About the book
John McPhee collects essays on the craft of writing long-form nonfiction, drawn from insights he refined while teaching at Princeton University. He covers decisions about arrangement, diction and tone, and puts extracts from his own work under wry scrutiny. One essay deals with getting sources to reveal what they might otherwise keep back; another shows how a flashback can place a bear encounter within a travel narrative. The essays move through reporting, drafting and repeated revision, with diagrams and personal anecdotes along the way. McPhee also recalls his early years at Time and his long ties to The New Yorker and to Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Food styling and photography blogger Catalina Penciu said she was hooked by McPhee's vivid account of how he picks the structure for his stories, including a piece he planned around a spiral diagram.
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This book has 1 recommendation
Catalina Penciu (Food Styling and Photography Blogger)
My current obsession is John McPhee. He's a creative nonfiction wizard, and as soon as I got my hands on Draft No. 4, where he explains quite vividly how he chooses the structure of his stories, I was hooked. He even mentions creating an entire article based on a spiral-like diagram structure, before even starting to actually write the piece.
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