Research Writing

Yes, it’s possible to build a business around your expertise, ideas, message, and personality. But first you need to realize - you are the brand. It’s no secret that more people than ever before are building thriving businesses around their personal brands. But why do some create six- or even seven-figure businesses while so many others strive to make a consistent income? In You Are the Brand, Mike Kim shares his proven eight-step blueprint that has helped build the brands for some of today’s most influential thought leaders - as well as his own personal brand.

Writing a memoir is daunting! You're the expert on your life, naturally, but narrating and organizing your own experiences in the best way can feel impossible. Many writers become frustrated in early drafting stages and quit after a couple of brief attempts. Learn from best-selling memoirist Rachael Herron (who teaches this class at Stanford Continuing Studies) how to fast-draft your memoir while keeping its structure compelling. Learn how to frame your life's story and give it a natural arc to keep your reader glued to the page.

Ready to take your story's character arcs and themes to the next level? This latest book from veteran writing teacher and story theorist K.M. Weiland ventures far beyond the popular and pervasive Hero's Journey to explore six important archetypal character arcs, representing key moments of initiation in the human experience.

This is an exuberant group portrait of four extraordinary writers, Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, and Edna Ferber, whose loves, lives, and literary endeavors captured the spirit of the 1920s.

In Joel's Schwartzberg's 10-plus years as a strategic communications trainer, the biggest obstacle he's come across - one that connects directly to nervousness, stammering, rambling, and epic fail - is that most speakers and writers don't have a point. They typically have just a title, a theme, a topic, an idea, an assertion, a catchphrase, or even something much less. This book shows you how to identify your point, leverage it, stick to it, and sell it and how to train others to identify and successfully make their own points.

The ability to write well is a key part of your professional success. From reports and presentations to e-mails and Facebook posts, whether you're a marketer, customer service rep, or manager, being able to write clearly and for the right audience is critical to moving your business forward. The techniques covered in this book will arm you with the skills you need to write better business communications. Inside you'll find: planning each communication; editing and fine-tuning your copy; building your personal brand with communications; writing bids, proposals, and reports; and more.

Sara Daniel, a star European correspondent and one of the few women reporters covering Iraq, dares to venture where few have gone, in this gripping and fascinating memoir. In June of 2002, war looms and Saddam Hussein still has a brutal grip on a nation in disarray. Sara Daniel travels the length and breadth of Iraq, following the fast-evolving events and interviewing people from all walks of life and all religious and political affiliations: from the Kurds in the north to the rising new politicians in Baghdad and beyond....

The Secret to Writing Your First Book: The Essential Guide is a practical guide for aspiring writers who want to take the first step towards completing their first book. Joel Mark Harris provides tips on how to develop a writing routine, including how to carve out dedicated time for writing and how to stay motivated throughout the writing process.

Blake Snyder, author of Save the Cat! and Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies, has delivered the audiobook countless readers and students have clamored for. Inspired by questions from his workshops, lectures, and emails, Blake listened to you and provides new tips, tactics, and techniques to solve your writing problems and create stories that resonate.

In Writing Rediscovered, author and writing scholar Elizabeth Wardle invites you to transform your approach to writing through nine powerful "threshold concepts." These foundational ideas will reshape how you think, feel, and act as a writer.

Writing a Romance Novel For Dummies is the only reference aspiring writers need to get their careers off to the right start. Fully updated to reflect the industry's latest trends and secrets, this book helps you understand what makes a great novel, so you can hone your craft and write books people want to read. We break down the romance subgenres, give you expert tips on plotting and pacing, and walk you through the process of finding an agent and getting published in today's competitive market—or self-publishing like many six-figure authors are doing.

As a scientist, you are a professional writer: your career is built on successful proposals and papers. Success isn't defined by getting papers into print, but by getting them into the reader's consciousness. Writing Science is built upon the idea that successful science writing tells a story. It uses that insight to discuss how to write more effectively.

This ultimate guide for fiction writers demystifies the eight essential elements that every great narrative needs: concept, character, worldbuilding, theme, plot, structure, scenes, and pacing. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to supercharge your skills, this book is packed with practical insights, clear examples, and actionable tips. Each chapter breaks down the storytelling journey into easy-to-follow steps, empowering writers to craft unforgettable narratives.

You’ve written your first book and you are ready to self-publish it; congratulations! Now, what steps do you need to take to self-publish? What are the best strategies? How do you ensure retailers and libraries will carry your book? Aggregating five plus years of experience in the self-publishing space, M.K. Williams has compiled the answers that you need into an easily digestible format to walk you through the publishing process.

Author Allison Fallon has led thousands of people just like you to find greater meaning by helping them write their story. She's witnessed the phenomenon of a person stepping back, analyzing their life, and realizing what they're good at and what they are not, the types of people who hurt them and those who help, and the things that provide satisfaction and what leaves them empty. And in all this, they find their purpose. They find their story.

The vast majority of writers begin the storytelling process with only a partial understanding of 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....

On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik detonated a bomb outside government buildings in central Oslo, killing eight people. He then proceeded to a youth camp on the island of Utøya, where he killed 69 more, most of them teenage members of Norway's governing Labour Party. In One of Us, the journalist Åsne Seierstad tells the story of this terrible day and what led up to it. What made Breivik, a gifted child from an affluent neighborhood in Oslo, become a terrorist?

Meander, Spiral, Explode is a singular and brilliant elucidation of literary strategies that also brings high spirits and wit to its original conclusions. It is a liberating manifesto that says, Let's leave the outdated modes behind and, in thinking of new modes, bring feeling back to experimentation. It will appeal to serious readers and writers alike.

Unlock the secrets of compelling storytelling with Next Level Plot Structure, a brand-new guide from K.M. Weiland, author of the popular Structuring Your Novel. This comprehensive resource delves deep into the intricacies of plot structure, revealing the rich vein of narrative techniques and philosophical underpinnings that have shaped storytelling throughout history.

A pioneer of the New Journalism movement, Hunter S. Thompson wrote with a fire that captured the attention of millions. Here Thompson delivers a mind-bending view of the 1992 presidential race, packed with all the horror, sacrifice, lust, and glory that made this campaign so utterly fascinating.