Writing Plots With Drama Depth Heart

What keeps a reader curious? It's the story. You might have a dazzling prose voice and plausible characters, but if they don't do anything, the reader is likely to lose interest.So where do you find story ideas? How do you make them into a captivating read?Do you know what genre you are best suited to write? What is literary fiction and how do you write that? How will you give your book depth without seeming preachy or bringing the plot to a standstill?What are the hidden patterns that ply the reader's emotions, regardless of your genre or style? How can you use them with originality? If you want to write a story that breaks the usual conventions, how do you do it?Whatever type of novel you want to write, this book will show you, in down-to-earth tutorials, games and exercises.Use it before you write and when revising, to diagnose your story's strengths and weaknesses, to decide how to begin, what to put in the middle, how it should end. If you've had feedback from critique partners and editors, use it to decode what's really wrong - instead of what they think might be.Most of all, use it to find out where you already have spellbinding plot material. Discover where your best ideas are hiding and how to tell stories with drama, depth and heart.By a bestselling ghostwriter, literary author, creative coach and book doctor.

What keeps a reader curious? It's the story. You might have a dazzling prose voice and plausible characters, but if nothing happens, the reader is likely to lose interest. So where do you find story ideas? How do you make them into a captivating read? What's your personal vision? Do you know what genre you are best suited to write? What is literary fiction and how do you write that? How will you give your book depth without seeming preachy or bringing the plot to a standstill? What are the hidden structural patterns that ply the reader's emotions, regardless of your genre or style? How can you use them with originality? How should you begin and end? What should go in the middle? Where should you play your best twists - and what should they be? How can you write each scene so it holds the reader's curiosity? If you want to write a story that breaks with convention but still keeps readers riveted, how do you do it? Whatever type of novel you want to write, this book will show you, in down-to-earth tutorials, games and brainstorming exercises. Use it before you write and when revising, to diagnose your story's strengths and weaknesses. If you've had feedback from critique partners and editors, use it to decode what's really wrong - instead of what they think might be. Most of all, use it to find out where you already have spellbinding plot material. Discover where your best ideas are hiding and how to tell stories with drama, depth and heart.

It's been six months since Ashlyn Daniels was kicked out of her home. Six months since she stood up to her abusive stepfather and got a busted rib-and seeing all her things set ablaze in a backyard bonfire-for her trouble. Never going back. She doesn't need trouble...especially if trouble is tattoo artist Lane Garrett, who's six-feet-plus of tattooed hotness and a complete ass. Lane has spent the last decade fighting to support his family. To protect them. There's no room for romance, even with a fragile (yet amusingly feisty) stunner...even if she somehow manages to invade his world and his heart. But while some secrets are as visible as ink on the skin, others must remain hidden at all costs... Each book in the Written on my Heart series is a standalone story that can be enjoyed out of order. Series Order: Book #1 Written on my Heart Book #2 Seared on My Soul

How do you create characters with depth? How do you write the opposite sex, authentic teenagers, plausible antagonists and chilling villains? How do you inhabit a character who isn't like you? Whether you write literary or genre fiction, this book shows you how to create people who keep readers hooked and make you want to tell stories

In a merciless summer of biblical heat and destructive winds, Gabrielle Fox's main concern is a personal one: to rebuild her career as a psychologist after a shattering car accident. But when she is assigned Bethany Krall, one of the most dangerous teenagers in the country, she begins to fear she has made a terrible mistake. Raised on a diet of evangelistic hellfire, Bethany is violent, delusional, cruelly intuitive and insistent that she can foresee natural disasters - a claim which Gabrielle interprets as a symptom of doomsday delusion. But when catastrophes begin to occur on the very dates Bethany has predicted, and a brilliant, gentle physicist enters the equation, the apocalyptic puzzle intensifies and the stakes multiply. Is the self-proclaimed Nostradamus of the psych ward the ultimate manipulator, or could she be the harbinger of imminent global cataclysm on a scale never seen before? And what can love mean in 'interesting times'? A haunting story of human passion and burning faith set against an adventure of tectonic proportions, The Rapture is an electrifying psychological thriller that explores the dark extremes of mankind's self-destruction in a world on the brink.

When Claudia accidentally eavesdrops on the epic breakup of Paige and Iris, the it-couple at her school, she finds herself in hot water with prickly, difficult Iris. Thrown together against their will in the class production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, along with the goofiest, cutest boy Claudia has ever known, Iris and Claudia are in for an eye-opening senior year. Smart, funny, and thoroughly, wonderfully flawed, Claudia navigates a world of intense friendships and tentative romance in Emma Mills's Follish Hearts, a young adult novel about expanding your horizons, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, and accepting—and loving—people for who they really are.

A Kirkus Reviews Best Young Adult Book of 2020 Family isn't something you're born into — it's something you build. One young woman’s journey to find her place in the world as the carefully separated strands of her life — family, money, school, and love — begin to overlap and tangle. All sixteen-year-old Izzy Crawford wants is to feel like she really belongs somewhere. Her father, a marine, died in Iraq six years ago, and Izzy’s moved to a new town nearly every year since, far from the help of her extended family in North Carolina and Puerto Rico. When Izzy’s hardworking mom moves their small family to Virginia, all her dreams start clicking into place. She likes her new school—even if Izzy is careful to keep her scholarship-student status hidden from her well-to-do classmates and her new athletic and popular boyfriend. And best of all: Izzy’s family has been selected by Habitat for Humanity to build and move into a brand-new house. Izzy is this close to the community and permanence she’s been searching for, until all the secret pieces of her life begin to collide. How to Build a Heart is the story of Izzy’s journey to find her place in the world and her discovery that the choices we make and the people we love ultimately define us and bring us home.

If he had been with me everything would have been different... I wasn't with Finn on that August night. But I should've been. It was raining, of course. And he and Sylvie were arguing as he drove down the slick road. No one ever says what they were arguing about. Other people think it's not important. They do not know there is another story. The story that lurks between the facts. What they do not know—the cause of the argument—is crucial. So let me tell you...