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How to Write Like Tolstoy
- A Journey into the Minds of Our Greatest Writers
- Narrated by: Richard Cohen
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
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How to Write Like Tolstoy
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Publisher's Summary
Behind every acclaimed work of literature is a trove of heartfelt decisions. The best authors put painstaking - sometimes obsessive - effort into each element of their stories, from plot and character development to dialogue and point of view.
Veteran editor and teacher Richard Cohen draws on his vast reservoir of a lifetime's reading and his insight into what makes good prose soar. Here are Gabriel Garcia Márquez's thoughts on how to start a novel ("In the first paragraph you solve most of the problems with your book"); Virginia Woolf offering her definition of style ("It is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words"); and Vladimir Nabokov on the nature of fiction ("All great novels are great fairy tales").
Cohen has researched the published works and private utterances of our greatest authors to discover the elements that made their prose memorable. The result is a unique exploration of the act and art of writing that enriches our experience of reading both the classics and the best modern fiction. Evoking the marvelous, the famous, and the irreverent, he reveals the challenges that even the greatest writers faced - and shows us how they surmounted them.
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What listeners say about How to Write Like Tolstoy
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Kindle Customer
- 07-04-2023
Title sells it short. Not a how-to book but better
If you're a geek for words and literature you'll love it. Snippets of great writing, highlights of critical debates arranged thematically. A few implied or hinted spoilers perhaps but not many and related to classic literature of the sort readers of this have hopefully read, Austen, Eliot, but even these are more likely to enhance your enjoyment, e.g., analysis of the last sentence of Middlemarch and Great Expectations. Writers of any kind will probably find useful but it's for you too if you're a reader. Reading is pretty good actually even though I tend not to prefer author read audiobooks. An incredibly sonorous voice.
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