25 writing tips from Stephen King’s book On Writing

I’m in the process of writing my first book (latest update here,) and I recently read devoured Stephen King’s book, On Writing.

As an aside, I’ve read over a dozen Stephen King books at this point, all within the last year. Almost everyone I tell this to says, “I’ve never been into Stephen King, I just don’t like that horror stuff.” Which is exactly why I never read King before. But then I realized that he writes all kinds of books, and I gave him a try. He has now become my favorite writer, and I have read exactly zero of his horror-themed novels. Give him a try, either read The Stand or Mr. Mercedes. Probably Mr. Mercedes, its an easy to get into detective mystery novel.

Ok, back to On Writing. The first half of the book tells King’s story of growing up – which is fascinating – and then he gets into his advice on writing. These are the 25 bits that I thought were the most impactful:

• When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.
• Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out.
• Remember that the basic rule of vocabulary is use the first word that comes to your mind, if it is appropriate and colorful.
• You should avoid the passive tense.
• The adverb is not your friend. For example: Consider the sentence He closed the door firmly. It’s by no means a terrible sentence (at least it’s got an active verb going for it), but ask yourself if firmly really has to be there. You can argue that it expresses a degree of difference between He closed the door and He slammed the door, and you’ll get no argument from me  . . . . but what about context? What about all the enlightening (not to say emotionally moving) prose which came before He closed the door firmly? Shouldn’t this tell us how he closed the door? And if the foregoing prose does tell us, isn’t firmly an extra word? Isn’t it redundant?
• Easy books contain lots of short paragraphs—including dialogue paragraphs which may only be a word or two long—and lots of white space.
• …how strong the basic paragraph form can be. Topic-sentence-followed-by-support-and-description insists that the writer organize his/her thoughts, and it also provides good insurance against wandering away from the topic.
• The more fiction you read and write, the more you’ll find your paragraphs forming on their own. And that’s what you want.
• But if you don’t want to work your tail off, you have no business trying to write well.
• If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.
• I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book.
• I distrust plot for two reasons: first, because our lives are largely plotless, even when you add in all our reasonable precautions and careful planning; and second, because I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren’t compatible.
• The situation comes first. The characters—always flat and unfeatured, to begin with—come next. Once these things are fixed in my mind, I begin to narrate.
• There is a huge difference between story and plot. Story is honorable and trustworthy; plot is shifty, and best kept under house arrest. Good fiction always begins with story and progresses to theme; it almost never begins with theme and progresses to story.
• I can’t remember many cases where I felt I had to describe what the people in a story of mine looked like—I’d rather let the reader supply the faces, the builds, and the clothing as well.
• The key to good description begins with clear seeing and ends with clear writing, the kind of writing that employs fresh images and simple vocabulary.
• Practice the art, always reminding yourself that your job is to say what you see, and then to get on with your story.
• It’s dialogue that gives your cast their voices, and is crucial in defining their characters—only what people do tells us more about what they’re like, and talk is sneaky: what people say often conveys their character to others in ways of which they—the speakers—are completely unaware.
• One of the cardinal rules of good fiction is never tell us a thing if you can show us.
• <Great dialogue in a book invokes> guilty pleasure of anyone first tuning in and then eavesdropping on an interesting conversation.
• How much and how many drafts? For me the answer has always been two drafts and a polish. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%.
• I like to start at square one, dead even with the writer. I’m an A-to-Z man; serve me the appetizer first and give me dessert if I eat my veggies.
• The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.
• He wrote this when describing a writing class, and I just love this line: It seems to occur to few of the attendees that if you have a feeling you just can’t describe, you might just be, I don’t know, kind of like, my sense of it is, maybe in the wrong f&cking class.
• You should probably be doing is writing as fast as the Gingerbread Man runs, getting that first draft down on paper while the shape of the fossil is still bright and clear in your mind.