Blueprint for Writing: A Writer's Guide to Creativity, Craft & Career

Offers a step-by-step guide to making an original concept into a finished work, covers character, plot, and dialog, and shows how to prepare a manuscript for submission

Ballon, a writing teacher and columnist, offers this step-by-step plan for crafting stories for television movies, motion pictures, short stories, sitcoms, and novels. Originally written for her own classes and workshops, the book describes the "Balloncing Method," a melding of creativity, craft, and career that results in a productive, marketable author. Ballon demystifies the writing process by showing how to tap into your unconscious to increase creativity and decrease roadblocks. She also stresses structure and characterization, demonstrating how would-be authors can plumb the inner depths of their characters in order to develop more complex, memorable ones. Exercises at the end of each chapter engage the motivated reader/writer but cannot substitute for in-class participation and criticism. Recommended for libraries serving large populations of writers.
Cathy Sabol, Northern Virginia Community Coll., Manassas
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.