Tell It Like It Is

A Guide to Clear and Honest Writing

By: Roy Peter Clark

Narrated by: Jefferson Mays

Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

America's favorite writing coach returns with a guide to writing clearly and honestly in a world full of lies, propaganda, and misinformation.

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 diverse collection of public writers, Clark highlights and explains the tools journalists, scientists, economists, fact-checkers, even storytellers 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, wars, natural disasters, social justice—easy reading?
How do I get readers to pay attention to what they need to know?
How do I help contribute to a culture of writing that combats misinformation and propaganda?
How do I instill 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.

©2023 Roy Peter Clark (P)2023 Little, Brown Spark

Critic reviews

“In a world with too much propaganda, confusion, and misinformation, Roy Peter Clark offers us a kind of North Star. His indispensable new book makes an urgent case for clarity, honesty, and conviction. Clark once again teaches us something crucial. We should all be aiming to write with purpose, for the public good. Now more than ever, we need this book.”—Diana K. Sugg, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, Baltimore Sun

“There may be no more timely, thoughtful, useful and needed book in this age of disinformation and lying in public media than Tell It Like It Is. If you are eagerly awaiting advice and counsel on how to write your way out of the muck and mire that is our media public sphere, this is the book for you. Clark brings his experience, integrity, humor, and brilliance to bear in all aspects of his work as a writer and teacher. I hope this book gets on the shelf of every human being with a pen or a computer.”—Arthur L. Caplan, Mitty Professor of Bioethics, NYU Grossman School of Medicine

“Roy highlights how any of us—all of us—can be called to communicate with our fellow citizens through writing. With his signature, deft humor and inspiring observations, Roy offers a road map for upping your writing game that is actually fun to follow, while also making the case that clear public writing is a civic good that should be encouraged and applauded—particularly when it cuts through misinformation or willful disinformation. Best of all, Roy’s own sterling personal attributes—his patience, kindness, good nature and earnest desire to help anyone aspiring to get better as a writer—shine through on every page. Tell It Like It Is is insightful, entertaining and one of the best books on writing I have ever read—guaranteed to galvanize you into crafting sentences and stories before you’ve even put it down.”—Eric Deggans, TV Critic and Media Analyst, NPR

Way too much on the author's political views...

This book goes on too much about the author's political views and too little about "clear writing."

What was worse (for me) is that the author's opinions are nearly identical to the views an elderly relative of mine acquired - not through years of relevant experience or broad reading and viewing - but by staying glued to MSNBC for years.

I suggest the author look hard at reporting and documentaries from sources other than those like MSNBC, the NYTimes, or NPR to escape the opinion bubble around his mind. The author incorrectly seems to think anything outside such sources is disinformation.

This book would be a smooth listen for a person who doesn't mind the author's politics repeated many times. I could have enjoyed this book myself if the author had deleted all or most of the expressions of his politics and his opinions on the "unvaccinated" and added more information on writing non-fiction. He could have done this. The author is clearly an excellent writer.