Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part 1: Structure. Pocket: Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway -- Crossed sentence: John F. Kennedy, Inaugural address -- Parallelism: Li-Young Lee, "from Blossoms" -- Reversed sentences: Yoda, Star Wars -- Surprise: Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey -- Questions: Judy Blume, Are Your There God? It's Me, Margaret -- Part II: Diction. Valuable verbs: Red Smith, "Dizzy Dean's Day" -- Tone: Shirley Jackson: "The Lottery" -- Word shifts: James Joyce, Ulysses -- Coinage: Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings -- Part III: Sound. Onomatopoeia: Watty Piper, The Little Engine That Could -- Matching Sounds: Marting Espada, "Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100" -- Repetition: Jack Kerouac, On the Road -- Part IV: Connection/Comparison. First person: J.D.Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye -- Second person: Lorrie Moore, "A Kid's Guide to Divorce" -- Contrast: Neil Armstrong, First Words on the Moon -- Negativity: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me -- Creative descriptions: Barbara Kingsolver, "Where it Begins" -- Synesthesia: Robert Hayden, "Those Winter Sundays" -- Part V: Extremes. Marathon sentences: Martin Luther King Jr., "Letter from a Birmingham jail" -- Simplicity: Ann Beattie, "Learning to Fall" -- Contradiction: Margaret Atwood, "Orphan Stories" -- Time: Karen Salyer McElmurray, "Consider the Houses" -- Impossibility: Toni Morrison, Beloved -- Visual Presentation: Nicky Enright, What on Earth (have you done)?