Readers will delight at the best scenes ever written. They will find old favorites and savor scenes new to them. With each scene, Barnaby Conrad provides insights as to what the author wishes to accomplish with this passage and the literary devices he or she employs. Any avid reader will enjoy Conrad's ""101 Best Scenes Ever Written,"" but countless fledgling and established writers will benefit enormously by sampling and studying these gems from the masters of the written word.

Making the provocative purposeful, this analysis spotlights the most exciting--or potentially embarrassing--story element: the obligatory sex scene. This sensibly suggestive guide demonstrates how to advance plots and reveal truths about characters through their romantic tableaus. Each scene is accompanied by insight into its authors' intentions, how they accomplished them, and their thoughts on romance, love, and sex. The featured passages include men such as William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and John Steinbeck and women from Margaret Mitchell to Toni Morrison and Danielle Steel.

Barnaby Conrad follows up his acclaimed ""101 Best Scenes Ever Written"" with ""101 Best Beginnings Ever Written."" Readers will continue their delightful romp through literature guided and instructed by Conrad's insights and annotations. For writers and readers, the first part of every story is the most important. Conrad has identified twelve types of beginnings, providing captivating examples such as Ambrose Bierce's opening sentence to his short story ""An Imperfect Conflagration"" Early one June morning in 1872 I murdered my father--an act which made a deep impression on me at the time. Writers will learn how to start their stories with forceful, compelling prose that hooks readers from page one; casual readers will delight in the cleverness of the various authors' opening lines and in Conrad's insightful comments.

The leap from concept to final draft is great, and the task is filled with hard work and horrors. It is here that most writers struggle to get the plot right at the expense of the story's real power. The result is a script that is logical in every way, yet unmoving. ""Emotional Structure,"" by Emmy- and Peabody-Award winning producer, writer, and teacher, Peter Dunne, is for these times, when the plot fits nicely into place like pieces in a puzzle, yet an elemental, terribly important something remains missing.

WHAT IS THE STORY GRID? The Story Grid is a tool developed by editor Shawn Coyne to analyze stories and provide helpful editorial comments. It's like a CT Scan that takes a photo of the global story and tells the editor or writer what is working, what is not, and what must be done to make what works better and fix what's not. The Story Grid breaks down the component parts of stories to identify the problems. And finding the problems in a story is almost as difficult as the writing of the story itself (maybe even more difficult). The Story Grid is a tool with many applications: 1. It will tell a writer if a Story ?works? or ?doesn't work. 2. It pinpoints story problems but does not emotionally abuse the writer, revealing exactly where a Story (not the person creating the Story'the Story) has failed. 3. It will tell the writer the specific work necessary to fix that Story's problems. 4. It is a tool to re-envision and resuscitate a seemingly irredeemable pile of paper stuck in an attic drawer. 5. It is a tool that can inspire an original creation.

A Finalist for the National Book Award When Ada leaves home for her freshman year at a Historically Black College, it’s the first time she’s ever been so far from her family—and the first time that she’s been able to make her own choices and to seek her place in this new world. As she stumbles deeper into the world of dance and explores her sexuality, she also begins to wrestle with her past—her mother’s struggle with addiction, her Nigerian father’s attempts to make a home for her. Ultimately, Ada discovers she needs to brush off the destiny others have chosen for her and claim full ownership of her body and her future. “Candice Iloh’s beautifully crafted narrative about family, belonging, sexuality, and telling our deepest truths in order to be whole is at once immensely readable and ultimately healing.”—Jacqueline Woodson, New York Times Bestselling Author of Brown Girl Dreaming “An essential—and emotionally gripping and masterfully written and compulsively readable—addition to the coming-of-age canon.”—Nic Stone, New York Times Bestselling Author of Dear Martin “This is a story about the sometimes toxic and heavy expectations set onthe backs of first-generation children, the pressures woven into the familydynamic, culturally and socially. About childhood secrets with sharp teeth. And ultimately, about a liberation that taunts every young person.” —Jason Reynolds, New York Times Bestselling Author of Long Way Down

More than 45 agent, editor, and author-written chapters--called workshops in the book--provide instruction on the writing craft and the business of getting published.