Chris Crutcher's Perfect Writing Technique

All I can say about Chris Crutcher's writing is double WOWSERS! He completely mastered the entire technique of writing in one 279 page book. I am usually not a negative person but right now, I don’t even have one word to say about the story that is negative. He used every single one of the six Traits of Writing like a pro. (Which technically, he is a pro.) Looking at Ideas and Content, I would like to point out that his topic was very focused on a main point but still left room to fill in imagination. His views were bluntly shown, in a good way, and all of his opinions were supported. I especially enjoyed how he went in to the life of a teenager and explained every aspect of that teenager’s life even though he is a grown man. Now on to Organization. It was almost angelic. The entire plot flowed together like one ongoing river. In the story, Crutcher had Bo, the main character, write to a radio talk show host named Larry. These basically posed as diary entries but in a less girly way. These small entries helped the entire book along and added details where they needed to be added and still I wanted to know more. Up to bat now is…Voice. Let’s all give it a round of applause. Holy Cow does Crutcher have a voice in his writing. Listen to this: “I think anyone who wants to get his temperament firmly under control should stand in the doorway of Mr.Nakatani’s anger management group for about 60 seconds or so, and let the member felons cast their gaze upon him. What you say to yourself at that moment goes something like this: Dear God, I will never again raise my voice in anger against anything—living or dead- on your sacred planet, I will besmirch not one of your creatures no matter how disgusting, not even my brother or hi puppy-mill cocker spaniel who watches television seven hours a day and gets so excited when he snatches food off your unattended plate that he pees all over the floor; and I will eat leafy green vegetables as the main course of every meal with a smile on my face if you will, oh please, just turn back the hand of time to the moment I did whatever I did to get me here and make me a good boy.”(Crutcher pg 44). These were my favorite lines from the entire book. He puts so much humor and voice in to one paragraph that I had to read it about six times to actually be satisfied and move on to the next paragraph. Imagery also puts you right in to the door of Mr. Nakatani’s room, shaking from fear. In all the books that I have read in my life, this was the only one that caused me to stop and stare at the page in amazement that someone of the same species of me could write that incredibly. Included in that little segment of splendor was also amazing word choice. He specifically chose his words one by one to give it the perfect amount of zest and humor. That paragraph made me laugh out loud. Even though they are not as fun, I have to finish talking about the rest of the six Traits of writing. Since this book was probably read a million times by editors, I obviously couldn’t find any convention errors. (Believe me, I looked hard.) Sentence fluency was also shown in that tiny tid-bit of the story. The sentences flowed like a waterfall. (What is it with me making similes comparing to water all the time?) Well, that seems to pretty much sum up Chris Crutcher’s amazing writing technique. I hope someday I’ll be at least half of the writer he is.