Product Description: No scholarly work has yet addressed the topic of beginnings in American poetry in sufficient scope or detail or adequate theoretical background. Although issues of futurity have become more and more central to literary and cultural studies in recent years, especially in environmental criticism, the study of poetry has been regrettably absent...read more

Reveals methods for creating a compelling story from beginning to end, discussing solutions for potential problems at each stage of the creative process

The ways in which literary works begin have proved fascinating to readers and critics at least since Aristophanes. This collection of essays gives life to a topic of perennial interest by presenting a variety of original readings in nearly all the major genres of Greek and Latin literature. The subjects of these essays range from narrative voices in the opening of the Odyssey to ideological reasons for Tacitus' choice of a beginning in the Histories, and from a survey of opening devices in Greek poetry to the playwright's negotiations with the audience in Roman comedy. Other papers discuss 'false starts' in Gorgias and Herodotus, the prologues of Greek tragedy, Plato's 'frame' dialogues, delayed proems in Virgil, the role of the patron in Horace, aristocratic beginnings in Seneca, and 'inappropriate' prefaces in Plutarch. By embracing a variety of authors and a broad range of approaches, from formal analysis of opening devices to post-structural interpretation, these twelve contributions by both younger and established scholars offer an exciting new perspective on beginnings in classical literature.

Product Description: 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...read more

Product Description: Jump Start Your Writing gives writers a creative nudge. It helps dormant muses wake up and run across the page screaming with passion. This book is packed with hundreds of story sparkers, creativity boosts, and fast writing tips. It reveals secrets that professional writers know well, like conceiving realistic characters, injecting conflict and emotion, and exploring storyline, action verbs, and active voice...read more

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Product Description: Whether you are a novice writer, or an immediate journalism student; in a freshmen English class; writing a speech, a technical report, advertising copy, or promotional or publicity material; beginning a magazine article or book; or working on any other writing project, you need to face the demands of that blank computer screen...read more

In what ways does the opening of a novel relate to the narrative that unfolds from it? What are the different approaches to close reading a page of prose fiction? How does reading a text for a second time affect our understanding of the significance of its opening?In this unique book, Peter Childs discusses the opening lines of 24 widely-studied literary texts from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. These analyses amount to both an overview of modes of fiction over the last 300 years and also a guide to techniques of close reading. The extracts are taken from the work of novelists ranging from Jane Austen to Salman Rushdie. This stimulating and illuminating book will be a useful text for undergraduates studying the novel and involved in critical appreciation and close textual analysis.Texts discussed: Robinson Crusoe, Tristram Shandy, Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, Silas Marner, Tess of the D'urbervilles, The Turn of the Screw, Heart of Darkness, The Good Soldier, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, The Life and Death of Harriet Frean, A Passage to India, Mrs Dalloway, Brave New World, The Road to Wigan Pier, Goodbye to Berlin, Under the Volcano, Wide Sargasso Sea, The Bloody Chamber, Shame, and The Buddha of Suburbia.

Product Description: A mostly theoretical and philosophical examination of the concept of beginnings in medieval literature, notably in Piers Plowman , as well as grammar, rhetoric, physics, theology and genealogy. Smith focuses on the ways in which texts begin and how the initiative of beginning, heralded as a call for action, is maintained...read more

Provides advice for aspiring novelists on preparing a manuscript for a literary agent or editor, writing readable dialogue, and using other techniques to begin a work so that publishers will want to publish it and readers will want to read it (view table of contents)

A collection of insightful essays on a variety of literary masterpieces from such writers as Gogol, Kafka, and Garcia Marquez analyzes the opening sections of works to explore the author's intentions in enticing the reader into the game of reading. 20,000 first printing. (view table of contents)

Shows aspiring fiction writers how to glean inspiration from neighbors and strangers, reshape classic tales, borrow from current events, pose a hypothetical situation, and use other tricks of the writing trade to turn reality into creative, imaginative stories. Original.

Product Description: The essays in this collection address the prophetic function of opening scenes and sequences in Shakespeare's histories, dramas, and comedies. The authors ask and attempt to answer such questions as what constitutes an opening sequence, the purpose of prologues and choruses, the meaning of «enframed action,» and the relationship between exposition and mood setting...read more

Product Description: Cook teaches article writers how to grip readers with their writing, keep them entranced and make them remember what they've read.

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Product Description: Though in some ways a realistic novelist, Jane Austen self-consciously presents the ideal through her ability to play. Kuldip Kaur Kuwahara shows how Austen treats art as an expression of what her contemporary, Friedrich von Schiller, termed the «Spieltrieb» or «play drive»...read more

Product Description: 300 pages

Product Description: Newlove combines human insight, personal taste, and his own crackling talent as a writer to show writers how, with an inspired beginning, a work of genius can be created. The 75 selections here range from works as diverse as Dickens' Bleak House to more contemporary openings from Updike, Joyce, Welty, and Dinesen...read more

Product Description: Opening lines of great novels from all times and periods.

Product Description: For book lovers, literary trivia fans, and know-it-alls everywhere, here is an irresistible collection of literature's great opening sentences, cleverly arranged so that each line or phrase builds upon the one before it to create a unique story.

Lists, alphabetically by title, the first sentences of five hundred popular novels from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to Zorba the Greek

Product Description: Most studies of Menander's comedies concentrate on the playwright's talent for characterization and plot construction while ignoring his artful use of theatrical conventions to create live theater. This book, based on close readings of the surviving texts, is the first to examine systematically the techniques of stagecraft--particularly stage movement--employed by the playwright in his effort to work successfully within theatrical limits...read more