Scan barcode
A review by gymbeannz
The Writer's Diet by Helen Sword
2.0
To begin with, let me point out how criminally expensive this book is. I bought it from the publisher's website for $31 NZD and the book is the tiniest thing I have ever read. (Before you hate on me for my own stupidity I needed to buy the book for my Web Writing course)
Now let the review proceed:
The Writer's Diet attempts to "trim down" your own writing by giving you guidelines on how to make your text more readable. So you would assume it makes it's points clearly and uses relevant examples to keep you on the right path? It doesn't. Instead it uses poems and Shakespearean texts as examples. And that's fine if you're into that kind of stuff; but for us average Joe Bloggs we don't know what the heck Shakespeare was on about and assume he was probably on drugs during writing periods. So, that being said, I was still in the dark as to what writing is good and what's bad.
If you nearly failed English (like me) this book is not for you. Nouns, adjectives, adverbs, hedgehogs... It's all incredibly overwhelming.
The Writer's Diet preaches to the choir and closes the door to heathens.
Now let the review proceed:
The Writer's Diet attempts to "trim down" your own writing by giving you guidelines on how to make your text more readable. So you would assume it makes it's points clearly and uses relevant examples to keep you on the right path? It doesn't. Instead it uses poems and Shakespearean texts as examples. And that's fine if you're into that kind of stuff; but for us average Joe Bloggs we don't know what the heck Shakespeare was on about and assume he was probably on drugs during writing periods. So, that being said, I was still in the dark as to what writing is good and what's bad.
If you nearly failed English (like me) this book is not for you. Nouns, adjectives, adverbs, hedgehogs... It's all incredibly overwhelming.
The Writer's Diet preaches to the choir and closes the door to heathens.