Dwight Swain:
Master Writing Teacher

4 CDs: 2 hours and 59 minutes total
ISBN 1880717-484
Price $39.95
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This title combines two workshops by one of the best writing teachers in the English language. Dwight Swain has mentored thousands of writers. Now you can hear this legendary teacher’s own voice with priceless advice on 1) Story Structure & 2) Building Strong Characters.

Structuring Your Novel

A step-by-step guide to writing stories you can sell. Learn how to:

• Conceive and cast your work
• Find the spine
• Drive the plot forward
• Use scene and sequel as building blocks
• Create conflict
• Use the springboard scene
• And much, much more!

How to Build Fictional Characters

Learn how to:

• Create memorable heroes and villains
• Make your characters likeable - Give your characters purpose
• Put story people in danger
• Discover a character's attitude and motivation

DWIGHT SWAIN is author of Techniques of the Selling Writer, published in 1965, which many still consider to be THE BEST EVER reference work for creative writers. During his lifetime, he was a recognized international authority on fiction writing and is still revered. At major writing conferences, hundreds attended his sessions to hear his advice, handed out with dry wit and common sense. He wrote more than 50 genre and mainstream novels, and also magazine articles and screenplays. He was professor emeritus at the University of Oklahoma.

4 CDs: 2 hours 57 minutes total
ISBN 1880717-530
Price $39.95
[Download this title from Audible.com]
[Order this title from Amazon.com]

This CD title combines two workshops:

Writing Your First Novel

Learn how to write The Great American Novel from veteran novelist James Magnuson.

Topics include how to:

• Use autobiographical material
• Complete your manuscript
• Find the spine of your novel
• Handle rewrites
• Keep your vision
• Avoid common pitfalls

JAMES MAGNUSON has written seven novels for major publishers, including Windfall and Ghost Dancing. He has worked as a TV story editor and screenwriter. He is Director of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. He was playwright in resident at Princeton University.

How to Write Historical Fiction

Listening to Roberta Gellis is a privilege. Her no-nonsense approach to writing historical fiction will answer questions you didn't know you had and keep you on track with your own manuscript. Topics include how to:

• Carry out useful research
• Pin down a historical period
• Discover how historical people lived and felt
• Pick a key event
• Create believable characters

ROBERTA GELLIS is respected and successful. Since 1964, she has published dozens of meticulously-researched historical novels, including the famed Roselynde Chronicles. She received Romance Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

On Writing: Volume 2
By Carolyn Banks &
Benjamin Alire Saenz
4 CDs: 2 hours 58 minutes total
ISBN 1880717-549
Price $39.95
[Download this title from Audible.com]
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This CD title combines two workshops:

Thickening The Plot

Pay attention to plot, says Carolyn Banks, and reap the rewards. A good plot outline can be used in a book proposal and as a safety net for you, the writer. Topics include how to develop your plot, use resolution and suspense, differentiate concept from plot, and create dramatic impact.

CAROLYN BANKS writes novels (Patchwork), mysteries (Death by Dressage), short stories, screenplays, erotica and book reviews. "I don't want to be put in a little category," say says. Her M.A. in Creative Writing is from the University of Maryland, and she had taught literature and writing at the college level.

Finding Your Literary Voice

Benjamin Alire Saenz examines the importance of language and who you are as a person to the voice you choose as a writer. "Assume people don't care; make them care with language," he says. Topics include how to aim for the emotional truth, use specific language, analyze and select your words, and achieve mystery, clarity, and immediacy.

BENJAMIN ALIRE SAENZ is one of the country's most important Hispanic writers. He is a children's book author (Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood), novelist (Carry Me Like Water), and an American Book Award-winning poet (Calendar of Dust). His first calling as a priest led him to study writing in Paris and California. He now teaches in the bilingual MFA program at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Structuring Your Novel

Author of more than 50 novels offers practical help on how to build your novel. Covers conception, structure, situation, the springboard scene, building conflict, people and places, the worry factor, scene and sequel as building blocks, and character development.

Thickening the Plot

Novelist and national book reviewer focuses on strengthening plotting skills. Covers how to develop plot by creating concrete events that are carefully sequenced to create dramatic impact and how to develop a plot outline and use it as a selling tool and writing guide.

Writing Your First Novel

Author of seven novels by major New York houses, playwright and screenwriter, Magnuson covers how to use autobiographical material, avoid common pitfalls of beginning novelists, handle rewrites and keep your vision without getting discouraged.  

How To Build Fictional Characters

International fiction expert tells how to create story people, how to make them likable and give them purpose, the importance of danger, attitude and motivation, caring for your characters and how to create a good villain.

Writing From Premise

American Book Award winner begins where Natalie Goldberg's lessons on creativity end. Learn how to find a one-sentence premise for your work to make you write better and to make agents, editors and readers take your work seriously.

How to Write Historical Fiction

One of the decade's most respected writers of this genre details the types of historical fiction, and gives the basics of research to enable you to make the setting authentic, pin down the period, pick the key event and get the details on how people lived and felt at the time.  

Confessing for Money

Writer/teacher gives the formula for writing for the confession magazines, today's biggest short fiction market.