The Writing Book

How to develop young writers

Zoë and Timothy Paramour

BLOOMSBURY EDUCATION

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland

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First published in Great Britain, 2023

Text copyright © Zoë and Timothy Paramour, 2023

Zoë and Timothy Paramour have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work

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ISBN: PB: 978-1-8019-9145-2; ePDF: 978-1-8019-9143-8; ePub: 978-1-8019-9144-5

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We’d like to dedicate this book to all of our pupils, past and present.

Acknowledgements viii

Introduction 1

Part One The power of writing

1 Dear reader: Writing for an audience 9

2 Macro, micro and middle: The art of the sentence 17

3 Less is more: Being succinct 27

Part Two Selecting words and arranging your writing

4 Powerfully powerless: Describing things 37

5 Precision engineering: Selecting the right nouns and verbs 47

6 Front and back: Varying word order 59

7 Long and short: Varying sentence length 71

8 The art of conversation: Direct and reported speech 79

9 Would that it were so simple: Different voices and styles 89

10 Literary devices 99

11 Make me feel: Eliciting an emotional response from the reader 107

Part Three Writing it down

12 Planning to fail: Planning, drafting, editing and rewriting 119

13 Opening ceremony: Writing the first line 133

14 Making connections: Linking sentences and paragraphs 145

15 Bringing order to chaos: Consistency and control 153

16 Happily ever after: Writing an ending or a conclusion 158

Conclusion 164

References 165

Index 166