PRIMERS

Excellent Copyediting Tutorial on the Current Chicago Manual of Style

★★★★★ : The Copyeditor’s Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications (Paperback) by Amy Einsohn, reviewed by C. J. Singh on amazon.com, copy posted August 17, 2011 (35 of 37 people found the review helpful.) – See all my reviews.

While teaching UC Berkeley’s courses in “The Professional Sequence in Editing,” I regularly assigned selected exercises in this book’s earlier editions as preparation for more complex exercises in class. The students’ evaluations of the book were always favorable.

Copyeditor's Handbook: Einsohn

This edition presents a fast-track introduction to the many changes in the Chicago Manual of Style, sixteenth edition, 2010. I particularly appreciate the handbook’s references to the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. (See my review of this great usage dictionary on Amazon.) Ever since its publication in 1989, I have regularly enjoyed reading MWDEU’s scholarly entries. These 2300 entries, often witty, drawn mainly from literary sources are a refreshing contrast to Garner’s stridently prescriptive injunctions in the Chicago Manual, drawn mainly from journalistic sources.

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An Excellent Primer for Developing a Story

★★★★★ : Wired for Story: The Writer’s Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence (Paperback) by Lisa Cron, reviewed by  C. J. Singh on amazon.com, copy posted January 1, 2014 (2 of 2 people found the review helpful) – See all my reviews
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Wired for Story presents the fundamental elements for developing a story, mirroring the topics in many other books catering to the creative-writing industry. However, this book does have a unique, distinguishing feature: Throughout its text, the author includes excerpts from the published works of leading contemporary brain-scientists that validate the principles of narrative craft. The principles of narrative craft are explained in eleven well-organized chapters that focus on theme, the protagonist’s issue, characters’ bios, points of view, rising conflicts, subplots, suspense, reveals, and the arc from setup to payoff. At the beginning of each chapter, Lisa Cron presents sentences in italics that illuminate the cognitive-science underpinnings of narrative craft. Examples follow.
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Excellent Teach-Yourself Book on Creative-Writing Basics – “Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft” (3rd Ed.)

★★★★★ : Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft (Penguin Academics Series) (3rd Edition) (Paperback) by Janet Burroway, reviewed by C. J. Singh on amazon.com, copy posted October 5, 2013 – See all my reviews

 

(The following is an addendum to my review of the previous edition that was posted on 8 April 2007.)

Janet Burroway’s Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft, 3rd Edition adds several new short stories, nonfictions, poems, dramas and drops some of the ones in the second edition, keeping the overall page count of the book about the same. Notably enhanced are the chapters on drama and on poetry. The drama section includes several examples of a newly popular genre, the ten-minute play.

Although marketed as a textbook for Creative Writing 101, this book can serve as an excellent primer for self-teaching. On completing the brief “try this” exercises included, you’ll acquire a good understanding of the craft elements and be able to judge whether the comments on your work by other apprentice writers in a workshop or your friends are on the mark or not. Beware that even positive, flattering comments (“I loved this image…”) can mislead you.

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