|
Spunk & Bite: A Writer's Guide to Punchier,
More Engaging Language & Style
by Arthur Plotnik. Random House Reference. 272 pages, hardcover. Published Nov. 15, 2005. List price: $16.95; online discounted prices $11-$14. ISBN 0-375-72115-0
NOW ALSO IN PAPERBACK, with added section of exercises for students: Published May 8, 2007. List price, $12.95, discounted prices from $9.38. ISBN 0375722270.
Description---What's so special
Spunk & Bite guides writers into language and styles fine-tuned to today’s writing environment---not that of fifty years ago.
To those who have slogged through the basic elements of composition, it introduces the next level---the distinctive and engaging writing that succeeds in today’s frenetic markets. With hundreds of sparkling examples from our brightest authors, it dispels the stale and predictable and lights the way to concussively brilliant effects.
Bucking but not flouting convention, the book shows how rule-breaking can yield dazzling results. It draws its advice from the author’s distinguished career as writer and editor, and from sources as diverse as Greek rhetoricians, feng shui masters, edgy comedians, and gonzo bloggers. Here are style pointers and notions of “correctness” that go beyond Strunk and White’s often-inhibiting dictums. Here readers will find friendly, up-to-date ideas for improving force, clarity, texture, surprise, and contemporaneity.
An antidote to the rasp of language scolds, Spunk & Bite is not a set of rules like The Elements of Style, a teaching text such as On Writing Well, or a punctuation review like Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Though it shares the lambent style of these bestsellers, its range is broader, with such unconventional topics among its thirty-one chapters as “Joys of Hyper-Hyphenation,” “Joltingly Fresh Adverbs,” “Dialogue Tags with Oomph,” and “Edge: Writing to the Nervy Limits.” (See complete Table of Contents, below.)
Disdaining the snobbery that pervades orthodox guides, Spunk & Bite embraces evocative language at every level, always with one clear mission: to engage and reward today’s distracted reader.
---A Selection of the Writer's Digest Book Club
- Read Art's advice in the serial interview (by Briget Ganske) on Vikk Simmon's world-class writer's Website, Down the Writer's Path
- Recommended in the ASJA (American Society of Journalists and Authors) Monthly
_____________________________________________
Hear all or part of the WLUS-Chicago radio inter-view of Art by Donna Seaman, host of Open Books.
NEW: Hear Plotnik interviewed on the Writers on Writing radio show, hosted by Barbara DeMarco Barrett. (Scroll to Aug. 17 and click.)
_____________________________________________
- Recommended in Frequent Flyer's "best of the best business books.
"Name" acclaim:
Billy Collins:
"Here Plotnik has accomplished the nearly impossible: to write a guide to lively, sparkling writing that serves in itself---sentence by sentence--as an example of all the advice being offered. A must for every writer's desk." ---
Richard Lederer, co-author of The Write Way and Comma Sense:
"This fellow Arthur Plotnik not only knows how to write about spunk and bite. He writes with spunk and bite. So will you, if you take in the wisdom of his colorful, learned, and caring advice."
Andrea J. Sutcliffe, editor, The New York Public Library Writer's Guide to Style and Usage:
"Writing by the rules is fine---so long as you are willing to bend them once in a while. In this highly entertaining and practical volume, Arthur Plotnik shows writers dozens of ways to transform their prose from leaden to lively without going overboard. Spunk & Bite belongs next to Strunk & White on every writer's desk.
From reviews
Chuck Leddy--The Writer magazine, Jan. 2006: Arthur Plotnik . . . has written a book that perfectly supplements the brilliance of Strunk and White, encouraging writers to move beyond the safe, well-known Strunkian rules and reach for something else in their writing: personality, surprise, risk-taking and edginess. . .
As befits an author who champions literary risk-taking, Plotnik takes chances too. Spunk & Bite is filled to the brim with his energy and engaging sense of humor. . . .
Plotnik blends erudition with hilarity, backing up his advocacy with countless examples of writers who prove that taking risks can pay large literary dividends. . . .
It’s a run-down-to-your-local-bookstore-and-buy-a-copy-and-stay-up-all-night-reading-it kind of book. .
Though breaking the Strunkian rules can sometimes lead you to fall flat on your face, following the adventuresome wisdom of Arthur Plotnik just might have you soaring. Try it.
Booklist magazine:
Plotnik, author of the well-respected Elements of Editing (1982), takes on the venerable duo of Strunk and White in this peppery guide to vibrant writing. . . . [H]e devotes 31 chapters to detailed analyses of the factors that make language sing. He is especially adept at providing exactly the right felicitous quotation to make his point and draws from a wide variety of writers. . . .
