Alongside his many novels Stephen King has also written about his life and creative process in, ’On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.’
‘On Writing’ is a revealing and practical view of the writer’s craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. It is part memoir and part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time. If you are a writer or want to be a writer, Stephen King’s, ‘On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft’ is filled with great tips and insights.
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things, read a lot and write a lot
“Constant reading will pull you into a place (a mindset, if you like the phrase) where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness. It also offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn’t, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what just lies there dying (or dead) on the page.”
Finish your first draft in three months
“The first draft of a book, even a long one, should take no more than three months, the length of a season.”
First, write for yourself, and then worry about the audience
“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story. Your stuff starts out being just for you, but then it goes out.”
Don’t use passive voice
“Timid writers like passive verbs for the same reason that timid lovers like passive partners. The passive voice is safe. The timid fellow writes, ‘The meeting will be held at seven o’clock,’ because that somehow says to him, ‘Put it this way and people will believe you really know.’ Purge this quisling thought! Don’t be a muggle! Throw back your shoulders, stick out your chin, and put that meeting in charge! Write ‘The meeting’s at seven.’ There, by God! Don’t you feel better?”
An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story
“The opening line is just as important for the writer as it is for the reader. It’s not just the reader’s way into the story it is the writers way into the story too. He doesn’t worry too much about it in the first draft, it is usually something that is developed in the editing process where the bulk of the writing work happens.”
The adverb is not your friend
“Consider the sentence, ‘He closed the door firmly.’ It’s by no means a terrible sentence, but ask yourself if ‘firmly’ really has to be there. What about context? What about all the enlightening (not to say emotionally moving) prose, which came before ‘He closed the door firmly?’ Shouldn’t this tell us how he closed the door? And if the foregoing prose does tell us, then isn’t ‘firmly’ an extra word? Isn’t it redundant?”
The magic is in you
“I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing. Dumbo got airborne with the help of a magic feather; you may feel the urge to grasp a passive verb or one of those nasty adverbs for the same reason. Just remember before you do that Dumbo didn’t need the feather; the magic was in him.”
Write one word at a time
“A radio talk-show host asked me how I wrote. My reply—’One word at a time’—seemingly left him without a reply. I think he was trying to decide whether or not I was joking. I wasn’t. In the end, it’s always that simple. Whether it’s a vignette of a single page or an epic trilogy like ‘The Lord Of The Rings,’ the work is always accomplished one word at a time.”
Eliminate distraction
“There should be no telephone in your writing room, certainly no TV or video games for you to fool around with. If there’s a window, draw the curtains or pull down the shades unless it looks out at a blank wall.”
Take a break
“If you’ve never done it before, you’ll find reading your book over after a six-week layoff to be a strange, often exhilarating experience. It’s yours, you’ll recognise it as yours, even be able to remember what tune was on the stereo when you wrote certain lines, and yet it will also be like reading the work of someone else, a soul-twin, perhaps. This is the way it should be, the reason you waited. It’s always easier to kill someone else’s darlings than it is to kill your own.”
Leave out the boring parts and kill your darlings
“Mostly when I think of pacing, I go back to Elmore Leonard, who explained it so perfectly by saying he just left out the boring parts. This suggests cutting to speed the pace, and that’s what most of us end up having to do (kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.)”
Write every single day
“Once I start work on a project, I don’t stop, and I don’t slow down unless I absolutely have to. If I don’t write every day the characters begin to stale off in my mind… I begin to lose my hold on the story’s plot and pace.”
The story always comes first
“When you step away from the ‘write what you know’ rule, research becomes inevitable, and it can add a lot to your story. Just don’t end up with the tail wagging the dog; remember that you are writing a novel, not a research paper. The story always comes first.”
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