
Stephen King tells everything you need to know about writing in 10 minutes - aycangulez
http://www.greatwriting.co.uk/content/view/312/74/
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brianlash
Years 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.

~~~
igravious
I've read it from cover to cover many times. When I lived in Barcelona I lent
it to this very cool chick from the US with tattoos of Koi fish on her feet.
She promised to return it, "don't worry, it's back this week". I never saw her
again. I remember his advice about adverbs. He likens them to dandelions if I
remember correctly. It was one piece of advice I didn't get. I got that he had
seen the adverb abused and as Mr. King is a man of taste he recoiled in horror
- I recall he can't bring himself to use the word "zestful" for similar
reasons. Adjectival phrases describe nouns, adverbial phrases describe verbs.
If you're fine with adjectives then why wouldn't you be fine with adverbs?
Honest question. However when I read a -- "what are you doing here", she
screamed mightily -- I chuckle and think of Stephen's (may I call you
Stephen?) advice.

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.

~~~
barrkel
Even the successful poor writers usually have something going for them. Dan
Brown is successful, I believe, because he uses very simple prose and
patronizing monologues masquerading as dialogues to fill in required
background material - this expands his market to a lot of people who don't
read a lot and have a hard time with more sophisticated styles - and his
timing of plot points and chapter pacing is excellent.

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.

~~~
andrewce
Dan Brown is successful because reading "The DaVinci Code" feels a lot like
watching the History Channel, which is to say that it feels very educational
and high-brow, but ultimately probably isn't. Fortunately for DB, not many
people are discerning enough to play the "Fact or Crap" game well; either
that, or not many people care.

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.

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electromagnetic
Being 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
The main advice I took from this was 'Use less words'.

I'd expand on that, but realize that's a bad idea...

~~~
8ren
Write words. Not too many. Mostly verbs.

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sarenji
I'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
I 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.

~~~
IsaacL
Yeah, 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
I 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."

~~~
barry-cotter
The original edited version is great. You can't buy it new, just the bloated
monstrosity of the "Director's Cut" or whatever it's called. Writers do not
outgrow the need for editing but a very few of them get high enough sales that
they can turn editing into proof-reading, like Tom Clancy.

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mayanklahiri
The 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-
Nonficti...](http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-25th-Anniversary-
Nonfiction/dp/0060006641) 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.

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RyanMcGreal
It'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>

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whyme
_"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
The 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
I'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.

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tzs
Robert 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.

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sjlb
Elmore Leonard's 10 rules also worth a read:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/16/arts/writers-writing-
easy-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/16/arts/writers-writing-easy-adverbs-
exclamation-points-especially-hooptedoodle.html)

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dgallagher
Google Cache as the link is currently down:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4qYMp-t...](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)

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archon
I 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.

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c0riander
His 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).

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ErrantX
My 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"

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jiganti
_But 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
If 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.

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d0m
It's so true that because it's Stephen King you listen differently and more
carefully.

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athom
Amusingly appropriate to post the link right before Halloween.

~~~
philh
I figured it was because National Novel Writing Month starts tomorrow.

~~~
electromagnetic
Same, however I've been plotting for my NaNoWriMo project for a good two weeks
now.

