The Writers Idea Book | 
 enlarge | Author: Jack Heffron
Publisher: Writers Digest Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.99
Buy New: $4.75
You Save: $10.24 (68%)
New (29) Collectible (1) from $4.75
Avg. Customer Rating:  21 reviews
Sales Rank: 48527
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 262
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6 x 0.8
ISBN: 158297179X
Dewey Decimal Number: 808.02
EAN: 9781582971797
ASIN: 158297179X
Publication Date: November 15, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Unread - a hint of shelfwear on the front cover.
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Product Description
Written to help anybody blast writer's block and get writing, Heffron's book offers tips on how to come up with ideas, how to filter out the best of them and how to transform those from ideas to the piece desired. The techniques are designed to help with any type of narrative, from a short story or
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| Customer Reviews: Read 16 more reviews...
For every writer, despite experience! January 16, 2008
I bought this book in 2004 and I still use it to this day. It's witty and a fun read, not to mention inspiring. It isn't that I have a shortage of ideas, but I have a hard time putting it on papaer... and this book definately puts things in a new perspective for me!
 a great idea book for fiction writers November 27, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
A great book with a lot of writing prompts. Perfect for the fiction author, however as a writer of non-fiction I felt there was a lot of character development exercises. The trick for me was to try to turn the ideas into ones that would fit into non-fiction. The surprise was this book got me back into writing fiction which I had not done for many years.
My recommendation is if you are looking for writing prompts for fiction, definitely buy this book. If all you do is non-fiction, this may not be the book for you, but it never hurts to look it over.
It was quite well written and Jack Heffron certainly presented some good idea generators.
Retell a fairy tale, write an eulogy...even review a book April 25, 2006
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
With over 400 prompts in this book there is one to suit every mood and these will not only encourage you to write regularly but get your creative juices flowing. What's more each of the prompts target specific areas of your writing such as story endings, developing character & plot. It also addresses nonfiction, poetry & screenplays...and I am using it to improve my blog writing.
I own a number of books on this topic (including "What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers") but find the format and content of Jack Heffron's Writers Idea Book to be the most practical, inspiring and effective. Thanks Jack!
straight to the point May 9, 2005
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
to add to the other reviews, I like this book because I'm the type of writer that needs an "assignment" to make sure I don't keep writing about the same things. With this book, it's easy to follow along and take out what you need and go back later to the other prompts the second or third time around. I'm a firm believer that a person should go through a book like this two or more times to get the full benefits.
Prompts, prompts, and more prompts! April 28, 2004
17 out of 17 found this review helpful
Jack Heffron's "The Writer's Idea Book" is a very good specimen of a book of writers' exercises. It mixes "prompts" of various sorts (more than 400 of them according to the cover, and I believe it!) with short riffs of practical advice on a wide range of writing matters. While Heffron is a professional editor and does give advice regarding methods that he believes work best, he concentrates on writing for yourself in this book rather than trying to get published. This is just the idea phase after all--check out his later book, "The Writer's Idea Workshop," for practical advice regarding taking your idea from raw ore to refined metal.There are many prompts meant to help you mine your own experiences for ideas and plots. (As well as your likes and dislikes, your family, your home town, places you've visited, "public moments," secrets, dreams, and more.) There are prompts to help you explore different forms of writing, structure your story, and more. There are even good solid hints on dealing with openings and endings. The huge number of prompts in this book guarantees that you should be able to find something to spark your creativity no matter what mood you're in. In fact, about the only thing that bothered me about this book was the lack of the unusual. I love genre. Horror, science fiction, fantasy--I love the strange, and this book had a very "literary" feel to it. That'll make it perfect for many other writers out there, but it left me a little flat. I like to have a certain otherworldliness come into play when looking through lots of writing exercises and warm-ups. This book is meant to push you into finding inspiration from the ordinary rather than the extraordinary; I would have liked a better balance. It's certainly a fun book, however, and definitely a kick in the inspiration department!
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