Writing Tools, 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer
by Roy Peter Clark
Published by Little, Brown and Company
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Reviewed by Mark M. Owen, Ph.D.
Roy Peter Clark's Writing Tools is to authors and journalists what Home Depot is to construction workers. Clark gives writers a fully stocked shed of clear, concise tips, strategies and guidelines to instantly help improve anyone's writing.
The material contained in the 250-page book is timeless. It can be used in the moment to help refresh a current work. Or, it can be perused for concepts to try and exploit in future work, to give authors refreshing ideas on how to write more effectively.
The book is organized into four parts: Nuts and Bolts, Special Effects, Blueprints, and Useful Habits. Nuts and Bolts are low-level tools to improve word choice, sentence structure, paragraph layout and editing strategies. The part on Special Effects contains tips on how to use language for imaging, pacing and emphasis, to list a few of the tools.
Blueprints moves to higher ground detailing how to plan a work, how to write dialog, and how to generate suspense like Dan Brown. The final part, Useful Habits, gives some ideas for project motivation and execution, to help writers get their art from brain to paper.
Clark did not develop all of these tools, and he admits that right up front. He uses dozens of references to give readers a sense that some tools are weathered advice, like lectures offered by a sage. But what he does well is put a good spin on the lectures. Anecdotes are provided alongside examples of the tools, and a humor is injected to help keep the book entertaining.
The end of the book is reminiscent of a textbook, in a good way. It has a detailed index to help readers locate topics of interest, and it has a handy five-page summary of the different tools. It's too bad the summary didn't come as a pullout poster, because many writers would surely tack it on the wall above their monitors.
Armchair Interviews: Another good book to help writers be better writers.