ON WRITING: A MEMOIR OF THE CRAFT by Stephen King
Even when I was a little kid, I knew my path was to become a writer. I read novels until my eyes crapped out on me, I spent hours and hours leafing through comic books, I was a cinephile, and I wanted to make my own contributions to these sources of entertainment. I wanted to write novels, comic books, and screenplays. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I got the idea that I wanted to be a film director as well, and that was an obsession that kept me distracted for years. Now, I’m back on the writer path. Maybe the directing thing will happen someday, maybe it won’t – but not being able to make movies shouldn’t hold me back from getting my stories out into the world. I had it right when I was a kid. I should write anything and everything. These days, my primary aspiration is to become an author, and as I pursue this goal, there are two writers I draw inspiration from above all others: the master of horror Stephen King, who has been dazzling and disturbing me since I was a kid, and the king of dialogue, Elmore Leonard. When it comes to giving advice, Leonard had a simple “top 10” list: 1. Never open a book with weather. 2. Avoid prologues. 3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. 4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said"… he admonished gravely. 5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. 6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose." 7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. 8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters. 9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things. 10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
King, on the other hand, has written a whole book on the subject.
Back in the ‘80s, King was tasked with writing a book on the horror genre, covering everything from books to films and comic books... and while that book, Danse Macabre, has its interesting points, it’s also a book that I find to be a challenge to make it through. It might work better for me if I break it up into sections and take time away between those sections, but if I try to get through Danse Macabre like any other book, it starts to feel interminable. It’s strange that I find that to be a difficult read when horror is my favorite genre and I happen to make my living by writing about horror, but that’s how it is. Thankfully, when King was tasked with writing a book about writing, he turned out something that I find to be a fascinating read.
On Writing begins with a chapter in which King shares several memories from his childhood, giving us background on the writer and also, along the way, revealing how he got started writing and worked his way up to becoming a successful author. In the early years, he was focused on making supplementary income for his family by submitting short stories to magazines – which is one reason why he dropped the opening pages of Carrie into the trash. This was clearly going to turn out to be a novel, and he shouldn’t be wasting his time on a novel when he needed to sell short stories. But his wife dug those pages out of the trash, encouraged him to continue writing – and once that novel was completed, it made King a lot of money and got his career rolling.
From there, King digs into the telepathy of writing and gives tips on pretty much anything an aspiring writer would think to ask about: vocabulary, grammar, style, editing, writing multiple drafts, etc. At the heart of it all are two theses: “The first is that good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals (vocabulary, grammar, the elements of style) and then filling the third level of your toolbox with the right instruments. The second is that while it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.” Whether or not a writer has a better chance at moving from bad to competent or good to great than King thinks they do, it’s very interesting to find out what he had to say about it all.
Like many King novels, I have read On Writing before. Like many King novels, I will be reading it again. But this one is unique in his bibliography in that it’s one I can turn to any time I need a bit of inspiration and advice.
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