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    My Weird Writing Tips
    My Weird Writing Tips
    My Weird Writing Tips
    Ebook118 pages50 minutes

    My Weird Writing Tips

    By Dan Gutman and Jim Paillot

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    With over 10 million books sold, the My Weird School series really gets kids reading! The ability to put thoughts into writing is an essential skill vital to success in school—from elementary school through college. Bestselling author Dan Gutman helps kids master this important skill with his fun, informative writing guide, My Weird Writing Tips.
     
    Dan offers tricks for spelling hard words, understanding the difference between similar words like “its” and “it’s,” and conquering grammar stumbling blocks like commas and apostrophes. He also teaches readers how to write an engaging story, in line with the grades 2–5 Common Core goals for writing a narrative.
     
    With illustrated appearances from A.J. and Andrea, stars of his bestselling My Weird School series, and with his trademark wacky sense of humor, Dan makes learning the writing and storytelling basics so fun kids will forget they’re learning.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJun 25, 2013
    ISBN9780062091086
    My Weird Writing Tips
    Author

    Dan Gutman

    Dan Gutman is the New York Times bestselling author of the Genius Files series; the Baseball Card Adventure series, which has sold more than 1.5 million copies around the world; and the My Weird School series, which has sold more than 35 million copies. Thanks to his many fans who voted in their classrooms, Dan has received nineteen state book awards and ninety-two state book award nominations. He lives in New York City with his wife. You can visit him online at dangutman.com.

    Read more from Dan Gutman

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    Reviews for My Weird Writing Tips

    4/5

    17 ratings4 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I liked the tips a lot and it's a fun book . I had a lot of fun reading .That is why I had a lot of fun and rate it 5 star
    • 5/5
      I know you don't want to read this book but it is awesome
    • 3/5
      This is an easy to read book for kids about story writing. I liked that the author didn't complicate his tips with too many examples. He kept it quite simple. This would be great for early readers.

      Received as an ARC.
    • 3/5
      This is an easy to read book for kids about story writing. I liked that the author didn't complicate his tips with too many examples. He kept it quite simple. This would be great for early readers.

      Received as an ARC.

    Book preview

    My Weird Writing Tips - Dan Gutman

    INTRODUCTION: DON’T BE A DUMBHEAD

    Oh, yeah. I forgot to introduce A.J. and Andrea. They’re two of my characters from the My Weird School series. They’re going to help me talk about grammar.

    Anyway, this is the part where I’m supposed to tell you why you need to read this book. Well, to be perfectly honest, you don’t.

    Nobody’s going to throw you in jail if you don’t use correct grammar and spelling. You don’t need to write well to live. I’ve heard all the reasons for not learning how to write a million hundred times:

    • None of my friends bother with punctuation and all that garbage. So why should I?

    • I’m in a hurry. It’s a busy world. Everything moves faster than it did back in the Dark Ages. Get with it, old man.

    • When I text with my friends, I can only send a limited number of letters. So there’s no point in learning how to write proper English.

    • I communicate just fine right now. CUL8R is the same as see you later. GR8 is the same as great. And I can write the short versions faster.

    • This is how I stick it to The Man, or my parents, or my teachers, or old people who grew up before computers. And besides, anything a grown-up tells me to do has to be wrong.

    • Spelling, grammar, and punctuation are boring.

    • Being illiterate is cool. (Hey, some people really think this!)

    Okay, I get it. You’ve decided to ignore the rules and just write whatever you want. I respect your independence. Now I’m going to tell you the one simple reason why you should change your mind. Are you ready? Here it is.

    You sound like a dumbhead.

    That’s it. I said it. I didn’t want to say it, but somebody had to. If your teacher gives you an assignment and you write, "I want to go over their, you sound like a dumbhead. If you write, The girls’s lined up in sise order," you sound like a dumbhead.

    You don’t want to sound like a dumbhead, do you? Sounding like a dumbhead isn’t cool. And besides, dumbheads don’t get into good colleges. They don’t get good jobs.

    I really shouldn’t say that. Some dumbheads do get great jobs and make gobs of money. Maybe you can think of a few.

    Call me a nerd if you want. I still think communication matters. And I think you should too. That’s why I wrote this book. So don’t be a dumbhead.

    Now, let’s get started.

    Here are some things you will not learn in this book, but would make good names for rock bands:

    I remember sitting in English class (that’s what they called it back in prehistoric times) listening to Mrs. Zatzkus talk about subordinate clauses, nominatives, and subjunctive whatchamacallits. Well, you’re not going to hear about any of that stuff in this book. Why not? Because I have no idea what any of those words mean. Oh, I tried to learn them, but it made no sense at all to me.

    The good news is, it doesn’t matter. You don’t need to know everything to get your point across. I’ve written a hundred books, and I wouldn’t know what a possessive pronoun was if it fell on my head.

    In this book, you’re not just going to learn a bunch of boring grammar rules. You’re going to learn how to communicate. You’re going to learn how to write.

    How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

    —Henry David

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