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Stephen King tells everything you need to know about writing in 10 minutes
- electromagnetic 16y agoBeing an aspiring novelist, I've read my fair amount of this 'how to write' stuff and invariably find it useless. King is the only person who actually makes it plain and simple and gives no bullshit. There's little point in trying to be a liked writer, if you never publish anything for anyone to like, and there's even less point if you can't make money off of what you do publish to ever release enough material to get noticed enough to get liked or disliked. My favorite thing of King's advice, and John Scalzi reiterates it in his own way: just get on with it and do the writing.
- daviding 16y agoThe main advice I took from this was 'Use less words'. I'd expand on that, but realize that's a bad idea...
- MartinCron 16y agoLawrence Block's books on writing, especially Telling Lies for Fun and Profit are at least as good as King's as far as being direct and giving no bullshit. I re-read it each time before I start a novel (I've finished three, started many more) and I take something new from it each time.
- mayanklahiri 16y agoThe advice looks familiar to W. Zinsser's "On Writing Well", which is the best book on writing I've ever read (even for writing academic papers). http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-25th-Anniversary-Nonfiction/dp/0060006641 http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-25th-Anniversary-Nonficti... I try to recommend it to everyone, especially if they're not a fan of bullshit, since it's a book on writing that's written exceptionally well.
- brianlash 16y agoYears ago I bought Stephen King's On Writing and it looks like he echoes a lot of its points here. Missing is his hatred of adverbs; To King's mind "He screamed angrily" is a terrible sentence because it uses the -ly construction to say what should be clear in context. So with precious few exceptions he scraps all the -ly's and lets his characters' actions do the talking.
- widgetycrank 16y agoThere is a similar dislike of adjectives in William Zinsser's "On Writing Well".
- _delirium 16y agoThat's fairly good default advice I think, but there are adverb-heavy writing styles that also work. For example, Edgar Allan Poe uses a ton of them everywhere.
- philwelch 16y agoThere are tons of great writers who get away with things which writers aren't supposed to do. You see this with athletes, too--arguably, the difference between greatness and competence is the ability to get away with things you shouldn't be doing.
- kranner 16y agoIf only King had applied his own advice to 'On Writing'. The first half of that book is nothing but tales of Uncle Billy Bob and what real men do in Maine. The second half I couldn't tell you.
- igravious 16y agoExcuse me? He mentions his uncle cuz he describes his uncle's toolbox. He describes it real well. He then uses this toolbox as a metaphor. The individual tools a writer has make up a writer's toolbox. Your knowledge of grammar, your vocab, your use of metaphor, your word-choice. And so on. This is your toolkit, your toolbox if you will. He calls writing a craft. Like carpentry. A craft is something you can perfect through practice. So the extended metaphor (yes it was a bit folksy but what do you expect, it's Stephen King, that's how his books sound a lot) works don't you think? A think the writing advice he gives in that book is some of _the best_ advice I have ever read. He presents the advice in his own style but I wouldn't fault him for that because he's hardly going to present it in your somebody else's style. The second half of his book tells the story of how he was practically killed by a drunk driver of a pickup truck when he was walking along the road minding his own business. He describes the massive injuries. He explains how On Writing is a direct product of that experience. He explains how he bought the pickup from the guy and smashed it to bits with a sledgehammer. Give it another go. It's well worth it.
- sarenji 16y agoI've always liked Stephen King. One piece of advice, first said by William Strunk and reflected here, has stayed with me: omit needless words. Now I take out all unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, which are most of them. I like to think my writing has improved. A quote cited in his book, On Writing, was also a revelation: "I made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it short." -- Blaise Pascal My friend and I used to laugh at this quote because we thought it wasn't true. Now we laugh because we know it is.
- StavrosK 16y agoI only read one King book, and it prevented me from reading any more. It was so needlessly verbose! It was called Gerald's Game, or something similar.
- igravious 16y agoRead his early stuff. His early stuff is better. You'll see why he became so popular. You don't even have to buy his stuff, just borrow from someone. His short stories are fantastic if you want easily digestible morsels. They are unforgettable, at least for me. Try Skeleton Crew or Night Shift, both great collections. I haven't read his later stuff so maybe he's gone off the boil.
