Today we are going to talk about Stephen King’s book, ‘On Writing’, which is part bio and part writing tips for aspiring authors.
In the foreword, King recommends that all aspiring writers also read ‘The Elements of Style’ by William Strunk Jr and E.B. White.
In the first part of the book, King talks about the bits that stood out from his life, from early childhood onwards. Reading on, what becomes obvious is that even as a little kid, he loved stories.
He loved books, movies, and writing and actively sold his writing work, first to his own mother and then to the kids at his local school.
He turned a movie he saw, ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’, into a book and sold three dozen copies of it to the kids at school. He considered it a raging success, his first bestseller, and walked around in a ‘kind of dream’, unable to believe his sudden wealth.
Unfortunately that particular dream was short-lived. Miss Hisler, the school principal, called him into the office and burst his bubble.
He was not, she said, to turn the school into a marketplace, especially to sell such ‘trash’. He also had to give everyone their money back, which he did, even to those who still insisted on keeping their copies.
In his heart, her words stuck, and he spent many years feeling ashamed of his writing till he hit around forty.
Stephen King has an epiphany
Then he had an epiphany: almost every writer of fiction, he realized, has had someone try to make them feel lousy about it.
Writers cop criticism – it comes with the territory, and one must learn to live with it.
Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don’t have to make speeches. Just believing is usually enough.
– STEPHEN KING
Later on, he was to learn yet another valuable lesson about writing.
He was working on a novel called ‘Carrie’ and was having some serious issues with it, so he threw it in the bin, thinking it would never sell.
His wife Tabby however, believed in his talent and retrieved it from the garbage. She shook the cigarette ashes off, smoothed the papers out, and sat down to read the manuscript.
Afterward, she told him to go on with ‘Carrie’. He had something, she said, she really thought he did, and she wanted to know the rest of the story.
Thanks to her encouragement, he did eventually finish the novel, and it reached heights he never imagined possible.
He sold the paperback rights to Signet Books for $400,000 and his life was changed forever.
Don’t stop because it’s hard
Lesson learned: stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard is a bad idea.
Sometimes you have to go on, even when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work even when it feels like you’re not.
Here are some other lessons from the book, ‘On Writing’.
Keep it simple
One of the worst things you can do to your writing is to look for long words, possibly because you’re ashamed of your short ones.
King says this is akin to dressing up your household pet in evening clothes; the pet is embarrassed, and the writer of this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed.
Plain and direct language is better.
Omit needless words
If it doesn’t need to be in there, get rid of it.
Read a lot and write a lot
‘Read a lot and write a lot’ is the great commandment of writing. Sneak reading into your day whenever you can.
Also set up a space conducive to writing – ideally it should have no distractions.
Shade down, door shut, no tv, no radio, and no phone. King suggests that you write every day, with one day off a week.
Get the amount of description right
Too little description leaves the reader feeling bewildered, whilst too much buries the reader in unnecessary details and images. The trick is to find a happy medium – get the amount of description just right.
Know what to describe and what to leave alone. For King, good description consists of a few well-chosen details.
Before beginning to write, he visualizes in his mind what he needs to describe, drawing from memory and opening up all of his senses. It gets easier with practice, he says.
Be true and honest with dialogue and characters
Building characters and creating good dialogue comes down to two things, King says. Paying attention to how people behave and talk, then telling the truth about what you see.
It’s also important to remember that no one is all good or all bad; no one is one-dimensional. We are all complex, multi-dimensional beings, with both good and bad traits.
Bring this attitude into your fiction to avoid creating comic book, one-dimensional characters.
If you’re doing a good job with your characters, you’ll find that when they come to life, they’ll start doing things on their own.
More writing tips from Stephen King are coming up in the next blog. Stay tuned!
If you like this post, please share it!