Tell It Like It Is

A Guide to Clear and Honest Writing

By: Roy Peter Clark

Narrated by: Jefferson Mays

America's favorite writing coach returns with a guide to writing clearly and honestly in a world full of lies, propaganda, and misinformation.

The darker and more dystopian the future appears, the more influential public writers become. But with so much content vying for our attention, and so much misinformation and propaganda polluting public discourse, how can writers break through the noise to inform an increasingly busy, stressed, and overwhelmed audience?

In Tell It Like It Is, bestselling author, writing coach, and teacher Roy Peter Clark offers a succinct and practical guide to writing with clarity, honesty, and conviction. By analyzing stellar writing samples from a diverse collection of public writers, Clark highlights and explains the tools journalists, scientists, economists, fact-checkers, even storytellers use to engage, inform, and hook readers, and how best to deploy them in a variety of contexts. In doing so, he provides answers to some of the most pressing questions facing writers today:

How do I make hard facts—about pandemics, wars, natural disasters, social justice—easy reading?
How do I get readers to pay attention to what they need to know?
How do I help contribute to a culture of writing that combats misinformation and propaganda?
How do I instill hope into the hearts and minds of readers?

With Clark's trademark wit, insight, and compassion, Tell It Like It Is offers a uniquely practical and engaging guide to public writing in unprecedented times—and an urgently needed remedy for a dangerously confused world.

Critic reviews

“In a world with too much propaganda, confusion, and misinformation, Roy Peter Clark offers us a kind of North Star. His indispensable new book makes an urgent case for clarity, honesty, and conviction. Clark once again teaches us something crucial. We should all be aiming to write with purpose, for the public good. Now more than ever, we need this book.”—Diana K. Sugg, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, Baltimore Sun

"There is no antidote to confusion and misinformation more powerful than Tell It Like It Is. Anyone seeking to make their writing more straightforward, compelling, and memorable needs to read this book."—Sewell Chan, Editor in Chief of the Texas Tribune

“Roy Peter Clark shares a toolbox for achieving clear and honest communication that’s invaluable for anyone who is—or wants to be—a public writer.”—Colette Bancroft, copy desk chief and book critic, Tampa Bay Times

“Required reading. With engaging anecdotes and examples from across many disciplines, legendary writing coach Roy Peter Clark shows us how to perfect our craft for the common good. I’ll be handing this book out to all the writers in my life who need guidance and, more importantly, encouragement and inspiration.”—Tom Huang, assistant managing editor, Dallas Morning News

“If you write public words for the greater good (talks, articles, letters-to-the-editor, even covid-test instructions), this elegant and handy manual will help you understand your topic imaginatively and deeply, then cast it as an engaging human story, and finally, edit with dozens of Clark's sensible and dynamic writing tips. I’m hardly alone among authors who regard Roy Peter Clark as America’s foremost (and funniest) writing teacher.”—Mark Kramer, co-editor of Telling True Stories and Founder of the Nieman Program on Narrative Journalism at Harvard University

“With insight, wit, and generosity, Roy Peter Clark’s Tell It Like It Is gives us a fresh, necessary set of writing tools: essential tools for truth-telling we urgently need in the struggle against disinformation and demagoguery, and in defense of democratic self-rule and fact-based reality.”—Paul A. Kramer, Vanderbilt University

“There may be no more timely, thoughtful, useful and needed book in this age of disinformation and lying in public media than Tell It Like It Is. If you are eagerly awaiting advice and counsel on how to write your way out of the muck and mire that is our media public sphere, this is the book for you. Clark brings his experience, integrity, humor, and brilliance to bear in all aspects of his work as a writer and teacher. I hope this book gets on the shelf of every human being with a pen or a computer.”—Arthur L. Caplan, Mitty Professor of Bioethics, NYU Grossman School of Medicine

Way too much on the author's political views...

This book goes on too much about the author's political views and too little about "clear writing."

What was worse (for me) is that the author's opinions are nearly identical to the views an elderly relative of mine acquired - not through years of relevant experience or broad reading and viewing - but by staying glued to MSNBC for years.

I suggest the author look hard at reporting and documentaries from sources other than those like MSNBC, the NYTimes, or NPR to escape the opinion bubble around his mind. The author incorrectly seems to think anything outside such sources is disinformation.

This book would be a smooth listen for a person who doesn't mind the author's politics repeated many times. I could have enjoyed this book myself if the author had deleted all or most of the expressions of his politics and his opinions on the "unvaccinated" and added more information on writing non-fiction. He could have done this. The author is clearly an excellent writer.