From the Book - First edition.
A writing book about writing books --
Language and craft. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch : Murder your darlings ; William Zinsser : Find and cut the clutter ; Donald Hall : Learn to live inside words ; George Campbell : Shape a sentence for the desired effect ; John McPhee : Work from a plan --
Voice and style. William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White : Recognize two contradictory meanings of style ; Gary Provost and Ursula K. Le Guin : Vary sentence length to create a pleasing rhythm ; Vera John-Steiner : Use visual markings to spark your creative process ; Constance Hale and Jessie Scanlon : Tune your voice for the digital age ; Ben Yagoda : Turn the dials that adjust the way you sound as a writer --
Confidence and identity. Donald Murray : Learn the steps of the writing process ; Anne Lamott : Keep writing, things will get better ; Peter Elbow : Write freely to discover what you want to say ; Dorothea Brande and Brenda Ueland : Say it loud : "I am a writer" ; Stephen King : Develop the writing habit --
Storytelling and character. Brian Boyd : Understand the value of storytelling ; James Wood : Prefer the complex human narrator ; Northrop Frye : Write for sequence, then for theme ; Lajos Egri : Distill your story into five words, maybe three ; E. M. Forster : Add dimension to characters ; Gay Talese and Tom Wolfe : Report for story --
Rhetoric and audience. Louise M. Rosenblatt : Anticipate the needs of readers ; Quintilian : Embrace rhetoric as the source of language power ; Aristotle : Influence the emotional responses of your audience ; Vivian Gornick and Mary Karr : Sign a social contract with the reader ; Rudolf Flesch and Robert Gunning : Write to the level of your reader, and a little higher --
Mission and purpose. S. I Hayakawa : Learn the strategies that make reports reliable ; Kurt Vonnegut and Lee Stringer : Write to make your soul grow ; Horace : Write to delight and instruct ; Edward R. Murrow : Become the eyes and ears of the audience ; Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Neil Postman : Choose advocacy over propaganda ; Natalie Goldberg and Charles Johnson : Be a writer, and so much more --
Appendix : Books by Roy Peter Clark.
