
Saved by Tyler and
Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer
Saved by Tyler and
Amy Tan’s verbs capture internal action and emotion.
“Why should I get writer’s block?” asked the mischievous Roger Simon. “My father never got truck driver’s block.”
the present. This strategy immerses readers in the immediacy of experience, as if we were sitting—right now—beside the poor woman in her grief.
forms with a pencil. In the margins, categorize each verb. 2. Convert passive and to be verbs into the active. For example, “It was her observation that” can become “She observed.” 3. In your own work and in the newspaper, search for verb qualifiers and see what happens when you cut them. 4. Experiment with both voice and tense. Find a passage you
... See moreEmbedded 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.
Begin with a good quote. Hide the attribution in the middle. End with a good quote.
the act of writing less as a special talent and more as a purposeful craft.
put your best stuff near the beginning and at the end; hide weaker stuff in the middle.
Writing long sentences means going against the grain. But isn’t that what the best writers do? In his novel The Rings of Saturn, W. G. Sebald uses the long sentence to explain—and mirror—the antique prose style of English essayist Sir Thomas Browne: In common with other English writers of the seventeenth century, Browne wrote out of the fullness of
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