1. Verbs fall into three categories: active, passive, and forms of the verb to be. Review your writing and circle verb

the act of writing less as a special talent and more as a purposeful craft.

who traffic in words. To

Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style advises the writer to “place emphatic words in a sentence at the end,” an example of its own rule. The most emphatic word appears at “the end.” Application of this tool will improve your prose in a flash.

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?

Use the long sentence to describe something long. Let form follow function.

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 is a linking verb, a form of the verb to be.

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.

Scrape away these crustaceans during revision, and the ship of your prose will glide toward meaning with speed and grace.