Three anti-social skills to improve your writing - Nadia Kalman

How to Write with Style: Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Keys to the Power of the Written Word Find a Subject You Care About Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style. Simple Book Publishing Copyright This courseware includes resources copyrighted and openly licensed by multiple individuals and organizations. Click the words "Licenses and Attributions" at the bottom of each page for copyright and licensing information specific to the material on that page. If you believe that this courseware violates your copyright, please contact us. Data Mining Novels Reveals the Six Basic Emotional Arcs of Storytelling Back in 1995, Kurt Vonnegut gave a lecture in which he described his theory about the shapes of stories. In the process, he plotted several examples on a blackboard. “There is no reason why the simple shapes of stories can’t be fed into computers,” he said. “They are beautiful shapes.” The video is available on YouTube. Vonnegut was representing in graphical form an idea that writers have explored for centuries—that stories follow emotional arcs, that these arcs can have different shapes, and that some shapes are better suited to storytelling than others.

English Composition I Copyright This courseware includes resources copyrighted and openly licensed by multiple individuals and organizations. Click the words "Licenses and Attributions" at the bottom of each page for copyright and licensing information specific to the material on that page. If you believe that this courseware violates your copyright, please contact us. Kids explain how banned and challenged books helped them and even saved their lives / Boing Boing By Joan Bertin and Millie Davis Banned Books Week has come and gone but we can be sure of one thing: the coming year will be marked by challenges to the same kinds of books that were controversial this year, and in years past. report this ad

Dear Comma Technically, those e-mail messages you write should begin Hi, John—with a comma after Hi. You see, Hi, John is different from Dear John because hi and dear are not the same kind of word. Hi is an interjection just like wow and ugh, and dear is an adjective that modifies John. In Hi, John you are directly addressing John, which means the punctuation rules of “direct address” apply. 10 books that will make you a better writer (and why) Last week, I wrote about 25 habits that will make you a better writer. This week, I thought — let’s dive into books. After twenty-plus years writing, I’ve collected some resources that I absolutely couldn’t do with out. I love borrowing books.

Simple Book Publishing Copyright This courseware includes resources copyrighted and openly licensed by multiple individuals and organizations. Click the words "Licenses and Attributions" at the bottom of each page for copyright and licensing information specific to the material on that page. If you believe that this courseware violates your copyright, please contact us. Iraqi Refugee Empowers Youth To Share Their Stories With 'Narratio' When Ahmed Badr was 8 years old, his family fled Baghdad in the midst of the Iraq War. Writing helped him process his experience, so he started the website Narratio to give other young people the same opportunity. Ariel Edelman hide caption toggle caption Ariel Edelman When Ahmed Badr was 8 years old, his family fled Baghdad in the midst of the Iraq War.

Free Grammar Check & Plagiarism Checker What is Plagiarism? If you’re looking for a free online plagiarism checker, you’re already aware that it’s not something you want to be found in your papers. However, you may still be wondering: what does plagiarism mean? It’s a reasonable question and one that merits exploring.

The Craft of Character Development Aimie K. Runyan As an author of historical fiction, my work must—almost by definition—begin with a concept. Am I going to write a gritty saga about the women who flew as combat pilots for Russia in the Second World War (I did and it was great fun)? Am I going to write a sweeping fictionalized biography of Joan of Arc? A dark and twisty Tudor-era mystery?

When Passive Is Better than Active This Everyday Grammar is all about the passive voice. The passive is a verb form in which the subject receives the action of the verb. For example, "I was born on a Saturday." Most sentences in English follow the subject-verb-object pattern known as the active voice. For example, "I love you." In this example the subject is "I," the verb is "love" and the object is "you." 6 Easy Steps to Unforgettable Characters By Laurence MacNaughton, @LMacNaughton Part of the How They Do It Series (Contributing Author) Readers will pick up your book because of the concept, but they’ll keep reading because of the characters. No matter what genre you write in, interesting characters are absolutely essential to a well-told story.