Learning from the Experts: Stephen King

One of the best books I have read about writing is Stephen King's 'On Writing.' I found it inspiring to read his story, and to learn from him. His books have sold more than 350 million copies, so he clearly knows what he's doing.

I am not a fan of the horror genre, but I have read a few Stephen King novels, and while it's not my thing, I recognise an expert at work.

Writing Tips:

Stephen King has said and written so much about the craft of writing, but I am going to distill this into 5 of my favourite quotes. His works speak for themselves, so I won't add much comment!

Unless stated otherwise, all quotes are taken from On Writing.

Write

"Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work."

"Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up."

"The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better."

Read

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut."

In 'On Writing', Stephen King describes how reading regularly is a part of his daily routine - he reads for a few hours every afternoon, after a morning of writing.

"Good description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It's not just a question of how-to, you see; it's also a question of how much to. Reading will help you answer how much, and only reams of writing will help you with the how. You can learn only by doing."

"Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."

Avoid Adverbs

"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. By then you see them for the weeds they really are, but by then it's-GASP!!-too late."

"The adverb is not your friend."

I've also heard adverbs described as the weak tool of a lazy mind. Find strong verbs instead!

On Editing

Leave out the boring parts "(kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings.)"

"To write is human, to edit is divine."

"The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story.... Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction."

"When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done."

(Writer's Digest, November 1973 - The Horror Writer Market and the Ten Bears.)

Persevere

"Whether it's a vignette of a single page or an epic trilogy like 'The Lord of the Rings,' the work is always accomplished one word at a time."

"There's should be no telephone in your writing room, certainly no TV or videogames for you to fool around with."

"But none of them taught me the things I learned from Carrie White. The most important is that the writer's original perception of a character or characters may be as erroneous as the reader's. Running a close second was the realization that stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position."

"So okay― there you are in your room with the shade down and the door shut and the plug pulled out of the base of the telephone. You've blown up your TV and committed yourself to a thousand words a day, come hell or high water. Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want."

And perhaps the best Mantra for a writer: "Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure."

Happy Writing!