This book is well written and had some good exercises and ideas. It reads a bit more like a textbook so this may be better for a classroom setting or for someone wanting to expand their skills.

📚 "Master the Art and Craft of Writing" by Leon Conrad is a game-changer for aspiring writers! 🖊️ Conrad's comprehensive guide offers invaluable insights, practical tips, and exercises to help writers hone their craft and unlock their creative potential. Whether you're a novice or seasoned writer, this book is a treasure trove of wisdom that will inspire and empower you to elevate your writing to the next level. From mastering storytelling techniques to perfecting your prose, Conrad's expertise shines through on every page. If you're serious about improving your writing skills, don't miss out on this essential resource! 🌟📖 #BookReview #WritingTips #MasterTheCraft #LeonConrad #netgalley

A valuable resource for teachers or students of English or writing, from high school through university. From the rhythm of language to usage of specific parts of speech to making your writing come alive for the reader ... here are 150 ways to play around.

I'm going to snag some of the exercises for my Research and Writing courses. Wish I'd had it earlier this year when I taught international university students the basics of writing with good English and style.

I enjoyed reading this creative writing book and trying out the writing exercises. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me review this book.

This is a must-read for aspiring and budding writers. I belong to the former group, so to me this is a huge "find". My only problem is that when I tried looking for it on Amazon UK/US and Waterstones, I could not find it. Please tell me how can I get hold of a physical copy. I cannot even pre-order it now.

Shortly after picking up this book, I realized it is way beyond what I was expecting and what I am capable of. I’m always up for a challenge, but I didn’t even understand the assignments in a lot of this book. When I read “Fun writing games,” I was expecting writing prompts, like “write about something blue.” Many of the “games” in this book were way above my current knowledge and writing abilities. For example, in one chapter, the author gave examples of strong-weak rhymes and strong-strong, and I could not see or hear the difference at all. Write a paragraph with assonance. Step 1, for me, look up what assonance is!

Reading this book made me feel like I accidentally registered for Advanced Creative Writing instead of Freshman English.

I do love reading writing with clever word play. Reading this book reminded me of the writing of Stanislaw Lem. I have a new appreciation for Lem’s skill (and the skill of his translators).

From Lem’s "The Cyberiad":

“Have it compose a poem- a poem about a haircut! But lofty, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter S!!” [sic]….
Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming
Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide."

I was also reminded of “The Pet Day” chapter in "Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger" by Louis Sachar. That whole series had a lot of clever writing.

So, while I love reading cleverly written prose, I am not sure I am cut out for writing it.

If you want to challenge your writing skills and your knowledge of the English language, this book would be a great tool. As for me, I am going to sneak out of here back down to the registrar’s office and see if I can’t find a spot in Remedial Writing 101.

I felt like this book was structured weirdly and its layout really bugged me while I was reading. I had never read a writing prompt book before, but I’ve read a few about writing in general, and I enjoy writing short stories, so I figured I could give it a try. Unfortunately, I was not a fan of the prompts provided, nor the language used during explanations and often I was not a fan of the examples either. Stylist differences, I guess, I’m sure for some this will be a lovely resource.

I read a lot of writing craft books, and listen to a lot of podcasts about how to improve your writing, and I'm really sorry to say I couldn't get into this one. Unfortunately the exercises just didn't grab my attention.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy.

This was wonderfully fun and inspiring for me as a writer. I wish I had a physical copy to mark it up and tab it with a million sticky tabs! Seriously will be recommending this to my writer friends!

This is my first time reading a creative writing kind of book and I found it interesting and very textbook like. It has some good exercise that I would like to try.

I have been really getting back into writing and this book has been very helpful! It has great exercises and doesn't feel too heavy like some non fiction books are.

This was an interesting book and had some good exercises and ideas but felt more like an accompaniment to a taught course than a stand alone book for those wishing to learn how to write well (that may come about more from my expectations being wrong - it does not claim to be for beginners or inexperienced writers, after all, and the title does imply it's intended more for those who want to hone a skill they already possess to some degree). It is well written though and the exercises are good at encouraging you to relax more in your writing style so will certainly make a good resource for the correct audience.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy in return for an honest review.

I love a good writing craft book, but this book just didn't do it for me. I went into this thinking that a book of games would be fun and playful, but this book reads like a college textbook in that it is very scholarly—academically educational, but not something that I would consider “fun.”

If you are looking for a college-level creative writing course, in book form, this is the book for you.

I'm a huge fan of writing craft books (I have a giant stack on my desk and my Kindle is full of them as well) so I went into this expecting a lot. The exercises are quite thorough and while it does get the creative juices flowing, it's written more like a textbook so it would be more suited for the classroom than for someone trying to learn on their own.

Excellent for making your writing more lyrical and whimsical (think Alice in Wonderland!), as well as allowing your inner child to come out and play!

DNF.
I feel very sad by writing this, but I have to. First, I’m going to say something that you all, as fellow reviewers and readers, already know, but I have to say that regardless: this is just my personal opinion.

I really wanted to like this book, and I really thought it was going to be an exciting experience and a great opportunity to learn and practice. But this isn’t for me. This is not the first book about the writing process I’ve read (I read On Writing, by King), and this is not my first practical/technical guide on writing either (I’m currently reading Writing Fiction, by the GWW), so it’s not a new topic for me and yet, I just couldn’t connect with this one.

I did read many exercises and did most of those but I couldn’t feel immersed on them, so I decided to skip some of those and try to find one that interested me and attracted me. And yeah, it has a pretty interesting exercise about “word choices”, and it explores how we can call the very same thing using different names. I found that one pretty amusing because in Spanish that’s a never-ending fight (is it called Aguacate or Palta?), but still it was just one out of forty.

I do think IMMERSION is the most important part of a practical book like this one. Because it’s not just about reading; it is about reading and THEN put into practice what we just read.
Yes, the book has a lot of work behind, it has a lot of research (I think the Links and references and further reading is about 25% of the book or something like that), but the structure and the way that that research was used is not appealing for me.
It doesn’t matter if the book has 40 games and if it has a whole investigation behind every one of them, if the VOICE of the author, the structure and the analysis of those 40 games fail to catch our attention then we are not going to experiment doing those games.

I'm not trying to criticize the author for the way the book is structured, because maybe the problem is on me, but I read that he is a teacher in creative writing and my guess is that maybe this book is structured to be a schoolbook for his courses more than a standalone reading. And if that’s the case, then I don’t see how it could work for the rest of the world, the people that would read the book but not would be part of his course, without him tutoring the experience.

Books like Writing Fiction by GWW, or even Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzenegger, are immersive because the narrative tone is so good and so personal that you feel that, more than reading a book, you are holding a conversation with the author. And when you feel that, is when you decide to put the book’s lessons into practice. In Master the Art and Craft of Writing by Leon Conrad I didn’t feel that urge collab with him.

About the book cover… it says it’s not final, but I really like it.