Vivid and memorable characters aren't born: they have to be made. This book is a set of tools: literary crowbars, chisels, mallets, pliers and tongs.... Use them to pry, chip, yank and sift good characters out of the place where they live in your memory, your imagination and your soul.Award-winning author Orson Scott Card explains in depth the techniques of inventing, developing and presenting characters, plus handling viewpoint in novels and short stories. With specific examples, he spells out your narrative options–the choices you'll make in creating fictional people so "real" that readers will feel they know them like members of their own families. You'll learn how to:draw the characters from a variety of sources, including a story's basic idea, real life–even a character's social circumstancesmake characters show who they are by the things they do and say, and by their individual "style"develop characters readers will love–or love to hatedistinguish among major characters, minor characters and walk-ons, and develop each one appropriatelychoose the most effective viewpoint to reveal the characters and move the storytellingdecide how deeply you should explore your characters' thoughts, emotions and attitudes

Vivid and memorable characters aren't born: they have to be made This book is a set of tools: literary crowbars, chisels, mallets, pliers and tongs.... Use them to pry, chip, yank and sift good characters out of the place where they live in your imagination. Award-winning author Orson Scott Card explains in depth the techniques of inventing, developing and presenting characters, plus handling viewpoint in novels and short stories. With specific examples, he spells out your narrative options-the choices you'll make in creating fictional people so "real" that readers will feel they know them like members of their own families. You'll learn how to:
* Draw characters from a variety of sources
* Make characters show who they are by the things they do and say, and by their individual "style"
* Develop characters readers will love-or love to hate
* Distinguish among major characters, minor characters and walk-ons, and develop each appropriately
* Choose the most effective viewpoint to reveal the characters and move the storytelling
* Decide how deeply you should explore your characters' thoughts, emotions, and attitudes

Craft your fiction with scene-by-scene flow, logic and readability. An imprisoned man receives an unexpected caller, after which "everything changed..."... And the reader is hooked. But whether or not readers will stay on for the entire wild ride will depend on how well the writer structures the story, scene by scene. This book is your game plan for success. Using dozens of examples from his own work - including Dropshot, Tiebreaker and other popular novels - Jack M. Bickham will guide you in building a sturdy framework for your novel, whatever its form or length. You'll learn how to: "worry" your readers into following your story to the end prolong your main character's struggle while moving the story ahead juggle cause and effect to serve your story action As you work on crafting compelling scenes that move the reader, moment by moment, toward the story's resolution, you'll see why... believable fiction must make more sense than real life every scene should end in disaster some scenes should be condensed, and others built big Whatever your story, this book can help you arrive at a happy ending in the company of satisfied readers.

Elements of Forecasting is a concise, modern survey of business and economics forecasting methods. Written by a leading expert on forecasting, it... focuses on the core techniques of widest applicability and assumes only an elementary background in statistics. It is applications-oriented and illustrates all methods with detailed examples and case studies.-- Covers standard material (trend, seasonality, cycles) as well as more modern topics such as model selection, volatility models, unit roots and stochastic trends, vector autoregressions, and cointegration-- Highly applications-oriented, and numerous detailed real-world examples chosen from a variety of fields (including economics, economics, public policy, and engineering) to illustrate all methods.-- Integrates modern modeling and forecasting software, using Eviews output throughout to illustrate concepts. All the data analyzed is included on a disk packaged with the book-- Drives home the limits of forecasting through realistic examples in which not everything works perfectly

ELEMENTARY FORECASTING focuses on the core techniques of widest applicability. The author illustrates all methods with detailed real-world applications,... many of them international in flavor, designed to mimic typical forecasting situations.

The essential guide to refining and improving grammar – from the basics of sentence structure to the art of composing written works.   A concise,... comprehensive handbook of the basic rules of grammar and usage that presents invaluable tips on how to implement these rules in everyday writing and speaking.   Succinct and immensely practical with coverage of punctuation, capitalization, the parts of the sentence, words often confused, foreign words and phrases, numbers, signs and symbols, etc.

The latest edition of this classic is updated with new problem sets and materialThe Second Edition of this fundamental textbook maintains the book's... tradition of clear, thought-provoking instruction. Readers are provided once again with an instructive mix of mathematics, physics, statistics, and information theory.All the essential topics in information theory are covered in detail, including entropy, data compression, channel capacity, rate distortion, network information theory, and hypothesis testing. The authors provide readers with a solid understanding of the underlying theory and applications. Problem sets and a telegraphic summary at the end of each chapter further assist readers. The historical notes that follow each chapter recap the main points.The Second Edition features:* Chapters reorganized to improve teaching* 200 new problems* New material on source coding, portfolio theory, and feedback capacity* Updated referencesNow current and enhanced, the Second Edition of Elements of Information Theory remains the ideal textbook for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in electrical engineering, statistics, and telecommunications.An Instructor's Manual presenting detailed solutions to all the problems in the book is available from the Wiley editorial department.

An original and ingenious introduction to the basic, experimental, trial-and-error process by which we acquire and validate facts and beliefs and... through which we gain understanding and truth. Elements of Knowledge is an engaging introductory text, effectively and imaginatively designed to bring a working understanding and appreciation of the fundamental tenets and methods of the American school of philosophy known as pragmatism, as articulated by its founder C. S. Peirce, to undergraduates and general readers. It presents and explains the basic pragmatic tools that are the common thread in our acquisition and development of knowledge, whether in an academic, vocational, or professional setting, or in life at large. Pragmatism guides, without dictating, examinations of ordinary human experience, creative learning in all fields, and progress in academic disciplines. This book is intended for use by both general readers and students, particularly those in introductory logic or related philosophy courses. It will also fit well in the design of many "core curriculum" or "general education" course requirements. It is ultimately meant to be accessible and beneficial to anyone seeking a clearer understanding of the unifying principles for acquiring and assessing the soundness of all knowledge.

Written by one of the main figures in twentieth century statistics, this book provides a unified treatment of first-order large-sample theory. It... discusses a broad range of applications including introductions to density estimation, the bootstrap, and the asymptotics of survey methodology. The book is written at an elementary level making it accessible to most readers.

Written by one of the main figures in twentieth century statistics, this book provides a unified treatment of first-order large-sample theory. It... discusses a broad range of applications including introductions to density estimation, the bootstrap, and the asymptotics of survey methodology. The book is written at an elementary level making it accessible to most readers.

Providing the most thorough coverage available in one volume, this comprehensive, broadly based collection offers a wide variety of selections in four... major genres, and also includes a section on film. Each of the five sections contains a detailed critical introduction to each form, brief biographies of the authors, and a clear, concise editorial apparatus. Updated and revised throughout, the new Fourth Edition adds essays by Margaret Mead, Russell Baker, Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, and Alice Walker; fiction by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ursula K. LeGuin, Anton Chekov, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Alice Walker, Louise Erdrich, Donald Barthelme, and James McPherson; poems by John Donne, Robert Browning, Walt Whitman, Edwin Arlington Robinson, e.e. cummings, Langston Hughes, W.H. Auden, Philip Levine, and Louise Gluck; and plays by August Wilson, Marsha Norman, Wendy Wasserstein, and Vaclav Havel. The chapter devoted to film examines the relation of film to literature and gives the complete screenplay for Citizen Kane plus close analysis of a scene from the film. With its innovative structure, comprehensive coverage, and insightful and stimulating presentation of all kinds of literature, this is an anthology readers will turn to again and again.