim high-not to try to write a good-enough-to-get-published mystery, but a damn good mystery. A damn good mystery is first a dramatic novel, Frey insists-a dramatic novel with living, breathing characters-and he shows his readers how to create a living, breathing, believable character who will be clever and resourceful, willful and resolute, and will be what Frey calls "the author of the plot behind the plot." Frey then shows, in his well-known, entertaining, and accessible (and often humorous) style , how the characters-the entire ensemble, including the murderer, the detective, the authorities, the victims, the suspects, the witnesses and the bystanders-create a complete and coherent world. Exploring both the on-stage action and the behind-the-scenes intrigue, Frey shows prospective writers how to build a fleshed-out, believable, and logical world. He shows them exactly which parts of that world show up in the pages of a damn good mystery-and which parts are held back just long enough to keep the reader guessing. This is an indispensable step-by-step guide for anyone who's ever dreamed of writing a damn good mystery.


The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 14

The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 14

Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2019-08-06

Total Pages: 745

ISBN-13: 0691200696

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Volume 1 of 2. Coleridge's nephew, son-in-law, and first editor, Henry Nelson Coleridge, began at the end of 1822 a record of Coleridge's remarks as a way of preparing an anthology of the interests and thought of the great poet and critic. His manuscripts, gathered to form the major text of his new edition, include passages on relatives, friends, and various censorable topics omitted from the Table Talk of 1835 and unpublished until now. These two volumes also contain talk recorded by other listeners from 1798 until Coleridge's death in 1834. Some of these records have not been previously published; some are published from manuscripts that differ from versions previously known. Also included are previously unpublished remarks by Wordsworth. Along with a bibliography of earlier editions of Table Talk and other useful appendixes, Carl Woodring's edition reprints the second edition (1836), which differs from the manuscripts more extensively than the edition of 1835. THis is the first fully annotated edition of a work that long remained more popular in the United Kingdom than any of the works in prose published by Coleridge himself. The two volumes make a convenient encyclopedia of his ideas and interests. Carl Woodring is George Edward Woodberry Professor of Literature Emeritus at Columbia University. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


Silent Film and the Triumph of the American Myth

Silent Film and the Triumph of the American Myth

Author: Paula Marantz Cohen

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2001-05-03

Total Pages: 1286

ISBN-13: 9780195343885

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Silent Film and the Triumph of the American Myth connects the rise of film and the rise of America as a cultural center and twentieth-century world power. Silent film, Paula Cohen reveals, allowed America to sever its literary and linguistic ties to Europe and answer the call by nineteenth-century writers like Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman for an original form of expression compatible with American strengths and weaknesses. When film finally began to talk in 1927, the medium had already done its work. It had helped translate representation into a dynamic visual form and had "Americanized" the world. Cohen explores the way film emerged as an American medium through its synthesis of three basic elements: the body, the landscape, and the face. Nineteenth-century American culture had already charged these elements with meaning--the body through vaudeville and burlesque, landscape through landscape painting and moving panoramas, and the face through portrait photography. Integrating these popular forms, silent film also developed genres that showcased each of its basic elements: the body in comedy, the landscape in the western, and the face in melodrama. At the same time, it helped produce a new idea of character, embodied in the American movie star. Cohen's book offers a fascinating new perspective on American cultural history. It shows how nineteenth-century literature can be said to anticipate twentieth-century film--how Douglas Fairbanks was, in a sense, successor to Walt Whitman. And rather than condemning the culture of celebrity and consumption that early Hollywood helped inspire, the book highlights the creative and democratic features of the silent-film ethos. Just as notable, Cohen champions the concept of the "American myth" in the wake of recent attempts to discredit it. She maintains that American silent film helped consolidate and promote a myth of possibility and self-making that continues to dominate the public imagination and stands behind the best impulses of our contemporary world.


Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition

Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition

Author: Gary A. Olson

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1997-01-01

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780791433959

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Eminent scholars discuss the politics and practices of generating scholarship in rhetoric and composition studies. Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition is a collection of essays about the politics and practices of generating scholarship in rhetoric and composition. The contributors to this book, many of whom are current or past editors of the discipline's most prestigious scholarly journals, undoubtedly have their finger on the pulse of composition's most current scholarship and offer invaluable insight into the production and publication of original research. They discuss publishing articles and reviews, as well as book-length projects, including scholarly monographs, edited collections, and textbooks. They also address such topics as how composition research is valued in English departments, recent developments in electronic publishing, the work habits of successful academic writers, and the complications of mentoring graduate students in a publish-or-perish profession. An inviting and helpful tone makes this an ideal textbook for research methodology and professional writing courses.