The Golden Rule of Writing: The Simple Trick That Cracks the Writing Code in All Fields

Do you struggle to start and organize your writing projects? Do you sometimes go off the track, writing sentences and paragraphs that confuse even you? Are you looking for a simple “hack” that can improve your writing—right away?
Whether you’re a novice or a seasoned professional, author and teacher Charles Euchner’s book shows you how to use a simple eight-word imperative—called the Golden Rule of Writing—to write with clarity and verve at all levels.
This trick will save you hundreds of hours—and save your readers unnecessary confusion about what the heck you’re trying to say.
In his work as a writing professor at Columbia, Yale, and other schools—and in writing seminars all over the country—Charles Euchner has developed a sure-fire trick to guide writing at all levels—from the sentence to the paragraph to the section to the whole piece.
By using this simple, intuitive rule, with short case studies to show how it’s done, The Golden Rule of Writing gives you a simple process for writing everything better and faster—right away.
In this book, you’ll discover:
- Why every level of writing—sentence, paragraph, section, and whole piece—is a “journey” that takes the reader from one “place” to another different “place.”
- How you can create a simple shortcut to create the “journeys” of your documents by “starting strong” and “finishing strong.”
- How to use a simple hack, called the Landscape View, to check every piece of writing—easily identifying whatever problems a draft might have.
- How to “toggle” back and forth from the standard “block” view to the “landscape” view of your document.
- How to apply the Golden Rule of Writing to give every piece of writing dramatic power as well as clarity—so you never get lost writing your piece … and the audience never gets lost reading it.
The Golden Rule of Writing not only offers a simple system for writing well. It also provides a simple practice that “burns” good writing skills into your brain. When you use this simple technique in all your documents, it will become almost automatic. Never again should you get tangled in your own prose. When you “learn and burn” this skill, you can instantly improve your writing.
If you like clear instruction, with instructive case studies and a dash of humor, you’ll love Charlie Euchner’s powerful—and simple—system for raising your writing skills in the time it takes to read this short guide. All you need to do is follow the format Euchner offers. The rest is up to you.
Buy The Golden Rule of Writing today to master the simplest, most powerful trick in writing well.
About the Author
Charles Euchner, an author and teacher, is the creator of The Elements of Writing.
Euchner is the author of books on the presidency (Losing the Peace, forthcoming), civil rights (Nobody Turn Me Around), baseball (The Last Nine Inningsand Little League, Big Dreams), urban affairs (Urban Policy Reconsidered and Playing the Field), and other topics.
A long time teacher—most recently at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation—Euchner has taught writing at seminars to corporate and education clients as well as author groups.
Euchner holds a B.A. from Vanderbilt University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University.