Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer

Begin with a good quote. Hide the attribution in the middle. End with a good quote.

1. Read through the New York Times or your local newspaper with a pencil in hand. Mark the locations of subjects and verbs. 2. Do the same with examples of your writing. 3. Do the same with a draft you are working on now. 4. The next time you struggle with a sentence, rewrite it by placing subject and verb at the beginning. 5. For dramatic variation,

You will find in this toolbox new ways of thinking, along with many familiar pieces of advice, dusted off and reframed for a new century. But where do writing tools come from?

Embedded in all that verbal activity is one splendid passive verb: “His pale eyes were frosted with sun glare.” Form follows function. The eyes, in real life, received the action of the sun, so the subject receives the action of the verb. That’s the writing tool: use passive verbs to call attention to the receiver of the action.

Amy Tan’s verbs capture internal action and emotion.

Read Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and study emphatic word order. 2. With a pencil in hand, read an essay you admire. Circle the first and last words in each paragraph. 3. Do the same for recent examples of your work. Revise sentences so that powerful and interesting words, which may be hiding

Tense defines action within time—when the verb happens—the present, past, or future. Voice defines the relationship between subject and verb—who does what. • If the subject performs the action of the verb, we call the verb active. • If the subject receives the action of the verb, we call the verb passive. • A verb that is neither active nor passive

2. Special effects: tools of economy, clarity, originality, and persuasion 3. Blueprints: ways of organizing and building stories and reports 4. Useful habits: routines for living a life of productive writing

Nuts and bolts: strategies for making meaning at the word, sentence, and paragraph levels