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Overview
Where do you get your ideas?"
It's a question and a quandary that bedevils every writer. And once you've got an idea, what then? Ideas without a plan, without a purpose, are no more than pleasant thoughts.
In The Writer's Idea Book, Jack Heffron, former senior editor at Writer's Digest Books and Story Press, will help you find the answer. Utilizing over 400 prompts and exercises, you'll generate intriguing ideas and plumb their possibilities to turn them into something amazing.
The Writer's Idea Book will give you the insight and the self-awareness to create and refine ideas that demand to be transformed into greater works, the kind of compelling, absorbing writing that will have other writers asking "where do you get those ideas?"
Synopsis
The guide writers will reach for time after time to jump start their creativity and develop original ideas. Four distinctive sections offer dozens of unique approaches to "freeing the muse," each geared toward a different stage of writing:
* Bending & Stretching introduces readers to a variety of loosening up techniques - clustering to automatic writing - designed to banish inhibitions and get the words flowing.
* Creating encourages readers to discover the rich writing material within their lives. Exercises including role-playing and picture drawing help writers elicit limitless ideas.
* Finding Forms prompts writers to explore traditional (and nontraditional) forms of written expression so their feelings and objectives are captured keenly and effectively.
* Developing & Assessing focuses on developing and refining existing material through a range of exercises and examinations.
Publishers Weekly
For the myriad frustrated or blocked writers in the world comes another addition to the swelling shelves of guides designed to soothe, teach and inspire. And while Heffron, an acquisitions editor for Writer's Digest and other F+W publications, undeniably loves his subject and knows much about it, he doesn't break out of the conventional (and at this point, one might argue tired) format to tell it. He includes, for instance, the requisite quotes from famous authors that are designed to inspire struggling ones; the familiar pleas for details; the advice on courage and persistence; and the tried-and-true brainstorming exercises. What's better-but still, in form anyway, standard fare-are the 400-plus writing prompts: "Write about your first experience with death"; "Write a scene in which a character returns home after an extended absence"; "Every day for a week, write down something you've learned in conversation"; "Write a new opening" to a piece that's unfinished. Like any catch-all book (this one extends over scripts, poetry, fiction and nonfiction-forms and genres with their own advantages and restrictions), it is ultimately too broad to really instruct. However, those in the market for a basic, practical writing guide will find this one at least as useful as many others. (Nov.) Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.