Spunk & Bite: A Writer's Guide to Punchier, More Engaging Language & Style [Hardcover]

Arthur Plotnik's "Spunk & Bite" is not a primer for beginners. It is a fun-filled romp in which Plotnik, an author, editor, and former publishing executive, demonstrates why slavishly following the rules of Strunk & White's revered classic, "The Elements of Style," will lead to writing that is DOA. In an age of increasingly short attention spans, Plotnik contends that writing must have "punch and vibrancy" in order to grab and hold the reader.

"Spunk & Bite" is divided into eight chapters: Flexibility, Freshness, Texture, Word, Force, Form, Clarity, and Contemporaneity. Plotnik explores such topics the use of arcane words and neologisms, choice of diction, how sentence fragments can energize your prose, and even how to apply the principles of feng shui to writing. Some of Plotnik's advice is pretty standard: avoid cliches and dead metaphors, shun dangling participles and misplaced modifiers, be careful that your subjects and verbs agree, and, for the most part, stay away from the passive voice. We've read all this before in many other writing handbooks.

What is unique about this book is Plotnik's witty and irreverent remarks about the wisdom of taking calculated risks. Try using an original "one-off" phrase if it suits your purpose and don't be afraid to experiment with lively tropes or figures of speech. Will you occasionally make dreadful mistakes? Absolutely. However, you have a great deal more to lose (especially your audience) by playing it too safe. Plotnik gives many examples both from his own writing and from such luminaries as Betty Friedan, Albert Camus, and Toni Morrison, to illustrate his points.

I particularly enjoyed the section on the omission of quotation marks to set off dialogue, a trend that has been in vogue for a while. In his delightful chapter, "Daringly Quoteless Dialogue," Plotkin surveys three literary review editors who offer their opinions on unmarked dialogue. Are writers who eschew quotation marks artistic and avante garde or are they merely pretentious and irritating? Plotnik says that "convention is there to be upended; but it is never to be taken lightly." When you throw out the rules, you had better do so skillfully and with good reason. "Spunk & Bite" will not transform you into a better writer instantly, but it may give you the courage to try new ways of bringing your moribund writing back to life.

Unlike the writer's rule book, Elements of Style, aka Strunk & White, this concise volume offers some thought-provoking suggestions for writing with an extra edge, the advantage of a creative boost in an increasingly competitive market. Strictly following the rules sometimes yields a loss of flavor, or, as Plotnik phrases the issue, "dead writing". Although decidedly unorthodox, these chapters are "meant to energize writing and liberate it from certain outdated style conventions". Flexibility in construction and a freshness of application highlight his approach, avoiding rules that weigh down the prose and thinking a bit outside the box; for example, indulging in oxymoron, indirection and understatement as mechanisms to increase interest. By all means write that banal first draft, urges Plotnik, then "sniff out and destroy everything that smells predictable, clichéd, formulaic, labored or lazy".

Plotnik, author of The Elements of Editing, leaves no stone unturned, no question unchallenged in chapters that address texture, language, force and stimulation, punctuation, clarity and writing for the contemporary marketplace. Using illustrative examples from established writers, unabashedly tossing in his own cleverly-phrased headings and a medley of metaphors, the author wields language like a sharp sword, enthusiastically slashing the hackneyed and overused, probing and questioning, the style as energetic as his intentions. With all its vitality and eagerness, this is a book to be taken seriously, filled with innovative interpretations, a challenge to transcend the ordinary, to consider a fresh, open-minded approach.

The text is sprinkled with suggestions, such as "Internet Word-a-Day Sources: A Sampling", a list of sites that will send word features via email by subscription (wordspy.com; vocabula.com; wordsmith.org/awad). These sites can be readily culled for "writer's words" to add extra context to the work. Other topics are "Style and Frequency of Foreignisms (keeping in mind that such substitutes wear thin with overuse); "Literary Editors on Quotation Style"; and "Deeper Secrets of Semicolons: Some Q & A's". Breeching the ramparts of the traditional, Plotnik kick-starts the writing process into a media savvy century, where distraction is anathema. Writers must forcefully grab a reader's attention, taking advantage of a new freedom born of modern communication, anchored in the conventional, but on the alert for those defining phrases or style that is both engaging and original. Luan Gaines/ 2005.

Where was this delightful little writing book when I was a working editor and looking for holiday treats for my staff or take-aways for meetings or special occasions? Unfortunately, at that time, back in the 20th century, it was probably still churning around in the author's brain. But not to complain. Now that I'm retired, I`ve at least had time to buy it and read it for myself. I've enjoyed this author's previous offerings on language (Elements of Expression) and the art of editing (Elements of Editing), but this one is clearly his best--intelligently organized, easily absorbed, and always entertaining. It's not a style manual or a "how to write" book as such (we have enough of those), but it's a volume anyone interested in words or already engaged in writing is bound to enjoy and profit from. It's open season on dull prose. The examples are contemporary and well chosen and the advice proferred with wit and, well, spunk. Spunk and Bite would certainly be a worthy addition to any writer's shelf or bedtable.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 29 reviews  4.4 out of 5 stars