William Sloane, Julia H. Sloane, "The Craft of Writing"
The Craft of Writing
W W Norton&Co Inc | 1979 | ISBN: 0393044718 | PDF | pages 123 | 1.39 Mb
If you're a serious writer, read, understand and follow the precepts in this book. True, Sloane–a career editor–is terse and abstract, but he speaks with such enormous authority and conviction, _The Craft of Writing_ is in my top four how-to writing books, next to Strunk and White. For example, Sloane emphasizes why the reader reads anything: "tell me about me." He urges, make the "reader not a spectator, but a participant." "Action," he goes on, is the "plot," while "reaction" is [reader] emotion. Though most grammar school graduates eschew the "theme" word, Sloan says it's integral and inseparable to all successful novels, as each word, sentence and paragraph must support the core argument of the work. I got the most out of the dialogue chapter. Every instance of dialogue must fulfill at least two of the following functions: characterization, setting, tell the backstory or theme. That's as close as Sloan ever gets to a writing cookbook.