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Ellen Fishbein consulting Matt Lerner on his manuscript:
“Matt, you’re a good writer, but this is not a good book.”
Ouch.
“It doesn’t have a thesis.”
A thesis?
“Every great nonfiction book,” she explained, “presents a focused thesis.” For example:
The Black Swan - Individual outlier events are rare, but collectively, they occur oft
President Carter signed an executive order directing that federal regulations be written “simply and clearly.” President Clinton’s attorney general, Janet Reno, urged the nation’s lawyers to replace “a lot of legalese” with “small, old words that all people understand”—words like “right” and “wrong” and “justice.”
William Zinsser • On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction
In a free society, force may be used only as retaliation and only against the person or persons who initiate its use; a distinction is made between murder and self-defense. The person who resorts to the initiation of force seeks to gain a value by so doing; the person who retaliates in self-protection seeks not to gain a value, but to keep a value
... See moreNathaniel Branden • Honoring the Self: The Pyschology of Confidence and Respect
Play with the quotes by all means—selecting, rejecting, thinning, transposing their order, saving a good one for the end. Just make sure the play is fair. Don’t change any words or let the cutting of a sentence distort the proper context of what remains. Do I literally mean “don’t change any words”? Yes and no. If a speaker chooses his words carefu
... See moreWilliam Zinsser • On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction
Lincoln’s goal, in each of these instances, was to balance law against military necessity, in the expectation that the passage of time and the success of his armies would stabilize the equilibria. “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong,” he wrote in 1864. “I cannot remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet, I have never understood tha
... See moreJohn Lewis Gaddis • On Grand Strategy
Clear writing is the logical arrangement of thought; a scientist who thinks clearly can write as well as the best writer.
William Zinsser • Writing to Learn: How to Write - and Think - Clearly About Any Subject at All
But the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adul
... See moreWilliam Zinsser • On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction
technical excellence was a moral requirement.