Guide to Writing Magazine Nonfiction [Paperback]

Michael J. Bugeja (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 3, 1997 | ISBN-10: 0205261132 | ISBN-13: 978-0205261130 | Edition: 1

Writing magazine nonfiction is made easy with this step-by-step approach. When writing is vague, confusing, or poorly executed, there is always a reason and solution. This book provides practical advice on writing and rewriting manuscripts for publication. It discusses the often-confusing freelance process in great detail--from standard manuscript format to cover and query letters. This book also includes an invaluable anthology of readings that contains the work of world-class writers who once struggled much like the novice writers. This book is ideal for anyone who wants to get published in magazines or even for anyone who is already published and needs a handy reference for their library.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Rare is the writing workbook that won't let you write. But "the goal of this book," says author Michael J. Bugeja, "is to help you envision a manuscript before you write it." By the time you get to the writing stage, in the book's penultimate lesson, you've done so much thinking about writing that your story is begging to write itself. There are many institutions across the United States at which one can hone one's journalism skills, but magazine-writing programs are few and far between--and don't confuse the one with the other. While "a news story takes a direct route to the truth..." says Bugeja, "a good magazine story takes a scenic route." News stories examine a topic (what the story is about), while magazine stories also include a theme (what the story is really about). Magazine freelancing is a tough market, but Bugeja's no-nonsense guide makes one feel about as equipped as one's going to feel. There is outstanding information here about crafting magazine nonfiction, from developing topic and theme to tending to such details as title, viewpoint, and ending. A strong current running through Bugeja's book is the need to tailor one's prose to specific magazines, something Bugeja insists should start with a story's inception. After all, this is how a freelancer stays in business. Plus, "every time you change the theme," says Bugeja, "you target a new market. That's how freelancers keep generating story ideas." --Jane Steinberg

From the Back Cover

Writing magazine nonfiction is made easy with this step-by-step approach.

When writing is vague, confusing, or poorly executed, there is always a reason and solution. This book provides practical advice on writing and rewriting manuscripts for publication. It discusses the often-confusing freelance process in great detail--from standard manuscript format to cover and query letters. This book also includes an invaluable anthology of readings that contains the work of world-class writers who once struggled much like the novice writers. This book is ideal for anyone who wants to get published in magazines or even for anyone who is already published and needs a handy reference for their library.

Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: Allyn & Bacon; 1 edition (June 3, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0205261132
• ISBN-13: 978-0205261130
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,243,773 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael Bugeja is a professor and the director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University of Science and Technology. He is the author of 22 books, including Living Ethics Across Media Platforms (2008) and Interpersonal Divide: the Search for Community in a Technological Age (2005), both published by Oxford University Press and both winners of the Clifford G. Christians Award for Research in Media Ethics.

Dr. Bugeja's commentaries on media ethics and technology have been cited internationally in such outlets as The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, The Guardian (UK), Toronto Globe & Mail (Canada), Die Welt (Germany), China Daily, The International Herald Tribune (France), The Ecologist (UK), The Futurist and the Associated Press as well as online news editions of CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News.

An prolific magazine freelancer writer, Dr. Bugeja publishes frequently in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, The Quill, Editor & Publisher, The Futurist, The Ecologist and other online and print publications. He has served as contributing editor and/or correspondent for several magazines, including Writer's Digest, where he also was poetry columnist for several years. His Art & Craft of Poetry (Writer's Digest Press) is a classic, with 50,000 copies sold since 1994. In addition, Dr. Bugeja is a creative writer and winner of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship with publications in Harper's, Poetry, Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, and Sewanee Review, among others.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Valuable to Writers and Teachers, October 22, 2000

By 

Scott A. Conroe (Cortland, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Guide to Writing Magazine Nonfiction (Paperback)

I used this book both as a freelance magazine writer and as a teacher of writing. Bugeja discusses ways to begin with a topic for an article and then expand to the theme, tone of narrative voice, an element he calls takeaway value, and a sense for what market to target in planning and writing. His examples are many, his approach sensible, his advice valuable.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Beyond bad, April 5, 2011

By 

J. M. Batista "José M. Batista" (Lisboa Portugal) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: GUIDE TO WRITING MAGAZINE NONFICTION (Kindle Edition)

Assorted clippings huge citations and rams of definitions shoved together in an unreadable piece of trash with the telling absence of a table of contents.