"In this lively nonfiction book for young readers, bestselling author Gail Carson Levine shares her secrets of great writing"--

"Bursting with practical tips and tricks, such as creating actual story-finding maps of your neighborhood, this book will help you build confidence and establish good writing habits as you learn to use a journal to snoop out plots full of action and emotion about yourself, your family, your friends, your neighbors, and your pets. As Jack shows you hot to shape your rough ideas, organize plots, and polish drafts to shiny perfection, he also shares...

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is publishing a monthly series of e-only essays to correspond with Katherine Paterson's two-year term as the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. The subjects of the essays include: writing and literature for young people, the wonder and imagination found within great books, common questions novice writers ask, and Katherine's own personal experiences throughout her historic career.

After writing more than one hundred books, it still amazes me that I have been lucky enough to spend most of my life doing what I truly love: writing.

What makes a writer? The desire to tell a story, a love of language, an eye for detail, practice, practice, practice. How well should you know your characters? Do you need to outline before you write? How important is length? Now Walter Dean Myers, the new National Ambassador for Young People's

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Outlines "steps of writing a story from beginning to end. Learn how to gather inspiration and develop a story's characters. Then visualize and organize your story's plot with a writing map. And after you've written a really rough draft, check out tips for revising your work"--Page 4 of cover.

This follow-up to What's Your Story? presents a selection of short fiction written by students in grades four through twelve followed by Bauer's comments on each.

"100 imagination-stretching writing exercises inspired by the idea of creative constraints, from the author of The Making of a Story. When you are facing down a blank page (or screen), a constraint-based prompt-for example, "you must use the words 'cloud' and 'green'" or "you must set the scene in a crowded grocery store"-can get your brain working in unexpected ways. In this creative writing guide, longtime teacher and novelist Alice LaPlante shares...

"Things are scary right now. We're all being swept along by a tidal wave of history, and it's easy to feel helpless. But we're not helpless: we have minds, and imaginations, and the ability to visualize other worlds and valiant struggles. And writing can be an act of resistance that reminds us that other futures and other ways of living are possible. Full of memoir, personal anecdote, and insight about how to flourish during the present emergency,...

"In his essential writing guide, This Year You Write Your Novel, Walter Mosley supplied aspiring writers with the basic tools and practical advice needed to write a novel in a single year. In this complementary follow up, Mosley guides the reader through the fundamental building blocks of fiction to deliver a master class on the writer's craft. In a series of conversational and instructive chapters, Mosley breaks down the art of fiction to its most...

The protagonist of Tobias Wolff’s shrewdly—and at times devastatingly—observed first novel is a boy at an elite prep school in 1960. He is an outsider who has learned to mimic the negligent manner of his more privileged classmates. Like many of them, he wants more than anything on earth to become a writer. But to do that he must first learn to tell the truth about himself.
The agency of revelation is the school literary contest,...