The Anatomy of Prose by Sacha Black / Buy on Amazon UK / Buy on Amazon US / Buy on Bookshop

About the Book

Author: Sacha Black
Publisher: Atlas Black Publishing
Date Published: 27 May, 2020
Pages: 382

Book Summary

The Anatomy of Prose is a comprehensive writing guide that will help you create sensational sentences. The book is for beginners who are just getting into the creative writing field, and seasoned writers who are looking to advance their skills further with additional tips.

By the end of this book, you’ll know how to strengthen your sentences to give your story, prose, and characters the extra sparkle they need to capture a reader’s heart.

My Thoughts

In this book, Sacha Black promises to help readers improve their prose. For those who aren’t familiar with the idea of prose, the word encompasses all elements of writing that comprise your unique writing style. Prose is a combination of sentences, phrases, paragraphs, rhythm, and voice.

By that definition, I expected that author Sacha Black would offer lessons devoted entirely to developing your style as a writer. I was quite surprised when the book went above and beyond style and became a comprehensive book on writing. Sacha Black’s wisdom expands way beyond grammar, sentence structure, and active voice. There are also important lessons about adding emotion to your writing, getting the right tone, and pacing out your pages.

Typically, craft books can be quite boring to flip through. Many use them as reference books, only reading specific chapters on the subject they’re struggling with most. But what I loved the most about this book is how Sacha Black inserted her own personality into each of the lessons. Her cheeky humor made me read the entire book from front to back. Sacha’s blissful personality shines through every part of the book, even in the chapter headings.

The Anatomy of Prose focuses on 12 overall steps, but each step has a bunch of sub-categories within. The 12 steps are as follows:

1. Learning to Sing (The lessons in this step focus on finding your author and character voice)
2. Learning to Learn (This lesson puts you in the habit of learning from the books you read)
3. Where We Cock Up in Style (This chapter shows where most writers go wrong)
4. Show Me the Money…I Mean Story (This one is all about Showing versus Telling in your writing)
5. Chinwag Central (This one focuses on dialogue)
6. World Delicacies (Lessons about word choices, strong vs weak words, slang words etc…)
7. Descriptive Prose (A chapter teaching how to create visual masterpieces in the reader’s mind)
8. Sensory Schmensory, Emotion Potion (This one is all about how to bring out emotions in your writing. It also teaches you how to play up the five senses when writing your character’s experience)
9. Philosophy Poetry, and Quotable Prose (How to enhance your expressionism using aphorism, symbolism, and more)
10. Cracking the Character Code (This chapter has lessons on making your character stand out by creating uniqueness, and descriptions and giving them clear motivations)
11. Self-Editing (A chapter with some useful tips on self-editing your work before sending it off to professional editors)
12. Literary Holy Grails (A lengthy chapter that goes through some of the more general writing tips. But this time, they’re offered from Sacha Black’s perspective!)

When it comes to these craft books, if you’ve read one or two already, then you’re expecting the third one to tell you exactly what you already know. But while reading The Anatomy of Prose, I found myself noting down new ideas on these topics that I’m already too familiar with.

Sacha Black taught me about Gestalt psychology and how it relates to writing. The idea is that your author’s voice is a sum of all aspects of your craft. In other words, your unique style is made up of how you approach a set of overall techniques. Such as the choice of verbs, the pattern of punctuation, the use of adverbs, the length of sentences, the balance of dialogue and prose, the quantity of descriptive prose, and more.

Because this book is so infused with Sacha Black’s own personality, it does include some profanity. This may put off some readers who want a good clean book. It may also not be the best book for young writers for this reason. However, if you enjoy some creative profanity-filled expressions from time to time, this won’t be a problem for you.

Final Thoughts

With most craft books that I read, I end up writing down a bunch of notes from them. After which, I may never open the book again. But with The Anatomy of Prose, I find myself flicking through its many pages of insight again and again, even after taking many notes.

This is hands down my favourite book on the craft of writing. I felt like Sacha Black gave more value than she needed to here. And it has me keen to check out some of her other books including 10 Steps to Hero: How to Craft a Kickass Protagonist, 13 Steps to Evil: How to Craft Superbad Villains and 8 Steps to Side Characters: How to Craft Supporting Roles with Intention, Purpose, and Power.

If there was just one book I could recommend to someone who wants to improve their creative writing skills, this would be the one. As long as they don’t mind a bit of swearing, of course!

The Anatomy of Prose by Sacha Black / Buy on Amazon US / Buy on Amazon UK

This quirky book focuses on the enhancement of prose. It will teach you how to deepen your reader’s experience through the power of expression. The book covers strategic word choice, rhythm and flow, differentiating characters in dialogue and embodying your character’s personality through words. What makes this a great book is that the author’s personality shines through vibrantly. Reading for improvement can sometimes feel dry and grating, but this book is a pleasure to read.

Show Don’t Tell by Sandra Gerth / Amazon US / Amazon UK

Show, Don’t Tell is one of the most important pieces of advice given to writers in the creative field. And many writers misinterpret or misuse this advice every day. That’s why Sandra Gerth’s book that focuses entirely on this piece of advice is essential. This book breaks down all of the nuances behind this advice and shows how it’s all a matter of balance. You have to learn as a writer when and where to apply this advice, and how it should be done. This book has an easy-to-understand example formula, which presents an example of Telling, followed by an example of Showing. These examples help you to digest each lesson in a way that’s easy to process.

Story Trumps Structure by Steven James / Amazon US / Amazon UK

Throughout my writing career, I’ve taught myself to outline everything. But the restrictive outlining process isn’t for every writer. For some, it limits their creativity. There are writers out there who thrive off of the uncanny feeling of not knowing where their words will take them next. For many, writing is an exploration. The problem is that this freeing approach leaves a lot of cleanup work to do after a first draft is completed. Well, this book, Story Trumps Structure, provides an excellent middle ground for those writers. It’s essentially a book for “pantsers”, writers who plan very little. It teaches you to do the basics that will keep your story in check, while also giving you the freedom to explore the depths of your creative mind. It teaches you to set up promises for readers and deliver on them, and it talks about the ways in which you can set up incredible twists in your writing.

The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. / Amazon US / Amazon UK

This one is really for beginner writers who are still developing a style framework. Originally published in 1918, The Elements of Style may have a few laws that are slightly outdated for the modern time. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to learn here. The book will give you fundamental lessons on how to structure sentences and paragraphs. And it’s important to understand these fundamental rules so you can later learn how and when to break them in fiction. If writing craft is something you’re just beginning to explore then I’d start with this book.

The Write Structure by Joe Bunting / Amazon US / Amazon UK

The problem with a lot of writing craft advice online is that it’s very broad and general. Sometimes, the advice writers find is also meant more for editors than creative writers. The Write Structure acknowledges this and aims to give you practical ideas that you can use to begin your project. This book will give some commentary and evaluation on the writing advice you’ve likely heard before, but the author Joe Bunting adds some useful perspective to the advice. Because who is better to learn from than a bestselling author? If you’re someone who has been struggling to bring one of your manuscripts to life, giving this book a read may help you understand the changes you need to make to move forward with your masterpiece.

–featured image from Aaron Burden, Unsplash