McNair, a marketing communications expert, presents twenty one steps to clearer writing, mainly for fiction writers who want to publish. He describes his steps as a path towards "fog-free writing," and includes solutions for wordiness, passive voice, excessive use of certain kinds of words (e.g. gerunds and infinitives), and confusing redundancies. McNair organizes the book into three parts. The first is on broad considerations pertaining to character and story development. The 21 steps are in the middle. The last and shortest section is about sharing your work with informal and formal editors, publishers or agents, and writing your synopsis. The 21 steps focus on "taking words out," presenting several before/after examples with explanations of why deletion has a desired effect. There are also assignments at the end of each step. This is a professional guide, not a piece of literary theory or even criticism. Its object is clearer writing for the sake of appealing to publishers. Annotation 2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
