Audiobooks by Roy Peter Clark

Tell It Like It Is: A Guide to Clear and Honest Writing

America's favorite writing coach returns with a guide to writing clearly and honestly in a world full of lies, propaganda, and misinformation. The darker and more dystopian the future appears, the more influential public writers become. But with so much content vying for our attention, and so much misinformation and propaganda polluting public discourse, how can writers break through the noise to inform an increasingly busy, stressed, and overwhelmed audience? In Tell It Like It Is, bestselling author, writing coach, and teacher Roy Peter Clark offers a succinct and practical guide to writing with clarity, honesty, and conviction. By analyzing stellar writing samples from a diverse collection of public writers, Clark highlights and explains the tools journalists, scientists, economists, fact-checkers, even storytellers use to engage, inform, and hook readers, and how best to deploy them in a variety of contexts. In doing so, he provides answers to some of the most pressing questions facing writers today: How do I make hard facts-about pandemics, wars, natural disasters, social justice-easy reading? How do I get readers to pay attention to what they need to know? How do I help contribute to a culture of writing that combats misinformation and propaganda? How do I instill hope into the hearts and minds of readers? With Clark's trademark wit, insight, and compassion, Tell It Like It Is offers a uniquely practical and engaging guide to public writing in unprecedented times-and an urgently needed remedy for a dangerously confused world.

Roy Peter Clark (Author), Jefferson Mays (Narrator)

Audiobook

Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer

A special 10th anniversary edition of Roy Peter Clark's bestselling guide to writing, featuring five bonus tools. Ten years ago, Roy Peter Clark, America's most influential writing teacher, whittled down almost thirty years of experience in journalism, writing, and teaching into a series of fifty short essays on different aspects of writing. In the past decade, Writing Tools has become a classic guidebook for novices and experts alike and remains one of the best loved books on writing available. Organized into four sections, 'Nuts and Bolts,' 'Special Effects,' 'Blueprints for Stories,' and 'Useful Habits,' Writing Tools is infused with more than 200 examples from journalism and literature. This new edition includes five brand new, never-before-shared tools. Accessible, entertaining, inspiring, and above all, useful for every type of writer, from high school student to novelist, Writing Tools is essential reading.

Roy Peter Clark (Author), Neil Kaplan (Narrator)

Audiobook

Murder Your Darlings: And Other Gentle Writing Advice from Aristotle to Zinsser

From one of America's most influential teachers, a collection of the best writing advice distilled from fifty language books -- from Aristotle to Strunk and White. With so many excellent writing guides lining bookstore shelves, it can be hard to know where to look for the best advice. Should you go with Natalie Goldberg or Anne Lamott? Maybe William Zinsser or Stephen King would be more appropriate. Then again, what about the classics -- Strunk and White, or even Aristotle himself? Thankfully, your search is over. In Murder Your Darlings, Roy Peter Clark, who has been a beloved and revered writing teacher to children and Pulitzer Prize winners alike for more than thirty years, has compiled a remarkable collection of more than 100 of the best writing tips from fifty of the best writing books of all time. With a chapter devoted to each key strategy, Clark expands and contextualizes the original author's suggestions and offers anecdotes about how each one helped him or other writers sharpen their skills. An invaluable resource for writers of all kinds, Murder Your Darlings is an inspiring and edifying ode to the craft of writing.

Roy Peter Clark (Author), Jefferson Mays (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

Roy Peter Clark, one of America's most influential writing teachers, offers writing lessons we can draw from 25 great texts. Where do writers learn their best moves? They use a technique that Roy Peter Clark calls X-ray reading, a form of reading that lets you penetrate beyond the surface of a text to see how meaning is actually being made. In THE ART OF X-RAY READING, Clark invites you to don your X-ray reading glasses and join him on a guided tour through some of the most exquisite and masterful literary works of all time, from The Great Gatsby to Lolita to The Bluest Eye, and many more. Along the way, he shows you how to mine these masterpieces for invaluable writing strategies that you can add to your arsenal and apply in your own writing. Once you've experienced X-ray reading, your writing will never be the same again.

Roy Peter Clark (Author), Jefferson Mays (Narrator)

Audiobook

How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times

America's most influential writing teacher offers an engaging and practical guide to effective short-form writing. In HOW TO WRITE SHORT, Roy Peter Clark turns his attention to the art of painting a thousand pictures with just a few words. Short forms of writing have always existed-from ship logs and telegrams to prayers and haikus. But in this ever-changing Internet age, short-form writing has become an essential skill. Clark covers how to write effective and powerful titles, headlines, essays, sales pitches, Tweets, letters, and even self-descriptions for online dating services. With examples from the long tradition of short-form writing in Western culture, HOW TO WRITE SHORT guides writers to crafting brilliant prose, even in 140 characters.

Roy Peter Clark (Author), Roy Peter Clark (Narrator)

Audiobook

Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer

One of America 's most influential writing teachers offers a toolbox from which writers of all kinds can draw practical inspiration. "Writing is a craft you can learn," says Roy Peter Clark. "You need tools, not rules." His book distills decades of experience into 50 tools that will help any writer become more fluent and effective. WRITING TOOLS 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 50 indispensable, memorable, and usable tools. "Pull out a favorite novel or short story, and read it with the guidance of Clark 's ideas. . . . Readers will find new worlds in familiar places. And writers will be inspired to pick up their pens." - Boston Globe "For all the aspiring writers out there-whether you're writing a novel or a technical report-a respected scholar pulls back the curtain on the art." - Atlanta Journal-Constitution "This is a useful tool for writers at all levels of experience, and it's entertainingly written, with plenty of helpful examples." -Booklist

Roy Peter Clark (Author), Roy Peter Clark (Narrator)

Audiobook

Help! For Writers: 210 Solutions to the Problems Every Writer Faces

The craft of writing offers countless potential problems: The story is too long; the story's too short; revising presents a huge hurdle; writer's block is rearing its ugly head. In HELP! FOR WRITERS, Roy Peter Clark presents an "owner's manual" for writers, outlining the seven steps of the writing process, and addressing the 21 most urgent problems that writers face. In his trademark engaging and entertaining style, Clark offers ten short solutions to each problem. Out of ideas? Read posters, billboards, and graffiti. Can't bear to edit yourself? Watch the deleted scenes feature of a DVD, and ask yourself why those scenes were left on the cutting-room floor. HELP! FOR WRITERS offers 210 strategies to guide writers to success.

Roy Peter Clark (Author), Gildan Author, Roy Peter Clark (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Glamour of Grammar: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English

Roy Peter Clark is one of the most influential writing teachers in the U.S. His book, Writing Tools, has 65,000 copies in print and his podcasts have been downloaded from iTunes over 1 million times. Now he's returning to the roots of the English language with THE GLAMOUR OF GRAMMAR. This is an enchanting and entertaining approach to essential grammar. Early in the history of English, the words "grammar" and "glamour" meant the same thing: the power to charm. Roy Peter Clark, author of Writing Tools, aims to put the glamour back in grammar with this fun, engaging alternative to stuffy instructionals. In this practical guide, listeners will learn everything from the different parts of speech to why effective writers prefer concrete nouns and active verbs. THE GLAMOUR OF GRAMMAR gives listeners all the tools they need to "live inside the language"--to take advantage of grammar to perfect their use of English, to instill meaning, and to charm through their writing. With this indispensable audio book, listeners will come to see just how glamorous grammar can be.

Roy Peter Clark (Author), Roy Peter Clark (Narrator)

Audiobook