Product Description

One of America's most influential writing teachers offers a toolbox from which writers of all kinds can draw practical inspiration.

"Writing is a craft you can learn," says Roy Peter Clark. "You need tools, not rules." His book distills decades of experience into 50 tools that will help any writer become more fluent and effective.

WRITING TOOLS covers everything from the most basic ("Tool 5: Watch those adverbs") to the more complex ("Tool 34: Turn your notebook into a camera") and provides more than 200 examples from literature and journalism to illustrate the concepts. For students, aspiring novelists, and writers of memos, e-mails, PowerPoint presentations, and love letters, here are 50 indispensable, memorable, and usable tools.



"Pull out a favorite novel or short story, and read it with the guidance of Clark's ideas. . . . Readers will find new worlds in familiar places. And writers will be inspired to pick up their pens." -Boston Globe

"For all the aspiring writers out there-whether you're writing a novel or a technical report-a respected scholar pulls back the curtain on the art." -Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"This is a useful tool for writers at all levels of experience, and it's entertainingly written, with plenty of helpful examples." -Booklist

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27758 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-10
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Covering the writing waterfront-from basics on verb tense to the value of forming a "support group"-Poynter Institute vice president Clark offers tips, tricks and techniques for anyone putting fingers to keyboard. The best assets in Clark's book are in the "workshop" sections that conclude each chapter and list strategies for incorporating the material covered in each lesson (minimize adverbs, use active verbs, read your work aloud). Though some suggestions are classroom campy ("Listen to song lyrics to hear how the language moves on the ladder of abstraction" and "With some friends, take a big piece of chart paper and with colored markers draw a diagram of your writing process"), Clark's blend of instruction and exercise will prove especially useful for teachers. One exercise, for instance, suggests reading the newspaper and marking the location of subjects and verbs. Another provides a close reading of a passage from The Postman Always Rings Twice to look at the ways word placement and sentence structure can add punch to prose. Clark doesn't intend his guide to be a replacement for classic style guides like Elements of Style, but as a companion volume, it does the trick.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
The author, vice president of the Poynter Institute School of Journalism, wants you to understand that a tool isn't the same thing as a rule. A tool is something designed to help you, not constrict you. The 50 tools discussed here take writers through the process of storytelling in prose, from the basic (construct a sentence with a subject and a verb) to the advanced (make your characters archetypes, not stereotypes). Many of Clark's rules are technical, having to do with such matters as punctuation and tense, but some of them are more thematically oriented (for example, discussions of the proper uses of foreshadowing and suspense). Use the tools when you like, the author says, and throw them away when it suits you. Just know what it is you're throwing away and why. This is a useful tool for writers at all levels of experience, and it's entertainingly written, with plenty of helpful examples. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Roy Peter Clark, a writer who teaches and a teacher who writes, is vice president and senior scholar of the Poynter Institute, one of the most prestigious schools for journalists in the world. He has written or edited 14 books about writing and journalism. He lives in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Customer Reviews

Standout approach to helping writers -- work through it or browse randomly, you'll find something useful!
I started to write as soon as I started to read, which is to say very young. I write daily; prevent me from writing and you will have to deal with the consequences: distant stares, mumbling, note-scribbling, sudden odd ejaculations (of words).

And I like to think that I have over the years gained some proficiency in writing. But there is always room for improvement and fresh insight into the process, and I regularly sample books on writing craft to pick up pointers.

Writing Tools caught my eye the other day. I was struck by the presence of the words "tools" and "strategies" in the title, rather than the "rules" and "guidelines" featured so prominently in many another book devoted to writing skills. And as advertised, I found in this book tools immediately welcome and useful in my writer's toolbox.

Clark's background is journalism, and many of the tools are devoted to increasing clarity and conciseness. But these are characteristics as important in fiction as in nonfiction, and the tools can be used on any form or genre.

Each 'tool' is covered in a short chapter, the 50 chapters grouped as "Nuts and Bolts", "Blueprints", "Special Effects", and "Useful Habits". (It would be more accurate to say that the chapters, averaging four pages, are not short but rather just as long as needed -- Clark stresses allowing words the space they need while keeping them reined in.) 'Homework' is assigned in the "Workshop" exercises for each chapter.

The book is replete with examples of fine writing in a variety of styles; Clark's critical analysis turns each of these examples into a lesson. He also asks us to ponder previous pages of the book and consider their alternative forms.

I said above that I found the tools presented in this book immediately useful, and I would hazard to say that any writer, of any degree of experience, could open this book at random and find something useful. Roughly half the book is dedicated to strategies for creativity and structure (Chapter 28: "Put odd and interesting things next to each other") with the remainder presenting tools for tightening up what has already been written (Chapter 5: "Watch Those Adverbs"). Writers could do worse than to copy synopses of these chapters onto cards, then draw a card at random as the 'tool of the day' to apply to works in progress.

After just one pass through this book, I already think of each chapter as a separate tool in the toolbox. Just as in my carpenter's toolbox there are tools for selecting, measuring, and cutting; tools and hardware for joining and building; tools for removal of material and for finishing and polishing. And just as in my carpenter's toolbox, I find satisfaction in knowing that I have the proper tools at hand to build new projects.

The book itself is the best tool of all. I am going to buy a copy, plus several to give or loan out.

A helpful tool for writers
Being a Norwegian avoids me of being an native speaker of English. But, surprisingly enough, all the books that has provided me with the most useful writing tools are from english writers or tutors. The Norwegian language is not immediately compatible with english, but there is a lot of universal rules when it comes to writing. "Writing Tools" is a very good collection of tools for writers that wants to improve their skills remarkably. The strategic tools is explicit and easy to understand, besides being convincingly. A writers quest (among several) is to give the readers an experience, and send them on journeys to worlds that they have never seen, but has the ability to recognise. "Writing Tools" are helping you passing the obstacles and it gives you tools, but not rules for writing. That gives you the freedom to understand it and transfer it in to something each of us can use. "Writing Tools" together with "The Elements of Style" (Strunk and White) is an ultimate combination and will elevate your writing into something "in the vicinity of perfect".

Terrific book for writers and teachers of writing
This book should be in the library of every writer. I've been writing for 20 years and still found lessons that I needed to learn.