Home » Fiction Writing Tips, Writing Novels

Re-learning from Stephen King’s “On Writing”

26 September 2008 One Comment

I didn’t really mean to, but I’ve been having a feast of writing how-to books passing through my life lately. Usually I try to ration that kind of stuff out – because the one thing that’s a whole lot better than reading writing how-to books is definitely just WRITING – but the writing’s been in a bit of a lull and a bunch of how-to books that I’ve had on reserve at the library for ages just all arrived at once.

Which means this week I’ve been devouring Stephen King’s On Writing again. I read it once on loan from some foreign library (in Japan? or Germany?) but I couldn’t remember much about it. It’s lovely. It’s utterly readable and interesting and didn’t make me feel there are a million rules to follow when I write; but at the same time it gave me a bunch of reminders of how I can improve my writing. So for my own good more than anyone else’s, here’s a list of reminders I need, courtesy of my interpretation of Stephen King’s:

  • no adverbs. Well, almost no adverbs.
  • no passive voice. Ditto.
  • watch dialogue attribution. Usually, stick to “X said” or better still, nothing at all.
  • King writes 2,000 words every day. I should write something every day.
  • keep your first draft private. Don’t let other people’s ideas interfere with yours until they’re on paper.
  • story is everything. Characters come next. Other stuff doesn’t matter.
  • good description makes the reader participate.
  • make dialogue honest.
  • 2nd draft = 1st draft minus 10%
  • nail down the symbolism and theme after the first draft, then enhance them
  • re-read 1st draft after (minimum) 6 weeks, and all in one sitting if possible.

A lot of these reminders will frame what I now go back and do with the draft of my first novel, which I hope to make a start on this weekend (a long one, thanks to our Queen’s Birthday holiday).

And also this weekend, the next Writers Weekly 24-Hour Short Story Contest is on and I’m signed up again. It’s on Sunday (my time) so send some creative energy my way, please.

One Comment »

  • “Read it in one sitting” = another procrastination excuse said:

    [...] may remember I got quite enthusiastic about revisiting my first novel draft after I re-read Stephen King’s On Writing. I’ve got a brand new draft printed off in a ring binder (a pretty ring binder of course, [...]

Leave your response!

Add your comment below, or trackback from your own site. You can also subscribe to these comments via RSS.

Be nice. Keep it clean. Stay on topic. No spam.

You can use these tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

This is a Gravatar-enabled weblog. To get your own globally-recognized-avatar, please register at Gravatar.

CommentLuv Enabled

Anti-Spam Protection by WP-SpamFree