Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences - Hardcover

Allen, Neal; Lamott, Anne

 
9798217046959: Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences
Hardcover
ISBN 13: 9798217046959
Verlag: Avery, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

36 ways to improve your writing

Two writers show you how to turn a worthy sentence into a memorable one. Starting where The Elements of Style leaves off, Good Writing can improve your book, your essay, your memo, your blog post, speech, or script. These essential rules for persuasive language work on any type of writing, and anyone can learn them quickly.

Each rule is accompanied by examples and a lively pair of essays, the first by Neal Allen, who developed the list of tips over the course of his journalism and corporate careers; the second by his wife, Anne Lamott, acclaimed author of Bird by Bird and nineteen other nonfiction works and novels. The authors don’t always agree on the specifics, but they are passionate about making better sentences.

As Neal writes, “These rules economize, favor the plainspoken and the specific, keep the reader’s attention sharp, and in other ways show respect for the audience’s time and desire for novelty.”

Some rules are fundamental: Use strong verbs. Remove the boring stuff. Twist clichés. Some are more subtle: Draw on all five senses. Give your sentence a finale. Along the way, Good Writing addresses practicalities such as finishing projects despite challenges, trusting editors, and knowing when to break the rules to serve your story.

Whether you're a novice writer or a seasoned author, this entertaining guide will revolutionize your approach to crafting sentences.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Neal Allen is a writer, spiritual coach, and speaker. He is the author of Shapes of Truth and Better Days. A former journalist and corporate executive, he holds master’s degrees in Political Science and Eastern Classics.

Anne Lamott is the author of twenty books, including the New York Times bestsellers Somehow; Help, Thanks, Wow; Dusk, Night, Dawn; Traveling Mercies; and Bird by Bird, as well as seven novels. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an inductee to the California Hall of Fame.

Neal and Anne live in Northern California.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

RULE 1:
Use Strong Verbs

Replace weak verbs, which are imprecise (walked, stood), with vivid verbs, which are specific (trudged, malingered).

Good old Sam Daleo. Sometimes this rule is expressed as Write with your verbs. Weak verbs are limp fish, sapped of energy by overuse: Walk, feel, think, dine, talk, tell, use, get-all colorless. "It felt bad to him" doesn't do much for the reader, nor does "He walked out of the house." Prosaic words, whether verbs or other parts of speech, leave readers unsteady about what is being conveyed. When I question my first bad attempt, more colorful actions-"His stomach churned" and "Rushing out of the house, he tripped on the last step"-magically appear.

Writing with strong, vivid verbs yields new sentence structures. It's not just bland to say, "He walked out of the house." It also doesn't lead anywhere much. But once I've got him "rushing," I imagine a consequence, the foot tripping on the last step, which gives me the puzzle of how to manage two verbs in one sentence. A more complicated but eminently readable sentence structure emerges. As I question my lackluster wordings and try new things out, my sentences mix up; some reel out longer while others sit boldly simple. The reader won't be lulled into a soporific monotony of one subject-verb-object sentence after another.

The more specific the verb, the less likely you'll need an adverb. "Raced" doesn't require "quickly." "Meandered" doesn't require "aimlessly."

By the way, don't confuse this rule with the unrelated grammatical distinction between "strong" (irregular) and "weak" (regular) verbs. Like any rule, you can take Use strong verbs too far. By avoiding the obvious verb "won," sportswriters imbue the victorious high school team with the courage and skill of Roman gladiators: The opponents typically have been slaughtered, massacred, blasted, blitzed, blown away, clobbered, thrashed, blanked, thumped, walloped, whomped, whipped, flattened, shellacked, crushed, hammered, shafted, or vanquished. Poor kids. Poor parents.

Anne's take:

A strong verb in a sentence instantly improves your writing. If no word springs to mind to vividly describe the action in your sentence, use your online thesaurus. Don't use "run" when you can use "sprint," "race," or "scurry." A verb describes what the subject of your sentence is doing: "The dog ate our Thanksgiving turkey." (This really happened ten years ago.) But Bodhi did not "eat" the turkey. He devoured, gobbled, wolfed down, and inhaled our Thanksgiving turkey. Bad dog.

"His grandfather sat on the porch, carving a figure out of a thick twig." OK, close your eyes and look at the screen on the backs of your eyelids. You see the old man-the noun-and what he is doing-the verb: carving something, holding it in one hand, slicing off thin layers of wood into a shape he has in his mind, to be revealed. But what if your sentence read "His grandfather slouched on the porch, whittling"?

