One of America's most influential writing teachers offers a toolbox from which writers of all kinds can draw practical inspiration. Writing is a craft you can learn, says Roy Peter Clark. You need tools, not rules. His book distills decades of experience into 50 tools that will help any writer become more fluent and effective. WRITING TOOLS covers everything from the most basic (Tool 5: Watch those adverbs) to the more complex (Tool 34: Turn your notebook into a camera) and provides more than 200 examples from literature and journalism to illustrate the concepts. For students, aspiring...

Early in the history of English, the words "grammar" and "glamour" meant the same thing: the power to charm. Roy Peter Clark, author of Writing Tools and the forthcoming Help For Writers, aims to put the glamour back in grammar with this fun, engaging alternative to stuffy instructionals. Now in paperback, this widely praised practical guide demonstrates everything from the different parts of speech to why effective writers prefer concrete nouns and active verbs. Above all, Clark teaches readers how to master grammar to perfect their use of English, to instill meaning, and...

America's most influential writing teacher offers an engaging and practical guide to effective short-form writing.

In HOW TO WRITE SHORT, Roy Peter Clark turns his attention to the art of painting a thousand pictures with just a few words. Short forms of writing have always existed-from ship logs and telegrams to prayers and haikus. But in this ever-changing Internet age, short-form writing has become an essential skill. Clark covers how to write effective and powerful titles, headlines, essays, sales pitches, Tweets, letters, and even self-descriptions for online...

Roy Peter Clark, one of America's most influential writing teachers, draws writing lessons from 25 great texts.
Where do writers learn their best moves? They use a technique that Roy Peter Clark calls X-ray reading, a form of reading that lets you penetrate beyond the surface of a text to see how meaning is actually being made. In THE ART OF X-RAY READING, Clark invites you to don your X-ray reading glasses and join him on a guided tour through some of the most exquisite and masterful literary works of all time, from The Great Gatsby to Lolita...