This book covers everything from the most basic ("Tool 5: Watch those adverbs") to the more complex ("Tool 34: Turn your notebook into a camera") and provides more than 200 examples from literature and journalism to illustrate the concepts. For students, aspiring novelists, and writers of memos, e-mails, PowerPoint presentations, and love letters, here are 55 tools.

Includes index.

Begin sentences with subjects and verbs -- Order words for emphasis -- Activate your verbs -- Be passive-aggressive -- Watch those adverbs -- Take it easy on the -ings -- Fear not the long sentence -- Establish a pattern, then give it a twist -- Let punctuation control pace and space -- Cut big, then small -- Prefer the simple over the technical -- Give key words their space -- Play with words, even in serious stories -- Get the name of the dog -- Pay attention to names -- Seek original images -- Riff on the creative language of others -- Set the pace with sentence length -- Vary the lengths of paragraphs -- Choose the number of elements with a purpose in mind -- Know when to back off and when to show off -- Climb up and down the ladder of abstraction -- Tune your voice -- Work from a plan -- Learn the difference between reports and stories -- Use dialogue as a form of action -- Reveal traits of character -- Put odd and interesting things next to each other -- Foreshadow dramatic events and powerful conclusions -- To generate suspense, use internal cliffhangers -- Build your work around a key question -- Place gold coins along the path -- Repeat, repeat, and repeat -- Write from different cinematic angles -- Report and write for scenes -- Mix narrative modes -- In short works, don't waste a syllable -- Prefer archetypes to stereotypes -- Write toward an ending -- Draft a mission statement for your work -- Turn procrastination into rehearsal -- Do your homework well in advance -- Read for both form and content -- Save string -- Break long projects into parts -- Take an interest in all crafts that support your work -- Recruit your own support group -- Limit self-criticism in early drafts -- Learn from your critics -- Own the tools of your craft -- Take advantage of narrative numbers -- Express your best thought in the shortest sentence -- Match your diction to your writing purpose -- Create a mosaic of detail to reveal character -- Look for the "inciting incident" to kick-start your story.