Hack into your creativity by author Michael Burns

Book: Hack into your Creativity

Author: Michael Burns

Publisher: Penguin Books, Penguin Randomhouse, Penguin group.

ISBN : 978 0670090105

American Michael Burns is a university teacher, writing coach, actor, editor and storyteller. He has a BA from Georgetown University, an MS from UMass Amherst, and holds a PhD in documentary film history from the University of Birmingham in the UK. He has directed five films for international television and his work has been seen in over twenty countries. He moved to India in 2011, and founded Tall Tales, the country's longest-running, live storytelling event series. He also conducts popular writing workshops around India. 

Everyone of us has a tale, a story that only we know best and can tell it with emotions, humor, insights. And yet when we pick up the pen , our words are stymied. We are unable to put it into a coherent narrative, into a style, that tells the tale to a reader sitting far away, in a different country, in the same passion and style that we narrate it. You know this feeling well. I certainly do !!!

This book holds your hand and takes you through the initial jitters to how to get the narrative going, how to get the creative juices to flow through your pencil. How to get a story and its subplots to stick together.

This book is divided into various segments : Character building, Genre, Integration, What next , Everyday magic, and on and on. It literally teaches you how to build a story. That same story, that you know the best, all your life, and yet it is stifled inside you.

If you’re a veteran of writing prompts from the Internet or newspapers, you will find comfort in familiar formats right next to brand new ones. So challenge yourself with types of prompts that you’ve never seen before and discover writing interests and abilities that you didn’t even know you had! Whether you are a casual flash-fiction author, scriptwriter, non-fictioneer or branding executive, this book will set your creativity on fire. Be a story alchemist. Transform your writing. And above all, have fun doing it!

The biggest laurel for this book is, a young reader of 11 years of age, who helps me write the kiddy books on my blog, picked it up and read it for some minutes and said “Wow, just the way you are teaching me to blog, this book is teaching me how to write”. And that young budding author, has since then picked this book up thrice and sat down to read it !!!