Vivid and memorable characters aren't born: they have to be madeThis 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 sourcesMake 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. . .

A widely varied, immensely enjoyable, and historically important anthology, Future on Ice is a showcase for the hottest stories by the coolest SF writers of the 1980s. Complete with a preface, introduction, and story notes by Card himself, here are early stories from eighteen incredibly talented authors who have since shattered the face of science fiction.

In Sarah, author Orson Scott Card uses his fertile imagination and uncanny insight into human nature to flesh out a unique woman—one who is beautiful, tough, smart, and resourceful in an era when women get short shrift in life as well as in the historical record. Sarah takes on vivid reality as a woman desirable to kings, a devoted wife, and a faithful follower of the God of Abraham, chosen to experience an incomparable miracle. Set in the splendor and excess of Egypt and the starkly beautiful desert landscapes of the Sinai peninsula, Sarah is an altogether believable and provocative drama. This first novel in a trilogy on the women of Genesis illuminates the hardships and the triumphs of a woman destined for greatness. Born into a time and place where a woman speaks her mind at her own peril, and reared as a motherless child by a doting father, Rebekah grew up to be a stunning headstrong beauty. She was chosen by God for a special duty. For Rebekah must leave her fathers...

Leah was so young when her sister Rachel was born that she could not remember a time when Rachel was not the darling of the family—pretty, clever, and cute, whereas Leah plugged along being obedient, hard-working, and responsible. Then one day a good-looking marriageable kinsman named Jacob showed up, looking for a haven from his brother's rage, and Leah fell in love at once. It didn't surprise her at all that Jacob saw only Rachel. But surely, as the two sisters worked and lived alongside Jacob for seven years, he would come to realize that Leah was the one he ought to marry. . .

The Tales of Alvin Maker, Part 4 by Orson Scott Card (c) 1995 by Orson Scott Card v1.1 (Jan-24-1999) If you find and correct errors in the text, please update the version number by 0.1 and redistribute.

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut—young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training. Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers, Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister. Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If the world survives, that is.