Writing Tools : 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer

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Format: Hardcover
Pub. Date: 2006-09-01
Publisher(s): Little, Brown and Company
List Price: $21.39

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Summary

'Tools Not Rules' says Roy Peter Clark, vicepresident and senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, the esteemedschool for journalists and teachers of journalists. Clark believesthat everyone can write well with the help of a handful of usefultools that he has developed over decades of writing and teaching. Ifyou 'google' Roy Peter Clark, Writing Tools', you'll get anastonishing 1.25 million hits. That's because journalists everywhererely on his tips to help them write well every day - in fact he fieldsemails from around the world from grateful writers. 'Writing Tools'covers everything from the basics (Tool 5: Watch those Adverbs) tothe more complex (Tool 34: Turn your notebook into a camera) and usesmore than 300e xamples from literature and journalism to illustratethe concepts. For students, aspiring novelists and writers of memos,emails, PowerPoint presentations and love letters, here are 50indispensible, memorable and usable tools.

Author Biography

Roy Peter Clark is senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, one of the most prestigious schools for journalists in the world. He has taught writing at every level -- from schoolchildren to Pulitzer Prize-winning authors -- for more than forty years.

A writer who teaches and a teacher who writes, he has authored or edited nineteen books on writing and journalism, including The Art of X-Ray Reading, How to Write Short, Writing Tools, The Glamour of Grammar, and Help! for Writers. He lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he is considered a garage-band legend.

Table of Contents

Introduction: A Nation of Writers 3(6)
Part One. NUTS AND BOLTS
9(48)
Begin sentences with subjects and verbs
11(4)
Order words for emphasis
15(4)
Activate your verbs
19(4)
Be passive-aggressive
23(4)
Watch those adverbs
27(4)
Take it easy on the -ings
31(5)
Fear not the long sentence
36(5)
Establish a pattern, then give it a twist
41(4)
Let punctuation control pace and space
45(5)
Cut big, then small
50(7)
Part Two. SPECIAL EFFECTS
57(60)
Prefer the simple over the technical
59(5)
Give key words their space
64(4)
Play with words, even in serious stories
68(4)
Get the name of the dog
72(4)
Pay attention to names
76(4)
Seek original images
80(4)
Riff on the creative language of others
84(4)
Set the pace with sentence length
88(5)
Vary the lengths of paragraphs
93(5)
Choose the number of elements with a purpose in mind
98(5)
Know when to back off and when to show off
103(4)
Climb up and down the ladder of abstraction
107(5)
Tune your voice
112(5)
Part Three. BLUEPRINTS
117(76)
Work from a plan
119(5)
Learn the difference between reports and stories
124(4)
Use dialogue as a form of action
128(5)
Reveal traits of character
133(4)
Put odd and interesting things next to each other
137(5)
Foreshadow dramatic events and powerful conclusions
142(4)
To generate suspense, use internal cliffhangers
146(4)
Build your work around a key question
150(5)
Place gold coins along the path
155(4)
Repeat, repeat, and repeat
159(6)
Write from different cinematic angles
165(4)
Report and write for scenes
169(5)
Mix narrative modes
174(5)
In short works, don't waste a syllable
179(5)
Prefer archetypes to stereotypes
184(4)
Write toward an ending
188(5)
Part Four. USEFUL HABITS
193(52)
Draft a mission statement for your work
195(5)
Turn procrastination into rehearsal
200(5)
Do your homework well in advance
205(5)
Read for both form and content
210(4)
Save string
214(5)
Break long projects into parts
219(4)
Take an interest in all crafts that support your work
223(5)
Recruit your own support group
228(4)
Limit self-criticism in early drafts
232(4)
Learn from your critics
236(4)
Own the tools of your craft
240(5)
Afterword 245(1)
Acknowledgments 246(3)
Writing Tools Quick List 249(6)
Index 255

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