
Stephen King: “Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully” - danso
https://www.msu.edu/~jdowell/135/King_Everything.html
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xydata
Wasn't this just posted?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9130423](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9130423)

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scott_s
If you enjoyed this, read King's book "On Writing". It's half memoir, half an
essay on writing for a living. The memoir part is interesting because he's had
an interesting life, and it's closely tied to his writing career.

The writing part should be interesting to anyone who: likes reading fiction
and thinking about how it is created; likes writing and has spent time about
how to do it well; has spent time thinking about how to a particular thing
well.

~~~
jalanco
It's been years since I've read it but "On Writing" is still one of my
favorite books of all time. It's worth reading whether you write much or not.
His description of the time he was struck by a van (and nearly killed) while
walking down the road near his home with his head in a paperback book is alone
worth the read. He said the guy driving the van was reaching into a box of raw
meat and tossing chunks to a dog in the back of the van and didn't see him
walking on the side of the road. He said it was like a scene from one of his
novels. I recall that he also goes into some detail about how he struggled
through a long period of near poverty with his wife Tabitha always supporting
him and staying by his side. So she deserves tremendous credit for his
success. For me the book was more about persevering through the struggle to
create in general.

~~~
unoti
> He said it was like a scene from one of his novels.

Incidentally, Stephen King ended up _actually_ putting that scene into one of
his novels, the seventh book of the Dark Tower. This was fitting, I thought,
since the idea of the Dark Tower is that it contains all worlds, real and
fictional, including our own.

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Dirlewanger
Nice read. I like how he doesn't wax philosophical about knowing if one is
talented or not. If one can't take enough queues from the real world, then
they most likely are delusional.

For the HN audience, #4 is the most relevant one. Too many things I read here
have high school-level writing. The authors cared more about getting their
half-baked opinion out on their Medium blog over proofreading (excluding
ESLs). One of the best lessons from college is when one of my history
professors metaphorically tore me a new asshole for not knowing how to write
on one essay, and out of pity, gave me a grace period to fix it. He
highlighted enough of my superfluous fluff that I finally _got_ writing and
how one must write as little as possible. I had other writing-intensive
classes after that one and never had such an event happen again.

~~~
Jimmy
>He highlighted enough of my superfluous fluff that I finally _got_ writing
and how one must write as little as possible.

Right, because Joyce, Pynchon, and Nabokov would have benefited from being
told to write "as little as possible".

If you're writing non-fiction, maybe. If you're writing literature, to hell
with rules. How impoverished our culture would be if all writing held itself
to the same standard.

~~~
snowwrestler
When you're trying to build a richly detailed world in your readers' minds,
"as little as possible" might still be quite a lot of writing. But even such a
detailed piece of work can suffer from superflous words and pointlessly
convoluted grammar. Every letter of a finely crafted piece of writing should
contribute to the intended effect.

~~~
jcfrei
This is one of the problems I've had back in my teens when I was reading
fiction. Especially authors of fantasy or science fiction novels seemed to be
very keen to describe their worlds in the most intricate details possible. And
as a result they became very strenuous to read to the point where I simply
stopped reading them at all. I think (and this is entirely subjective) that if
you need to describe your fictional world in such perfect detail then maybe a
book is simply the wrong medium. Then you should maybe opt for drawing a
comic, where you can put all the power of your imagination into actual
pictures.

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justindz
I'm not sure I quite expected to see this on HN, though I'm glad it was posted
since I happen to be trying to learn novel writing. I thought the before and
after example of the basketball article was a concise and clear way to explain
over-writing. The second version was clearer, more accessible, less obnoxious
and no less informative and narrative. A series of poetry and short fiction
teachers in college helped me become self-aware about this bad habit. I still
make the mistake consistently, but I have learned to either catch it or agree
with the suggestions of my peers who catch it when I don't.

I personally believe that programmers can learn from poets, for example. Write
constantly. Read the work of others, both critically and for enjoyment.
Writing is the sexy part, but revising is at least as important a task.

~~~
scott_s
I find your last sentence amusing because I actually prefer editing to
writing. It's when I'm editing that I feel like I'm actually applying a craft.
I get the same kind of satisfaction from editing my words that I do from
refactoring my code. In both cases, it is often only after doing the initial
work that I realize how it _should_ be structured, and reworking it into that
elegant structure is satisfying.

~~~
justindz
I am the same way. I found it surprising. I get so much positive feedback from
the editing process that I have actually developed a routine of editing as I
draft. Although it improves the quality of my draft, it takes ages. For
poetry, it worked well. For novels, I think I'll need to break the habit.

~~~
ricree
Though for what it's worth, I've seen a lot of professional authors that warn
about that as another kind of trap that beginners fall into. That is, paying
too much attention to the revision process, at the expense of producing actual
finished works.

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Jun8
It doesn't always look like King practices the brevity he preaches in his own
work, this is one of the points that he's often criticized (in a snickering
sort of way in literary circles, see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_King#Critical_response](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_King#Critical_response)).
As an example I thought the first two volumes of the _Dark Tower_ series,
especially the first one was great, but the volumes got thicker and thicker
later. However, just now I found a comparison of approx. word counts of the
series with other epic series and his books do not seem to be excessively long
([http://cesspit.net/drupal/node/1869/](http://cesspit.net/drupal/node/1869/)).

What I found really neat about King's advice is its _practicality_. This, I
think, makes his points applicable to young writers as well as young
entrepreneurs, esp. (1) and (7) can be combined to pg's motto of "Make smt
that people want."

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mendelk

        > 8. 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.
    

Reminds me of this quote from Steve Jobs's commencement address[0]:

> When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each
> day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made
> an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in
> the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my
> life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the
> answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change
> something.

[0]
[https://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html](https://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html)

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drhayes9
My favorite rule from "On Writing" is "Second Draft = First Draft - 10%". What
a godsend that rule is.

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Balgair
[http://www.amazon.com/The-Elements-Style-Fourth-
Edition/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Elements-Style-Fourth-
Edition/dp/020530902X)

A good companion piece. Really, if you want to know how to write, and barely
have time to make breakfast, The Elements of Style is the book for you.

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thedaveoflife
Point 1 reminds me of Steve Jobs' famous line" "Real Artists ship".

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shmerl
He didn't list the last rule - there are no rules. I.e. various guidelines to
creativity are useful of course, but it also involves the chaotic element.
Trying to turn it into a very rigid system reduces its value.

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andrewchambers
I feel like some of this applies to programming and creativity in general. The
difference with programming, is too often they don't go back and edit the
first draft.

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higherpurpose
What about non-fiction?

~~~
ricree
Except, perhaps for rule five, all of those seem applicable to nonfiction.
Though the measures for "talent" are rather different between the two. In the
case of seven, "Write to be informative" might suffice, in the sense that your
greatest purpose is to have the reader come away from your having absorbed as
much of the material successfully as possible. Though with that said, most of
the best nonfiction books I've read, even textbooks, had the occasional traces
of humor and other lightheartedness.

