Retrieve Getting The Words Right Penned By Theodore A. Rees Cheney Contained In Version

think Theodore's advice is solid, but he kinda comes across as a tool, Excellent tome on how to revise a book, Logically presented, useful examples, a good reference book for a writer, I like the premise behind Theodore Cheney's "Getting the Right Words", I have come across many writings that could benefit from some of the advice given in the book.
One of the books I am reading now is bad for redundancy, A typical sentence might be "John put his eggs in one crate, One John slipped, the crate of John's eggs fell all over John's floor and John's eggs were everywhere.
" This can be a bit irritating, especially since it would be a really good book if it wasn't for the redundant writing.

I've also noticed some writers can go off on tangents, They can be describing a car chase and then take the next seven pages describing and giving the complete history of a clock they drove past.
This can interfere with a story as well,
My only criticism is that some of Mr, Cheney's chapters could also be a bit wordier than they need to be, which probably should not have occurred in a book discussing the matter.
Overall, though, it is a great resource for writers and students, First, I will say that I picked this one up because revising has always been a chore for me.
I know it needs donemy drafts are generally a mess! But it always seems such a daunting task that I get bogged down and end up procrastinating no end.
I thought this book might help a bit,

It does seem to be more slanted to nonfiction writers, although there are certainly sections and examples pulled from fiction.
It breaks the whole of revision into pieces:

overused words, cliches and the like, sentence structure, etc.
There are examples of the wrong in the author's opinion way to do each, and then the revised version of the same passage.
There are definitely parts that are the author's opinion and approach to writing, and I will admit, I didn't agree with all of them.
But it is clearly written, does a good job of breaking out the whole process into parts that can be turned into a plan, and there's a lot that makes sense.
Someone who is good at revising, or who can focus on the multiple things that need attention might not find this overly informative, but I pulled some ideas to try for my next big revision project.


Worth reading Probably, especially if you struggle with revising, Pretty good, if somewhat overlong, book that gives you the basic rules for writing and revision to ensure that, whatever you're writing, you end up with the perfect message principles which, I should add, I'm not using here!.
Divided intochapters, one for each "rule", Cheney argues quite effectively that the process splits into three basic principles, reduce, rearrange, and reword.
This, of course, oversimplifies things horribly, but serves as a useful way of splitting up the book.


I felt that the book loses its way in the middle a little, though perhaps it's not intended to be read from cover to cover in one go.
The author does admit in the Afterword that if you've read the whole book, you probably have the patience to write one! However, it does end up on a very good high, the last chapter being devoted to common word mistakes and misunderstandings.
While this could so easily have been a boring end, churning out the same old principles that schoolteachers have been preaching for years, it was actually a pretty fascinating quickfire final round for the book, addressing some issues that I already knew about, and some that were completely new to me who knew the difference between nauseous and nauseated Not me!

The book is written by an American, and does suffer on occasion from USEnglish advice, though not too much, and some of the examples have clearly suffered from the "Kindleising" process there was a section where the examples should clearly have had some form of crossing out or editing that just didn't appear in the Kindle version but overall this is a good reference.
Archaic style, wordy, overacademic, full of passive constructions, I couldn't get past the firstpages, Don't waste your time or money, Theodore Cheney was a creative writing professor, and is an author of fiction and nonfiction, This book is all about the multifaceted process of revision, and is divided into three parts: reduce, rearrange, and reword.
It discusses structure from the level of sentence to story/novel, emphasis, word order, diction, rhythm, and usage.
To illustrate techniques, almost every section contains writing samples from famous authors and workshop students alike, Behold as Cheney gets meta and blows your mind by making his prose an example unto itself:

From the section on rhythm and sound


ORIGINAL

The house remained stubborn.
After a moment, she closed and locked the windows, crunching dead fly bodies,

REVISED

After a moment, she closed and locked the windows, crunching the fly husks that littered the sills.


The writer was on the right trail with the use of crunching, but the sound image is now amplified by the crispier, crunchier rasp of husks.
This revision did not make a more beautiful sentencebut it did make for a more accurate, truetolife sentence.
Incidentally but not accidentally, I tried to make my explanation of onomatopoeia more satisfying to your interior ear by using onomatopoeia myselfthe crispier, crunchier rasp of husks.
Notice that it was not the use of sound for sound's sake, but to reinforce the aural imageand that must always be the case.
I used rasp in that context because it added to the sounds surrounding it, and because rasp is itself onomatopoetic.



Though this is a reference handbook for writers, geeks may read it cover to cover.
Of particular interest are Cheney's graphs illustrating variation in sentence length in stories by O'Connor, Steinbeck and others.
These are actual line graphs with "words per sentence" on the Y axis and "sentences" on the X axis.
Best graph ever. To me, the sections on syntax and emphasis were the most useful and interesting, This book enhances the enjoyment not only of writing but reading a carefully crafted sentence, An incredibly helpful book for revising and editing your book, There's so much information in it, I especially like his largetosmall approachmaking major revisions first, then intermediate ones, and finally microchanges, It also works well as a reference book, if you only need help with a specific problem.
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