The writers edge
Discover the writer's edge with essential books for mastering your craft. From Roy Peter Clark's Writing Tools to Dorothea Brande's classic advice and Dwight Swain's selling techniques, this curated list offers the ultimate resources to sharpen your skills and boost your writing.
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Becoming a Writer
by Dorothea Brande
A reissue of a classic work published in 1934 on writing and the creative process, Becoming a Writer recaptures the excitement of Dorothea Brande's creative writing classroom of the 1920s. Decades before brain research "discovered" the role of the right and left brain in all human endeavor, Dorothea Brande was teaching students how to see again, how to hold their minds still, and how to call forth the inner writer.
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One Writer's Beginnings (The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization)
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No summary available.
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Techniques of the Selling Writer
by Dwight V. Swain
Techniques of the Selling Writer provides solid instruction for people who want to write and sell fiction, not just to talk and study about it. It gives the background, insights, and specific procedures needed by all beginning writers. Here one can learn how to group words into copy that moves, movement into scenes, and scenes into stories; how to develop characters, how to revise and polish, and finally, how to sell the product. No one can teach talent, but the practical skills of the professional writer's craft can certainly be taught. The correct and imaginative use of these kills can shorten any beginner's apprenticeship by years. This is the book for writers who want to turn rejection slips into cashable checks.
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Writing Tools
by Roy Peter Clark
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
