The Writer's Compass
The Writer's Compass

Author: Nancy Ellen Dodd

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2011-06-29

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1599631970

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Map out your idea and finish your story in 7 stages! This book will show writers how to develop their ideas into a finished novel by working through it in 7 stages, while learning how to mapping out their story's progress and structure so they can evaluate and improve their work. It teaches writers to visualize their story's progress with a story map that helps them see all the different components of their story, where these components are going, and, perhaps most importantly, what's missing. The book simplifies Aristotle's elements of good writing (a.k.a. that each story should have a beginning, a middle and an end) into easily applicable concepts that will help writers improve their craft. The author helps readers strengthen their work by teaching them how to focus on one aspect of their story at a time, including forming stories and developing ideas, building strong structures, creating vibrant characters, and structuring scenes and transitions. Thought-provoking questions help writers more objectively assess their story's strengths and weaknesses so they may write the story they want to tell.

Compass
Compass

Author: Mathias Énard

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 2018-03-27

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13: 0811226638

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Winner of the 2015 Prix Goncourt, an astounding novel that bridges Europe and the Islamic world Winner of the Prix Goncourt (France), the Leipzig Prize (Germany), Premio Von Rezzori (Italy), shortlisted for the 2017 International Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award As night falls over Vienna, Franz Ritter, an insomniac musicologist, takes to his sickbed with an unspecified illness and spends a restless night drifting between dreams and memories, revisiting the important chapters of his life: his ongoing fascination with the Middle East and his numerous travels to Istanbul, Aleppo, Damascus, and Tehran, as well as the various writers, artists, musicians, academics, orientalists, and explorers who populate this vast dreamscape. At the center of these memories is his elusive, unrequited love, Sarah, a fiercely intelligent French scholar caught in the intricate tension between Europe and the Middle East. With exhilarating prose and sweeping erudition, Mathias Énard pulls astonishing elements from disparate sources—nineteenth-century composers and esoteric orientalists, Balzac and Agatha Christie—and binds them together in a most magical way.

The Creative Compass
The Creative Compass

Author: Dan Millman

Publisher: H J Kramer

Published: 2013-10-15

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 1932073655

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A guide should give clear directions and then get out of your way. In this unique collaboration, bestselling author Dan Millman and his daughter Sierra Prasada help to orient you as you advance through five universal stages of creativity: Dream, Draft, Develop, Refine, and Share. Whether you’re seeking new goals, the discipline to reach them, a shield against self-doubt and inertia, or practical advice on sorting through feedback and connecting with readers — you’ll find a way forward in this fresh approach to writing and storytelling. Drawing on the coauthors’ personal stories about overcoming challenges, as well as sage advice from other writers, artists, and innovators, The Creative Compass will transform both the stories you tell and the stories you live.

Points of the Compass
Points of the Compass

Author: Saḥar Tawfīq

Publisher:

Published: 1995-11

Total Pages: 98

ISBN-13:

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This collection of short stories, recipient of a 1994 University of Arkansas Press Award for Arabic Literature in Translation, presents one of Egypt’s most innovative contemporary fiction writers. In her first collection published in English, Sahar Tawfiq explores the consciousnesses of young women alienated from their surroundings in today’s rapidly changing Egyptian society. In questioning the place of long-powerful myths and beliefs, she is in the forefront of writers examining the legacy of the Pharaohs as it permeates current Egyptian identities and practices, especially in the countryside. Her characters are shaped by journeys through modern social and economic trials and the ageless troubles of the human spirit and heart.

Story Engineering
Story Engineering

Author: Larry Brooks

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2011-01-27

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1599632810

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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!

Breathing Life Into Your Characters
Breathing Life Into Your Characters

Author: Rachel Ballon

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2009-03-01

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1599633701

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Create Convincing Characters That Readers—and Editors—Can't Resist! It's the question that eternally plagues all good writers: How can you describe the thoughts and feelings of characters who have backgrounds or psychological aberrations with which you have no personal experience? How can you describe the feelings of a drug addict if you've never been one? How can you write about being a prisoner if you've never been to jail? You can do all the research you want, but the question still remains: How do you convincingly portray characters if you've never lived in their skin? In Breathing Life Into Your Characters, writing consultant and professional psychotherapist Rachel Ballon, Ph. D., shows you how to get in touch with the thoughts and feelings necessary to truly understand your characters—no matter what their background or life experiences. She'll show you how to: • Develop a psychological profile for every character • Turn archetypes into conflicted characters • Think like a criminal to convincingly write one • Reveal personalities through the use of nonverbal communication In addition, you'll learn how to effectively use Ballon's "Method Writing" system—taught previously only in her writing workshops—to explore your own feelings, memories, and emotions to create characters of astonishing depth and complexity!

