Tools of the Craft

Tools of the Craft

So you have decided you want to write. Perhaps you may feel you need to write. Sometimes this urge inside you is so sweet and urgent that you find yourself imagining the smooth feel of the keyboard beneath your fingertips. You can hear the tap tap of the keys as your fingers fly over them, forming words, sentences, paragraphs and pages of images that will flow from your mind to another’s in a bizarre and wondrous kind of telepathy. This desire may come to you as you are studying, attending classes, or working, making you yearn for the time when the tedious details of life might be abated, if only for a moment, so that you can finally work on your story.

When at last you are able to grasp your favored writing instrument, whether it is keyboard, pencil or pen, you might reach inside for the words that had nagged at you so insistently earlier. Your fingers will caress the keys, or your pencil will lightly touch the page…and frustration will fill you more completely than your earlier desire had. For even though the words are there, deep inside the crevices of your imagination waiting to break through, the transfer of thought to print is more difficult than you had ever realized.

Writing is hard, a fact that most novices and likely all experienced writers are aware of. When you find yourself fighting the inadequacies that plague your writing, where do you turn? Most likely you’ll seek the pages of the books and stories that have inspired you in the first place. Are the answers there? Perhaps; perhaps not. It can depend on the writer and the book. There are hundreds of books out there that claim to help the writer, including numerous “How To” books that address every aspect of writing that you have imagined and some that you may not have. Which are right? Where are the ones that might help you?

One book for writers that has been popular for roughly 65 years was written by a professor of composition at Cornell University and revised by a writer of fiction who was well known for his fiction and essays. The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White is a valuable guide for any writer. In it the writer will find rules for writing that are demonstrated by short examples. This book is for the writers who have found themselves stumbling over the roadblocks of grammar. It will also be of assistance in describin...

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...writer, but he will discuss many of the rules Strunk insists on, and he will use examples from his own writing as well as the works of others to illustrate how the rules can be used to strengthen your writing. His tone will be more in the nature of friendly, personal advice to a friend than a clinical study of the mechanics of language, and this may appeal to a number of readers who have been overwhelmed by the other books. He will even present the rough draft of one of his short stories and demonstrate how it might be edited to improve it, listing in the following pages detailed explanations for each of the changes that were made. Finally, he will touch on certain elements of writing fiction left entirely untouched by the other two books: Dialogue, symbolism, and some discussion on the importance of plotting your novel as opposed to letting the story tell itself.

Together, each of these books will provide the beginning or struggling writer with not only the tools for writing, but also with a demonstration of how to use them. These books will not make you a writer but they may be able to show you how to become a better writer. Once shown the way, it is up to you to follow it.