Steering The Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story

by Ursula K. Le Guin

In-class writing is tremendously useful for people who aren’t used to producing under pressure and think they can’t do it. (They can.)

Writing a sentence that expresses what you want to say isn’t any easier than plumbing or fiddling. It takes craft.

Careless punctuation makes a written sentence unclear and ugly. Wise punctuation keeps the flow running clear.

Limited third person is the predominant modern fictional voice—partly in reaction to the Victorian fondness for involved-author narration and the many possible abuses of it.

A story that has nothing but action and plot is a pretty poor affair; and some great stories have neither.

I like my image of “steering the craft,” but in fact the story boat is a magic one. It knows its course. The job of the person at the helm is to help it find its own way to wherever it’s going.