Book Review: Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer

by Roy Peter Clark

Recently I found myself in an enchanting independent bookstore, The Bookhouse, in Winston, North Carolina. Out of a desire to support the bookseller, rather than a need for another book, I searched its aisles. Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark, with its celadon cover and intriguing title, lured me to pull it from the shelves. Its soft, cover easily flopped open it in my hand.

Its pages are not dense, and its 55 chapters are consistently short. Each one is a writing tool, zoomed in on a habit or practice to improve your writing. Clark springs from a journalistic tradition, so his tools are not aimed at poets or fiction writers. However, the tools in his book apply to any and all of us: journalists, memoirists, screenwriters, novelists, poets, even students and letter-writers. If you write words in English, his tips will help. In fact, his tips will help if you write words in other languages too.

He guides his reader to assemble a toolbox of five “parts” (think of these as the drawers in your toolbox,) each filled with more than a dozen chapters (each chapter being a tool.) Those “Parts” are: Nuts and Bolts, Special effects, Blueprints, Useful Habits and Bonus tools. If you wanted to read this book over the course of a year, you could read one tool per week and follow the workshop prompts at the end of each chapter. That would be an excellent way of studying and putting the tools into practice. I read two to three chapters every day and finished the book in 18 days. I highlighted key points throughout my reading and have already revisited some of the tools less than a month after finishing the book. While I did consider his workshop prompts, I haven't yet done any of them. Will I? Perhaps—I don’t know.

I especially appreciated the way Clark organizes his book. Each chapter title (each tool) is a succinct lesson. Once you’ve read the book, you can read the chapter titles and recall their salient points in a flash. Some examples: “Ch 1—Begin sentences with subjects and verbs,” “Ch 19 —Vary the length of paragraphs,” “Ch 32—Place gold coins along the path,” “Ch 40—Draft a mission statement for your work,” and “Ch 52—Express your best thought in the shortest sentence.” It’s such a helpful list, I'm thinking of posting these chapter titles beside my writing desk.

Every chapter contains excerpts of remarkable writing, snippets of text mostly unfamiliar to me, offering clarifying examples of the tools Clark is defining. Some of his examples have prompted me to add a book to my longterm TBR.

Because his passion is journalism, Clark doesn’t glorify style, voice, or lyricism. Yet, his section on special effects is, he would argue, all about style and voice and how to use them to best tell your story—the story always remaining paramount. His practical approach made it apparent that Clark himself had wrestled with writing challenges all his life and had equipped his tool box out of necessity.

Writing Tools offers straightforward and clear advice. It’s the kind of book every writer should have within easy grasp; a perfect book to read as a daily discipline or as a meditation on writing. As you read: annotate, dog-ear, highlight, tab its pages. You’ll want this one on your bookshelf as a resource. Having the right tools will sharpen your writing, making your storytelling easier—and more fun.