The Sun Is a Compass
The Sun Is a Compass

Author: Caroline Van Hemert

Publisher: Little, Brown Spark

Published: 2019-03-19

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 0316414433

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For fans of Cheryl Strayed, the gripping story of a biologist's human-powered journey from the Pacific Northwest to the Arctic to rediscover her love of birds, nature, and adventure. During graduate school, as she conducted experiments on the peculiarly misshapen beaks of chickadees, ornithologist Caroline Van Hemert began to feel stifled in the isolated, sterile environment of the lab. Worried that she was losing her passion for the scientific research she once loved, she was compelled to experience wildness again, to be guided by the sounds of birds and to follow the trails of animals. In March of 2012, she and her husband set off on a 4,000-mile wilderness journey from the Pacific rainforest to the Alaskan Arctic, traveling by rowboat, ski, foot, raft, and canoe. Together, they survived harrowing dangers while also experiencing incredible moments of joy and grace -- migrating birds silhouetted against the moon, the steamy breath of caribou, and the bond that comes from sharing such experiences. A unique blend of science, adventure, and personal narrative, The Sun is a Compass explores the bounds of the physical body and the tenuousness of life in the company of the creatures who make their homes in the wildest places left in North America. Inspiring and beautifully written, this love letter to nature is a lyrical testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Winner of the 2019 Banff Mountain Book Competition: Adventure Travel

Compass Points
Compass Points

Author: Edward Hoagland

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2002-03-26

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 0375702407

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In a luminous memoir of a life richly lived, one of America’s finest writers explores the themes that have shaped his life and work: the glories of the natural world, the lure of working for a circus and fighting forest fires, the afflictions of temporary blindness and blocked speech, and the enduring influence of literary friendships, including John Berryman’s, Edward Abbey’s, and his mentor, Archibald MacLeish. From his childhood in rural Connecticut to some of the earth’s last remaining wildernesses, Hoagland has traveled the world wielding his unusual gift for observation. In Compass Points he delivers an honest and lively accounting of his voyages through two marriages; the New York parties he attended as a precocious young writer; Vermont hippiedom and academia; his many vivid sojourns into Europe, Alaska, British Columbia, the Sudan; and, perhaps most unforgettably, his stint in the “Animal Department” of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus fifty years ago. Leavened with Hoagland’s trademark humor and insight, Compass Points is an entertaining and moving account of the days and nights of one of our most eminent literary voices.

Compass Rose
Compass Rose

Author: Anna Burke

Publisher: Bywater Books

Published: 2018-06-18

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 1612941206

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In the year 2513, the only thing higher than the seas is what’s at stake for those who sail them. Rose was born facing due north, with an inherent perception of cardinal points flowing through her veins. Her uncanny sense of direction earns her a coveted place among the Archipelago Fleet elite, but it also attracts the attention of Admiral Comita, who sends her on a secret mission deep into pirate territory. Accompanied by a ragtag crew of mercenaries and under the command of Miranda, a captain as bloodthirsty as she is alluring, Rose discovers the hard way that even the best sense of direction won’t be enough to keep her alive if she can’t learn to navigate something far more dangerous than the turbulent seas. Aboard the mercenary ship, Man o’ War, Rose learns quickly that trusting the wrong person can get you killed—and Miranda’s crew have no intention of making things easy for her—especially Miranda’s trusted first mate, Orca, who is as stubborn as she is brutal.

Love Had a Compass
Love Had a Compass

Author: Robert Lax

Publisher: Grove Press

Published: 2019-02-19

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 0802146988

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"Among America's greatest poets, a true minimalist who can weave awesome poems from remarkably few words." -Richard Kostelanetz, New York Times Book Review Every generation of poets seems to harbor its own hidden genius, one whose stature and brilliance come to light after his talent has already been achieved and exercised. The same drama of obscurity and nuance that attended the discovery of Emily Dickinson and Wallace Stevens is suggested by the career of Robert Lax. An expatriate American whose work to date — more than forty books — has been published mostly in Europe, this 85-year-old poet built a following in the U.S. among figures as widespread as Mark Van Doren, e. e. cummings, Jack Kerouac, and Sun Ra. The works in Love Had a Compass represent every stage of Lax's development as a poet, from his early years in the 1940s as a staff writer for The New Yorker to his present life on the Greek Island of Patmos. An inveterate wanderer, Lax's own sense of himself as both exile and pilgrim is carefully evoked in his prose journals and informs the pages of the Marseille Diaries, published here for the first time. Together with the poems, they provide the best portrait available to date of one of the most striking and original poets of our age.