Or "We tried to handle a week without Internet" could be "We hunkered down for a week without Internet." "Hunker" is a great verb. Try to use it more often. "The gorilla lowered her body to the ground" could also be "The gorilla hunkered down."

Here's another one: "She could not stop thinking about eating an entire chocolate cake." What about "She craved chocolate cake"? "Crave" is a great verb because it is so precise, so psycho-visual. You know that exact feeling when you've been in that state, longing for and obsessed with eating your body weight in cake, and then doing that-gobbling or devouring or wolfing it down. Cake is to me as turkey is to Bodhi.

Or "She went out to the garden and got a lot of vegetables for the meal she was cooking that night." Why not "She gathered vegetables for dinner"? "Gathered" rings with its suggestion of arms embracing lovely things-vegetables, flowers, little kids.

"Slouch," "whittle," "hunker", "crave", "gather"-these verbs are exact and rich. The reader immediately sees and understands the action you are describing-which could also be "The reader gets it."

Rule 2:
Question "Being"
and "Having"

The verbs "to be" and "to have" are the weakest of all; by nature static, they slow a narrative.

"To be" and "to have" aren't just overused; they're barely verbs. They suspend the sentence in an inert universe. Think of the sentence "I am ____." Whatever fills in the blank is fixed in place and time, frozen. "I am tired." "I am happy." "I am a teacher." "I am a jerk." The object of such a sentence characterizes you, or identifies you, or describes you. Most verbs move me along; "to be" keeps me in place. Any forward motion that the reader has been chasing slows to a full stop.

English reflects the odd behavior of "to be" by declaring that sometimes the nouns on either side of it can be both nominative, which means that they don't quite separate into subject and object. It's called the predicate nominative, which you don't need to remember. Lemon is a fruit. Shirley is a doctor. The sentence describes an equivalence rather than an action. Other languages reflect the outlying position of "to be" by ignoring it. In Sanskrit, if two nominative nouns appear without a verb, then "to be" is assumed. You don't have to bother to write it down to complete a Sanskrit sentence. This emphasizes how the idea of "being" lacks the typical propulsive energy of a verb.

Likewise "to have" does not describe an activity, but an acquisition that took place before the sentence began." I have three dollars." "I have a sister." "I have a basket of trouble." "I have" means that I already acquired the thing that I am naming. The thing is a possession, which is a little like an identity. If I think I own something, then I have stopped it in time as if it is neither in development nor in decay. Both of us-the reader and the object-are immobilized by the sentence.

Two exceptions to the questioning of "to be" and "to have" are common. One, they can be useful helper, or auxiliary, words, especially in constructing passive sentences. While "I was running to the store" might be replaced by "I ran to the store," you probably wouldn't want to turn "I am running for president" into "I run for president." Two, they can help me sound authoritative. In the next paragraph, I use a declarative sentence with the verb "to be"; "Becoming is an activity; being is static."

If you know a little about Hinduism, then it makes sense that Sanskrit has two verbs for "to be." One, "as, is nearly as static as the English "to be." But the other, bhu, carries a liveliness that often doesn't make it into English translations. When a form of bhu is used in the Hindu holy work the Bhagavad Gita, for instance, it implies "becoming" as well as "being." Becoming is an activity; being is static. Using bhu, "I am a man" has hidden in it the notion that "I am becoming a man," and probably "A man is becoming me," as if identities aren't resting places but developmental transitions. The language itself unfolds a distinctively non-Western notion of things in constant flux. English is not so subtle in its hidden metaphysics. We Westerners are confirmed materialists. Things "are," and what you see is what you get.

You might ask, "What about Hamlet's soliloquy?"

"To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler . . ." The entire speech runs thirty-three lines. The first fourteen lines include nine occasions of the verb "to be." Hamlet punches it out almost exclusively with one- and two-syllable words. Then he makes a course correction. The final nineteen lines include one occasion of the verb "to be," and that one an auxiliary verb ("Is sicklied o'er . . ."). More three-syllable words appear. Hamlet's language rings with more authority, or ego, in the opening section than in the longer analysis of the situation, and that might...

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Verlag
Avery
Erscheinungsdatum
2026
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 13 
9798217046959
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
208
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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mail@preigu.de

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