The point is that he doesn’t look like himself.”Īnother section deals with consistency of technique in such areas as perspective (first person, or third person?), tense (past tense, or present tense?), and mood (casual, or formal?), with the importance of strong introductions and conclusions, and a hodgepodge of mini-lectures on a wide array of topics from parts of speech to subject matter. He emphasizes the necessity of repeatedly, mercilessly honing one’s prose and makes candid comments like, “Few people realize how badly they write.” Think of On Writing Well as a virtual boot camp for writers (though Zinsser refrains from hoarsely shouted verbal abuse).Īnother example: When exhorting readers to refrain from affecting a writing style, he compares the affectation to wearing a toupee: “The problem is not that doesn’t look well groomed he does, and we can only admire the wigmaker’s skill. In the first part of the book, which covers principles such as simplicity and conciseness, as well as style, usage, and vocabulary, Zinsser reproduces two manuscript pages showing how he revises and pares down his work. Zinsser, a veteran writer and writing teacher with numerous books and magazine articles to his credit, lays it out straight in a refreshingly no-nonsense tone. If you’re searching for a motivational manifesto and how-to manual in one, this is it. So you decide to consult the sage: Hmm, you wonder, what’s the one desert-island book DailyWritingTips recommends?Īnswer: William Zinsser’s On Writing Well. Your budgets (financial and chronological) limit you to one volume, because you want to actually, you know, start writing in this lifetime, not after an interminable period poring through numerous guides. Go to any bookstore - whether bricks and mortar or click-and-order - and you will, in the quest for a book about how to write, be subjected to a bewildering array of possibilities.
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