Front cover image for Steering the craft : a twenty-first century guide to sailing the sea of story

Steering the craft : a twenty-first century guide to sailing the sea of story

Ursula K. Le Guin (Author)
"Completely revised and rewritten to address the challenges and opportunities of the modern era, this handbook is a short, deceptively simple guide to the craft of writing. Le Guin lays out ten chapters that address the most fundamental components of narrative, from the sound of language to sentence construction to point of view. Each chapter combines illustrative examples from the global canon with Le Guin's own witty commentary and an exercise that the writer can do solo or in a group. She also offers a comprehensive guide to working in writing groups, both actual and online."--Publisher's website
Print Book, English, 2015
First Mariner books edition View all formats and editions
Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, 2015
Local author
xvii, 141 pages ; 21 cm
9780544611610, 9780544612341, 0544611616, 0544612345
902766840
The sound of your writing
Punctuation and grammar
Sentence length and complex syntax
Repetition
Adjectives and adverbs
Verbs: person and tense
Point of view and voice
Changing point of view
Indirect narration, or what tells
Crowding and leaping
Appendix: the peer group workshop
Exercises: Being gorgeous ; Am I Saramago ; Short and long ; Again and again and again ; Chastity ; The old woman ; Points of view ; Changing voices ; Telling it slant ; A terrible thing to do
"Modernized, new edition"--Back cover
Earlier version published in 1998 under title: Steering the craft : exercises and discussions on story writing for the lone navigator or the mutinous crew