You can't really skim through looking for neat little pearls of wisdom. You need to read the extracts (some of which are several pages long) and annotations. She begins with chapters on "Words" and "Sentences", pointing out that "Some writers can write both meticulously and carelessly, sometimes on the same page. At lazy moments, F.Scott Fitzgerald could resort to strings of clichés" (p.26) and that "many Raymond Chandler fans are more attracted to his sentences ... than they are to his detective plots" (p.48). Then she goes on to "Character" then "Dialogue", "Details" and "Gesture". She writes about breaking rules (the ones about "show, not tell" and fixed PoVs), how Jane Austen almost never uses physical gestures, how Dickens uses them as "handy mnemonic devices designed to help us to keep track of a large cast of characters" (p.228). Also there are sections about her teaching and learning experiences, and the value of slow, close reading.
"We all begin as close readers .... Word by word is how we learn to hear and then read" (p.5)
"Though I'm usually put off by any use of brand names in fiction (it's a lazy writer's way of "placing" a character, and nothing can date a work more quickly than a reference to a brand of bed linen that no longer exists0 it's also true that certain consumer choices can communicate a wealth of information" (p.199).
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