Tell It Slant by Brenda Miller
Published 2004 · 336 pages · 85,695 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is Tell It Slant to read?
Tell It Slant scores 29 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 42 out of 100
- Accessible craft vocabulary designed for students and developing writers.
- Sentence structure: 38 out of 100
- Abstraction: 55 out of 100
- Craft concepts are abstract but always grounded in textual examples and exercises.
- Information density: 60 out of 100
- Comprehensive coverage of subgenres and techniques across many chapters.
- Narrative indirection: 20 out of 100
- Direct instructional mode throughout.
- Symbolic density: 18 out of 100
- Analytical approach; figurative language appears only in quoted examples.
- Ironic distance: 15 out of 100
- Earnest and encouraging tone throughout.
- Resolution withholding: 22 out of 100
- Each chapter delivers clear craft instruction.
- Structural complexity: 30 out of 100
- Textbook organization by subgenre and technique, with consistent chapter format.
How Tell It Slant is regarded
Tell It Slant holds a literary regard score of 55 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.