"Good Prose" is an inspiring book about writing--about the creation of good prose--and the record of a warm and productive literary friendship.

From the work of the New Journalists in the 1960s, to the New Yorker essays of John McPhee, Susan Orlean, Atul Gawande, and a host of others, to narratives such as Mary Roach's Stiff, narrative nonfiction has come into its own. Yet writers looking for guidance on reporting and writing true stories have had few places to turn for advice. Now in Storycraft, Jack Hart, a former managing editor of the Oregonian who guided several Pulitzer Prize-winning...

"A feral child finds a family. An old bottle washes up with a note inside. A boy's stuffed elephant flies out the car window. Over two decades, Lane DeGregory's stories of ordinary people struggling with love and loss, pain and perseverance, have earned her a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing and enhanced the Tampa Bay (formerly St. Petersburg) Times's reputation for publishing pioneering literary nonfiction. DeGregory has also built a worldwide...

"Get all the tools you need to craft compelling creative nonfiction prose. This helpful guide gives you everything you need to write real-life characters, compelling plots, natural dialogue, and captivating details." --

This book provides guidelines, examples, and advice on hundreds of style issues, plus punctuation, grammar, and usage. Each easy-to-find entry is written just for the creative writer. Part one contains rules on the elements of correct style. Part two has advice on word choice, description, metaphor, slang, pace, and many other aspects of clear, powerful writing. -- Publisher description. "Textbook rules about punctuation and grammar can be difficult...