Books about Writing (Book Guide): Biographies about Writers, Style Guides, Texts on Poetry, the Chicago Manual of Style, the Elements of Style

This is nonfiction commentary. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Reading Like a Writer. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: Reading Like a Writer is writing guide by Francine Prose, published in 2006. In this book subtitled "A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them," Prose shares how she developed her writing craft through writing and reading. She uses examples from literature to demonstrate how fictional elements, such as character and dialogue, can be mastered. Prose discusses the question of whether writing can be taught. She answers the question by suggesting that although writing workshops can be helpful, the best way to learn to write is to read. Closely reading books, Prose studied word choice and sentence construction. Close reading helped her solve difficult obstacles in her own writing. Prose encourages the reader to slow down and read every word. She reminds the reader that words are the "raw material out of which literature is crafted." Challenging the reader stop at every word, she suggest the following question be asked: "What is the writer trying to convey with this word?" Prose discusses how "the well made sentence transcends time and genre." She believes the writer who is concerned about what constitutes a well-constructed sentence is on the right path. Prose mentions the importance of mastering grammar and how it can improve the quality of a writer's sentence. In this chapter, she also discusses the use of long sentences, short sentences, and rhythm in prose. Prose discusses that, just as with sentence construction, the writer who is concerned about paragraph construction is stepping in the right direction. She states that the writer who reads widely will discover there are no general rules for building a well-constructed paragraph, bu...More: http: //booksllc.net/?id=914444