General writing tips

Today we continue to share more writing tips by Stephen King, taken from his famous book, On Writing. As before mentioned, it’s part memoir and part writing masterclass.  You can read part one of this article here.

Firstly, a little bit about Stephen King.  He was born September 21, 1947.

He’s been described as the “King of Horror” and his books have sold more than 350 million copies.  Many of them have been turned into celebrated films, such as Misery and The Shawshank Redemption.

Why did he decide to write the book, ‘On Writing’‘?

No-one ever asks popular novelists about ‘the language’ – about the art of telling stories, King says in the book. 

He’s passionate about his craft, he says, and the book has been an attempt to put down how he came to write books, what he knows about it, and how it’s done. 

So without further ado, here are more writing tips by Stephen King, the leader of all things horror!

You don’t always have to be grammatically correct

I like this quote from Stephen King in the book: “Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes.”

The objective of fiction is not grammatical correctness. 

It’s for the reader to get lost in another world.  To make them forget, as much as possible, that he or she is reading a story at all. 

Grammatically proper sentences can sometimes stiffen a line.  It’s better to go for realism in your story.   

I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.  To put it another way, they’re like dandelions.  If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique.  If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day…fifty the day after that…and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, completely, and profligately covered with dandelions.

– STEPHEN KING

Avoid the passive tense

Verbs are either active or passive.  With active verbs, the subject is doing an action. 

For example, consider this sentence: Australia beat Brazil in the final.

Australia is the subject and beat is the active verb.

With passive verbs, something is being done to the subject.

For example:  He was taken to school by his mother.

Passive and active verbs are also referred to as passive voice and active voice.

Passive verbs should generally be avoided because they tend to weaken a sentence. 

They explain things in a murky, roundabout way, whilst active verbs explain things in more straightforward language.   

Consider these two lines as an example.   

Sally ate six prawns for dinner (active verb).

OR

At dinner, six prawns were eaten by Sally (passive verb).

The first line is stronger than the second, as it’s more straightforward and direct.

Passive verbs can be used every now and again, but use them sparingly.

Avoid adverbs

The adverb is not your friend, King says, as they also tend to weaken sentences.  

Like passive voice, they’re to be avoided (but again, you can still use them occasionally). 

Adverbs are words that modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs, by expressing things such as time, manner, place, cause, and degree.

They’re often words ending in ‘ly’, and you must be aware of using too many of them. 

For example, consider these sentences:

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said apologetically.

AND

“I feel fantastic.  I’ve just won the lottery,” she said gleefully.

We don’t need the adverbs apologetically or gleefully in these sentences, as it’s obvious how she feels from the words she says. 

The dialogue in your story must ring true

King says that when you write, you are making a promise to the reader to express the truth of how your characters act and talk.

Therefore it’s important to let each character speak freely, whether certain members of the public approve of the language or not.

It doesn’t matter if the dialogue in your story is innocent or profane; what matters is if it rings true, both on the page and to the ear.

To improve on dialogue, start listening to how others talk.

King has a terrible accident

In 1999 King set out on one of his daily walks and stepped into the woods to pee.  Unbeknownst to him, it would be two months before he’d be able to take another pee standing up. 

He was hit by a wayward van on his walk, and the extent of his injuries was such that he had to be helicoptered to Central Maine Medical Centre in Lewiston. 

His lower leg was broken in at least nine places and his spine was chipped in eight places.  He also broke four ribs and his scalp was lacerated, requiring twenty or thirty stitches. 

It took five marathon surgical procedures to put his leg back together, and he stayed in hospital for three weeks.  Then there was rehab:  stretching, bending, and crutch-walking. 

King resumed writing five weeks after the terrible accident. The first writing session lasted an hour and forty minutes and left him dripping with sweat, almost too tired to sit up straight in his wheelchair, but gradually things got better.  

Writing didn’t save his life, Dr. David Brown’s skill and his wife’s care did that – but writing has continued to enrich him and make his time on earth brighter and more pleasant.

If you like this post, please share it!