- IsaacL 16y agoYeah, the only works of his that I've read are The Dark Tower series and the Shawshank Redemption; but I definitely found that his shorter works were much better. It seems that as he's gotten older, he's gotten simply too successful for any editor to trim the fat of his weightier novels (I've heard the same said about J K Rowling).
- gaustin 16y agoI think The Stand is one of his best novels. It is also one of his longest novels (almost 1,000 pages). It is also one of his earlier novels, so maybe it's missing "the fat."
- dgallagher 16y agoGoogle Cache as the link is currently down: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4qYMp-t5TF0J:www.greatwriting.co.uk/content/view/312/74/+http://www.greatwriting.co.uk/content/view/312/74/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4qYMp-t...
- d0m 16y agoIt's so true that because it's Stephen King you listen differently and more carefully.
- jiganti 16y agoBut if everyone - or even most everyone - is criticizing something different, you can safely disregard what all of them say. Reminds me of the mentality of some tech companies who choose to not listen to their customers in order to realize their own vision for their product/service.
- aycangulez 16y agoIf everyone is complaining about a different part of your software, that probably means just nitpicking. If the complaints converge on a feature or two, then you should absolutely listen to what they have to say. King is right on the money on this one.
- c0riander 16y agoHis definition of talent is pretty useful in the context of learning to improve one's writing: >People who are published steadily and are paid for what they are writing may be either saints or trollops, but they are clearly reaching a great many someones who want what they have. Ergo, they are communicating. Ergo, they are talented. In this light, however, his sage 1986 advice about agents is not really sound any longer -- there are no longer very many or very lucrative doors open in the publishing world to unrepresented authors, and there are plenty of agents willing to risk the time and effort on someone that is talented. These days, the way to be paid for writing in the traditional sense (a.k.a. demonstrate talent) essentially has to be by getting an agent (though of course there are loopholes, and segments of the industry in which this doesn't so much apply).
- athom 16y agoAmusingly appropriate to post the link right before Halloween.
- philh 16y agoI figured it was because National Novel Writing Month starts tomorrow.
- electromagnetic 16y agoSame, however I've been plotting for my NaNoWriMo project for a good two weeks now.
- whyme 16y ago"My friend, after six thousand pinks, it's time you tried painting or computer programming." Interesting to note, he feels a bad writer should become a Hacker or Painter. Paul Graham, surely, would think otherwise? (i.e a good hacker or painter probably makes for a good writer?, so maybe they should try something else - like basketball).
- mechanical_fish 16y agoThe writing King is talking about is commercial fiction. You can certainly be a good programmer, a good artist, or even a good writer of other stuff and still be hopeless at writing commercial fiction.
- electromagnetic 16y agoI'd generally agree, I was a good reviewer but I'm still having a devil of a time getting a novel written that I'm proud of. I'm thankful that every query I've sent out, especially for short stories, have come back with constructive criticism explaining why they didn't accept it. This is far better than friends I knew who had simply received constant standard rejections. So I want to take my time and make sure when I'm going for a sale, I want to be selling something I'm truly proud of... I'm sure I wont care after the first advance so it's probably best I do it now when the money isn't important than when the money is important.
- archon 16y agoI think this one is good generalized advice for anyone, not just writers: > Ask yourself frequently, "Am I having fun?" The answer needn't always be yes. But if it's always no, it's time for a new project or a new career.
- sjlb 16y agoElmore Leonard's 10 rules also worth a read: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/16/arts/writers-writing-easy-adverbs-exclamation-points-especially-hooptedoodle.html http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/16/arts/writers-writing-easy-...
- ErrantX 16y agoMy favourite writing advice quote (sadly I do not know where it is from) is: "There are only three thing wrong with this script: you wrote too much, you wrote too much and you wrote too much"
- tzs 16y agoRobert Heinlein's rules for writing SF: 1. You must write. 2. You must finish what you write. 3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order. 4. You must put the work on the market. 5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.
- RyanMcGreal 16y agoIt's also important to point out that successful writing entails writing. As Paul Graham has argued [1]: People who fail to write novels don't do it by sitting in front of a blank page for days without writing anything. They do it by feeding the cat, going out to buy something they need for their apartment, meeting a friend for coffee, checking email. "I don't have time to work," they say. And they don't; they've made sure of that. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html