50 Writing tools in 50 minutes

In Roy Peter Clark's 50 Writing tools in 50 Minutes, he started out by providing students with various techniques for starting an article. Using a variety of demonstrations and examples, he illustrated the techniques.

Bringing the group of students to their feet to dance the Chicken Dance, Roy Peter Clark brought out a guitar. He explained the transition he went through learning to play blues.

At first the point of this demonstration was lost on me, but eventually he concluded that learning to write works the same way as learning the blues. By adding different techniques to what you already know, you can make an ordinary piece of work extraordinary, so to speak.

In another demo, Roy used a line from Shakespeare's "Macbeth," to illustrate the importance of the key idea, or the most significant word in a sentence.

Overall, his workshop was informative, interesting, and undoubtedly entertaining.