In addition, Plotnik addresses such practical topics as the question of audience, providing a pocket guide to the different generations and their wildly varying approaches to the written word. Moving seamlessly between instruction and quotation, Plotnik’s work makes for addictive reading for both aspiring and veteran writers. —Joanne Wilkinson
Library Journal:
[T]his is an entertaining and engaging choice for writers. Recommended for all libraries. -- Ann Schade
mediabistro.com:
The editor and writing coach shoves past Strunk & White. . . . Encouraging writers to be bold and bright, sharp and sly, Plotnik challenges the old rules in his new book.
ASJA Monthly:
There is a wealth of good advice here, including how to keep your vocabulary fresh, when to use extreme language and how adverbs, the presumed bugbears of lucid writing, can actually pep things up. One of the best sections, of particular interest to fiction writers, is found in the chapter on diction. . . .
Plotnik certainly practices what he preaches. His writing is lively . . .
I recommend this book to pros and beginners alike. It definitely deserves to be on the bookshelf alongside Strunk & White. ---Kathryn Lance
Frequent Flyer and OAG Official Traveler Update:
Following bestselling author Arthur Plotnik's own dictates, this tome is written with a touch of spunk and bite in a jazzy, highly entertaining manner, with no sacrifice to content. . . . Stretch your writing abilities to include the new elements of style promulgated by the sprightly locutions of Spunk & Bite. ---Jack McGuire
Writeradvice.com:
. . . He shows (rather than tells) readers how to vitalize language, making it sing and dance on cue. His examples and exercises were mind opening. Smart, stylish, and sassy, this book is a valuable reference as well as a hip, entertaining read. ---B. Lynn Goodwin
Shared Spaces online journal:
A great book on adding "UMPH!" to your writing.
Author's note: Why this book?
Isn't all art a statement directed at one's father figure? Yes, of course. Like most modern communicators, I developed my style under the austere parentage of The Elements of Style, that pint-sized cynosure of composition by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White. These two patriarchs of American prose have no doubt saved America from choking on its jargon and obfuscation; but in some respects they have handicapped writers seeking a voice in today’s writing environment.
“Place yourself in the background,” they tell us. “Do not affect a breezy manner.” “Do not inject opinion.” “Use figures of speech sparingly.” “Avoid foreign languages.” “Do not thrash about.” “Prefer the standard to the offbeat.”
But then, how to engage today’s overloaded and understimulated readers? How to compete with so many deft authors and the circus of non-print entertainment?
At all stages, writers yearn to be offbeat, to express opinions and use language so unexpected that readers chase after them with confetti---or even torches.
In earlier books and articles I offered liberating advice to such writers. But throwing off restraints is one thing; deciding what to do with that freedom is another. Will it be self-indulgent drivel, or adventurous art that engages editors and readers?
For Spunk & Bite, I looked at some of the most exciting language and style in contemporary writing, noting the techniques and approaches that come into play in achieving effects, winning attention, and getting published. I wanted not only to free aspiring writers from stale orthodoxy, but to tell them what to do with language and style to make it as stimulating as anything in today’s frenetic milieu.
So take that, you two patriarchs of style.
Table of Contents
Introduction / I See Dogs and Dead Writing
Flexibility / A Little Light Unstrunktion
Chapter 1/ E. B. Whitewashed: A Starting Point
Freshness / The Wallop of the New
Chapter 2/ The Pleasures of Surprise
3/ Extreme Expression
4/ Writers’ Words, Drop by Dottle
5/ Upgrading Your Colors
6/ Joltingly Fresh Adverbs
Texture / Writing into the Mood
Chapter 7/ Tense: A Sticky Choice
8/ Diction: We Are the Words
9/ The Punchy Trope
Word / Language—Aerobatic and Incandescent
Chapter 10/ How to Loot a Thesaurus
11/ Words with Music and Sploosh
12/ Coining the bonne Locution
13/ Words with Foreign Umami
Force / Stimulation by Any Means
Chapter 14/ Dialogue Tags with Oomph
15/ Enallage: A Fun Grammatical Get
16/ Intensifiers for the Feeble
17/ Opening Words: The Glorious Portal
18/ Closings: The Three-Point Landing
Form / Life Between the Marks
Chapter 19/ The Joys of Hyper-Hyphenation
20/ A License. To Fragment. Sentences.
21/ The Poetry of Lists
22/ The Art of the Semicolon
23/ Daringly Quoteless Dialogue
Clarity / “A House of Great Spickness and Spanness”
Chapter 24/ The Feng Shui of Writing
25/ Hunting Down Danglers
26/ Magic in the Names of Things
27/ The Earnestly Engaging Sentence
Contemporaneity / A Leg Up on the Competition
Chapter 28/ Writing for New Generations
29/ Hot Pop and Ephemeragy
30/ Edge: Writing at the Nervy Limits
31/ Parting Words:
Butterflies in the Killing Fields
Index
| 
