By Theodore Cheney
Whilst requested through the Paris evaluate what forced him to rewrite the finishing of A Farewell to palms 39 occasions, Ernest Hemingway responded, "Getting the phrases right." His solution echoes what each profitable author understands: the key to all sturdy writing is revision.
For greater than 20 years, Getting the phrases correct has helped writers from all professions rewrite, revise, and refine their writing. during this re-creation, writer Theodore Cheney bargains 39 distinct methods you could increase your writing, together with how to:
create gentle transitions among paragraphs
correct the invisible faults of inconsistency, incoherence, and imbalance
overcome difficulties of transferring viewpoint and style
express your principles sincerely by means of trimming away vulnerable or additional words
You'll enhance latest items and each destiny paintings via making use of the 3 basic principles—reduce, rearrange, and reword. as soon as the secrets and techniques of revision are yours, you may keep on with Hemingway's lead—and get the phrases correct!
Read or Download Getting the Words Right: 39 Ways to Improve Your Writing PDF
Best publishing & books books
Covers budgeting, copyrighting, and marketingKnow the professionals and cons of self-publishing and get your paintings in printThinking approximately self-publishing your booklet? This no-nonsense advisor walks you thru the full strategy of going it on my own, from getting ready your manuscript and growing the ideal identify to promoting the ultimate product.
Reading Penguin : a Critical Anthology
Based via Allen Lane in 1935, Penguin Books quickly grew to become the main learn writer within the uk and used to be synonymous with the British paperback. Making top of the range interpreting affordably on hand to hundreds of thousands, Penguin helped democratise interpreting. In so doing, Penguin performed an immense a part of the cultural and highbrow lifetime of the English conversing global.
- The New Writing Environment: Writers at Work in a World of Technology
- Without Covers: literary_magazines@the_digital_edge (NotaBell Books)
- E-books and e-publishing
- A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers
- Strange Bird: The Albatross Press and the Third Reich
- The Author Training Manual: Develop Marketable Ideas, Craft Books That Sell, Become the Author Publishers Want, and Self-Publish Effectively
Additional info for Getting the Words Right: 39 Ways to Improve Your Writing
Sample text
I recall well all these unprofessional emotions in connection with my first novel. The first chapter was a beauty. I had researched wide and deep, located maps of a particular river in China, talked with a Chinese man who had escaped from the Communists, and polished the result to a fine glow. After all, this was the leading chapter, the one that would hook the reader. By objective standards, it was well written. A professional writer (whom I hated and didn’t believe at the time) pointed out a problem—it did nothing for the story.
Five hundred words gone and the reader doesn’t miss them. The editor is happy because your piece now fits the space allotted, and you’re happy because the editor’s happy. KEEP IN MIND ALWAYS THAT READERS DO NOT USUALLY KNOW WHAT YOU PLANNED TO INCLUDE; THEY’LL NEVER MISS A DELETED MINOR POINT, OR EVEN A MINOR SECTION. Naturally, you have to consider carefully which words or ideas will be least missed. Even if your editor knows your original outline in advance, he or she is aware of how things can, and sometimes must, change in the doing—especially in the process of meeting length limitations.
She might finally decide to leave it in, satisfied that she had deep-sixed the most offensive launcher, but she would have to give it at least a moment’s consideration. Unwarranted repetition can also result from the several meanings a word may have. In the throes of composition, the writer is thinking of the meaning she intends right then, not of all the other possible meanings. She may therefore unintentionally repeat herself. Margaret Thatcher had to fight the pacifist Lord Pym in order to wage war on the Argentinean invaders.