Tell It Like It Is

The darker and more dystopian the future appears, the more influential public writers become. But with so much content vying for our attention, and so much misinformation and propaganda polluting public discourse, how can writers break through the noise to inform an increasingly busy, stressed, and overwhelmed audience?

In Tell It Like It Is, bestselling author, writing coach, and teacher Roy Peter Clark offers a succinct and practical guide to writing with clarity, honesty, and conviction. By analyzing stellar writing samples from a wonderfully diverse collection of public writers, Clark highlights and explains the tools journalists, scientists, economists, fact-checkers, even storytellers and poets use to engage, inform, and hook readers, and how best to deploy them in a variety of contexts. In doing so, he provides answers to some of the most pressing questions facing writers today: -How do I make hard facts--about pandemics, war, natural disasters, economics, social justice, the environment--easy reading?

-How do I make boring but important stuff interesting? How do I get readers to pay attention to what they need to know?
-How do I escape the gravity of neutrality in order to write plainly?
-How do I help contribute to a culture of writing and communication that serves as an antidote to lies, misinformation, and vicious propaganda?
-How do I bring light into the darkness? Hope into the hearts and minds of readers?

With Clark's trademark wit, insight, and compassion, Tell It Like It Is offers a uniquely practical and engaging guide to public writing in unprecedented times--and an urgently needed remedy for a dangerously confused world.