75 years of solid writing instruction, advice and inspiration fill the pages of this book, culled from Writer's Digest articles. A goldmine of information from experts in the field.
On the occasion of the 75th birthday of Writer's Digest, its editors have collected 49 columns from the magazine that best exemplify "fine writing about the art and craft of writing." Included are essays from writers famed (Isaac Asimov, Allen Ginsberg, Stephen King) and forgotten (Morry Hull, Allis McKay) on such subjects as setting the pace of a story, writing science fiction ("think like an alien, write like an angel"), and getting inside your characters. Irving Wallace ponders "that most important of all gifts--an eye for the unusual" (December 1938), while David X. Manners divulges his "Ten Deadly Sins" of story writing (August 1946) and Carl E. Johnson explores ways of bringing "sharpness of sensory detail to our writing efforts" (May 1972). From Gary Provost we have "Seven Beacons of Excellent Writing"--brevity, clarity, precision, harmony, humanity, honesty, and poetry (March 1984); from Linton Weeks, "Eight Ingredients of Powerful Nonfiction" (September 1989). Toward book's end, appropriately, Don McKinney addresses the question of what makes a good ending (February 1992). --Jane Steinberg
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
The Usual Stuff by the Usual Suspects.:
The book is an anthology of essays cobbled together by the senior editor of WRITERS DIGEST for their 75th anniversary. Some of the essays are incoherent, some are sublime, and most are the usual stuff that reveals little about the nuts & bolts of writing. I found the essays from the 1920s to be excellent. The rest failed to impress me. The collection of cameo quips by famous authors was a disappointment.
A Best of Writer's Digest book:
If you can buy only one book on writing then this is it. It's filled with informative articles from Writer's Digest magazine written by the best of the best--from Ginsburg to King.
You will learn everything from theme to plotting to building believable characters.
I highly recommend The Writer's Digest Guide to Good Writing.
Privacy policy: we don't collect information
about visitors except for the standard technical server logs. We don't send unsolicited emails. We don't
sell the information that we don't collect about you to anyone. When you follow
links to other sites, their privacy policies apply. Thanks for visiting!
