Part autobiography, part instruction, part taste and opinion on how to write fiction well from one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.
On Writing is part autobiography of the writer (the first half), and part guidance on how to write (the second). I’ve pulled only a handful of quotes from the first half, which are these:
On ideas:
“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.” (Page 29)
On the perceptions of others about you as a writer:
“I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction and poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.” (Page 46)
On drafting, then writing the second draft, and how your approach to these two should be different:
“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. Once you know what the story is and get it right - as right as you can, anyway - it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.” (Page 56)
On shoveling shit, and your first perceptions of your own characters:
“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.” (Page 82)
One of the most important tools in the writer’s toolbox is vocabulary, in that your choice of words are incredibly important but something you should be careful not to overdo.
“One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed.” (Page 129)
His golden rule is that you should use the first word that comes to mind, if it is both appropriate and colourful. The next two, perhaps “silver” rules, are that you should:
But sometimes adverbs do slip through, and it’s not the end of the world.
“Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation. Affectation itself, beginning with the need to define some sorts of writing as 'good' and other sorts as 'bad,' is fearful behavior. Good writing is also about making good choices when it comes to picking the tools you plan to work with.” (Page 143)
In other words, don’t try to dress yourself up as something else in the hope of getting the imagined approval of somebody else.
“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.” (Page 160)
One wonders if King thinks of himself as being just a good writer here. Many would think of him as one of the greats now.
“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.” (Page 164)
You can’t develop your taste otherwise, and taste is important. You’ve no other choice here.
“It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written, but I know it's true.” (Page 167)
Writing is, says King, at its best when it seems like play. Write every day, have an ironclad schedule that you stick to. Stay healthy. Stay fit. Stay married! And then:
“I think we're actually talking about creative sleep. Like your bedroom, your writing room should be private, a place where you go to dream.” (Page 179)
So what should you write about? “What you know” is a blunt tool often misunderstood, but how Kind means it is to be honest. Do not write what you think is clever, or impressive, or that you think “will do well.” This is a surefire way to write something that sucks.
Don’t worry about making it “literary,” either. This is not what readers are looking for, and certainly not publishers:
“Book-buyers aren't attracted, by and large, by the literary merits of a novel; book-buyers want a good story to take with them on the airplane, something that will first fascinate them, then pull them in and keep them turning the pages. This happens, I think, when readers recognize the people in a book, their behaviors, their surroundings, and their talk. When the reader hears strong echoes of his or her own life and beliefs, he or she is apt to become more invested in the story. I'd argue that it's impossible to make this sort of connection in a premeditated way, gauging the market like a racetrack tout with a hot tip.” (Page 184)
There are only three real elements to any work of fiction:
King believes that “plot” really only emerges as a found artefact and that any attempts to engineer it is like using a jackhammer to create a fine statue. His preference is instead for putting characters into certain situations and then watching what unfolds in a way that is true to those characters, rather than trying to crowbar them into doing certain things.
“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. I often have an idea of what the outcome may be, but I have never demanded of a set of characters that they do things my way. On the contrary, I want them to do things their way. In some instances, the outcome is what I visualized. In most, however, it's something I never expected.” (Page 190)
When it comes to description, it is just as much about how much to do it as it is how to do it:
“Thin description leaves the reader feeling bewildered and nearsighted. Overdescription buries him or her in details and images. The trick is to find a happy medium. It's also important to know what to describe and what can be left alone while you get on with your main job, which is telling a story.” (Page 202)
Descriptions of characters should not be heavy-handed. You want to leave the reader to fill in more details than you’d think. Locale and texture, King argues, are more important. If you try to dictate too closely what the person looks like, you leave little room for the reader to actually imagine the character in their mind’s eye.
For dialogue, how well do you listen to how people really speak? This is important, otherwise you’ll come out with dialogue that sounds like contrived nonsense. Again:
Ultimately, the characters and their actions need to seem reasonable to us, and do so in a way that helps the story along.
The first draft is to be written with the door closed, to understand what the book is really about.
The second draft is to be written with the door open, and to make it even clearer what it’s about.
Once the first draft is done, King recommends resting and not reading it again—or even thinking about it—for at least six weeks. Ideally you’d be writing something else entirely in this time.
Then, go through it looking for errors, plot holes, gaps in character development. What needs changing? What needs removing? What needs adding in, entirely new?
Then there’s the matter of subjective evaluations:
“Subjective evaluations are, as I say, a little harder to deal with, but listen: if everyone who reads your book says you have a problem (Connie comes back to her husband too easily, Hal's cheating on the big exam seems unrealistic given what we know about him, the novel's conclusion seems abrupt and arbitrary), you've got a problem and you better do something about it.” (Page 260)
Write for an imagined or real “ideal reader” (IR), someone whose tastes you know well and who you are trying to please specifically. It helps with decision making in the process of writing itself.
Another helpful rule of thumb from King is that that the 2nd draft = the 1st draft - 10%.
Back story is whatever has gone before. You need it, but not too much of it and only the kind that you think will actually be of interest to your IR. There are, of course, more subtle ways to do this than not, and figuring this out takes time.
Research will often be necessary too but, like back story, it should largely remain where the name suggests: in the back. Character and story should always come to the fore before anything else.
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