Stephen King tells everything you need to know about writing in 10 minutes
greatwriting.co.uk
greatwriting.co.uk
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.
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.
Honestly I think the guy writes whatever he pleases because he knows he's got a permanent fan base. But thanks for your note; I will finish reading the second half.
I singled out directness because that is what most of the rest of this HN thread seems to talk about.
Wikipedia gives a different story:
"King's lawyer and two others purchased Smith's van for $1,500, reportedly to prevent it from appearing on eBay. The van was later crushed at a junkyard, much to King's disappointment, as he dreamed of beating it with a baseball bat. King later mentioned during an interview with Fresh Air's Terry Gross that he wanted to completely destroy the vehicle himself with a pickaxe"
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https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w/index.php?title=...
Regarding talent. In On Writing he preaches Read Lots, Write Lots. He hammers that home. You don't have the time to read? You certainly ain't got the time to write. From the reading list he gives out at the back of the book you can see for yourself his taste in authors and let me tell you it's not Dan Brown territory. When Stephen (okay, King) equates talent to successfully published I think he's telling a little white lie and he knows it. Untalented writers get published all the time. Why? You can work that out for yourself. I think King tells this porky in this article because he is trying to dispel fear. His target audience here are aspiring writers. He thought they'd need to hear this stuff to keep the demons at bay. That was before his horrific accident. After that he wrote On Writing and you don't find that equation in there, let's just imagine that his brush with death allowed him to man up and drop the pretense. Stephen King is talented. Stephen King, last I heard, manages to sell a fair number of copies. But not everyone who sells a fair number of copies is talented. Did I mention Dan Brown? I think you get the point (he said haughtily).
Funny thing is, a lot of _serious_ critics wouldn't rate King at all. He's just a horror story / fantasy story writer they will say dismissively. He's not Proust, he's not Hemmingway. I've grown out of King (sorry, don't hate me) but damn it, that guy can turn a phrase. He writes like you are his companion, like he's taken your arm at the elbow and is walking with you awhile discussing personal matters. He scared the living _shit_ out of me when I was younger, The Shining is a genuinely frightening piece of fiction and boy is it well written. The Stand is an awesome piece of work that held me spellbound. Ditto, It. Long books both but I didn't want them to end. Maybe I have less patience now but it is rare I encounter a long (> 500 pages) book that I'll read with unflagging enthusiasm from cover to cover. I figure, if you've got something to say, say it briefly, winningly and championly or get off my lawn.
It's his pacing that I noticed most: it really is first class. But the actual writing is very uninteresting, reminding one of juvenile books targeted at 10 year olds.
Also: his use of cliff-hangers at the end of most chapters provides a decent amount of momentum.
I think Dan Brown is a hack, though less odious of one than Stephanie Meyer, whom I read in hopes of knowing what my freshmen were talking about. Never again.
Imho, it's that nouns sometimes require adjectives (or phrases) to characterize them, but if you find your verb requires an adverb/ial phrase to convey your intent, then you may have chosen that verb poorly, and either need to find a more suitably textured verb, or add/change the context. There's generally more flexibility to change a verb than to change a noun.
I'd say that's implied in #4.
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.
I'd expand on that, but realize that's a bad idea...
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.
"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.
It was called Gerald's Game, or something similar.
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.
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).
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.
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.http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4qYMp-t...
> 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.
>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).
"There are only three thing wrong with this script: you wrote too much, you wrote too much and you wrote too much"
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.