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Murder Your Darlings: And Other Gentle Writing Advice from Aristotle to Zinsser
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Overview
With so many excellent writing guides lining bookstore shelves, it can be hard to know where to look for the best advice. Should you go with Natalie Goldberg or Anne Lamott? Maybe William Zinsser or Stephen King would be more appropriate. Then again, what about the classics Strunk and White, or even Aristotle himself?
Thankfully, your search is over. In Murder Your Darlings, Roy Peter Clark, who has been a beloved and revered writing teacher to children and Pulitzer Prize winners alike for more than thirty years, has compiled a remarkable collection of more than 100 of the best writing tips from fifty of the best writing books of all time.
With a chapter devoted to each key strategy, Clark expands and contextualizes the original author's suggestions and offers anecdotes about how each one helped him or other writers sharpen their skills. An invaluable resource for writers of all kinds, Murder Your Darlings is an inspiring and edifying ode to the craft of writing.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780316481885 |
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Publisher: | Little, Brown and Company |
Publication date: | 01/21/2020 |
Pages: | 352 |
Sales rank: | 776,493 |
Product dimensions: | 5.70(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.30(d) |
About the Author
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 Writing Book about Writing Books 3
Part I Language and Craft 11
1 Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch: Murder your darlings. 13
2 William Zinsser: Find and cut the clutter. 20
3 Donald Hall: Learn to live inside words. 27
4 George Campbell: Shape a sentence for the desired effect. 34
5 John McPhee: Work from a plan. 41
Part II Voice and Style 47
6 William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White: Recognize two contradictory meanings of style. 49
7 Gary Provost and Ursula K. Le Guin: Vary sentence length to create a pleasing rhythm. 58
8 Vera John-Steiner: Use visual markings to spark your creative process. 68
9 Constance Hale and Jessie Scanlon: Tune your voice for the digital age. 78
10 Ben Yagoda: Turn the dials that adjust the way you sound as a writer. 86
Part III Confidence and Identity 97
11 Donald Murray: Learn the steps of the writing process. 99
12 Anne Lamott: Keep writing; things will get better. 108
13 Peter Elbow: Write freely to discover what you want to say. 116
14 Dorothea Brande and Brenda Ueland: Say it loud: "I am a writer." 125
15 Stephen King: Develop the writing habit. 139
Part IV Storytelling and Character 147
16 Brian Boyd: Understand the value of storytelling. 149
17 James Wood: Prefer the complex human narrator. 160
18 Northrop Frye: Write for sequence, then for theme. 170
19 Lajos Egri: Distill your story into five words-maybe three. 178
20 E. M. Forster: Add dimension to characters. 185
21 Gay Talese and Tom Wolfe: Report for story. 193
Part V Rhetoric and Audience 203
22 Louise M. Rosenblatt: Anticipate the needs of readers. 205
23 Quintilian: Embrace rhetoric as the source of language power. 213
24 Aristotle: Influence the emotional responses of your audience. 220
25 Vivian Gornick and Mary Karr: Sign a social contract with the reader. 229
26 Rudolf Flesch and Robert Gunning: Write to the level of your reader-and a little higher. 239
Part VI Mission and Purpose 253
27 S. I. Hayakawa: Learn the strategies that make reports reliable. 255
28 Kurt Vonnegut and Lee Stringer: Write to make your soul grow. 265
29 Horace: Write to delight and instruct. 273
30 Edward R. Murrow: Become the eyes and ears of the audience. 282
31 Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Neil Postman: Choose advocacy over propaganda. 291
32 Natalie Goldberg and Charles Johnson: Be a writer-and so much more. 299
Afterword 311
Acknowledgments 313
Appendix: Books Roy Peter Clark 316
Bibliography 319
Index 329