On Writing

Stephen King’s guide to narrative writing:

quick tips to creating meaningful prose while you enjoy yourself!

note from Worth Weller: this is a great book and makes fun and useful reading!

Here are some useful links I found about it:

Review

Discussion

Online purchase

Tip One

• “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.”

Tip Two

• Get rid of the “bullshit,” or as William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White more elegantly put it in The Elements of Style, “Omit needless words.”

Tip Three

• “Write (about) what you like then imbue it with life and make it unique by blending in your own personal knowledge of life, friendship, relationships, sex, and work.”

Tip Four

• “John Grisham knows lawyers. What you know makes you unique in some other way. Be brave. Map the enemy’s positions, come back, tell us all you know.”

Tip Five

• “Words have weight. Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breath.”

Tip Six

• “I would argue that the paragraph, not the sentence, is the basic unit of writing—the place where coherence begins and words stand a chance of becoming more than mere words.”

Tip Seven

• You must learn to use the paragraph well if you are to write well. What this means is lots of practice; you have to learn the beat.

Tip Eight

• “In expository prose, paragraphs can (and should) be neat and utilitarian. The ideal expository graf contains a topic sentence followed by others which explain or amplify the first.

Tip Nine

• “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.”

Tip Ten

• “Paragraphs are almost as important for how they look as for what they say; they are maps of intent.”

Tip 11

• “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.”

Tip 12

• “As the whore said to the bashful sailor, ‘It ain’t how much you’ve got, honey, it’s how you use it’.”

Tip 13

• “Make yourself a solemn promise right now that you’ll never use ‘emolument’ when you mean ‘tip’ and you’ll never say John stopped long enough to perform an act of excretion when you mean John stopped long enough to take a shit.”

Tip 14

• “Remember that the basic rule of vocabulary is use the first word that comes to your mind, if it is appropriate and colorful.”

Tip 15

• Here’s what Stephen King has to say about grammar:
“Relax. Chill.”

Tip 16

• “One either absorbs the grammatical principles of one’s native language in conversation in reading or one does not. What Sophomore English does (or tries to do) is little more than the naming of the parts. And this isn’t high school.”

Tip 17

• Here’s all you need to know: “Nouns and verbs are the two indispensable parts of writing,…nouns, the words that name, and verbs, the words that act.”

• “Without one of each (noun and verb), no group of words can be a sentence, since a sentence is, by definition, a group of words containing a subject (noun) and a predicate (verb); these string of words begin with a capital letter, end with a period, and combine to make a complete thought which starts in the writer’s head and then leaps to the reader’s.”

Tip 18

• Avoid the passive tense: “It’s weak, it’s circuitous, and it’s frequently tortuous as well.”

For example:

• My first kiss will always be recalled by me as how my romance with Shayana was begun.

• “Oh, man—who farted, right? A simpler way to express this idea—sweeter and more forceful as well—might be this:”

• My romance with Shayana began with our first kiss. I’ll never forget it.

Tip 19

• “Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation.”

• “You probably do know what you’re talking about, and can safely energize your prose with active verbs.”

Tip 20

• Put the most important part of a sentence at the beginning (and remember Mr. Weller says do the same with a paragraph!).

• “Everyone’s entitled to his/her opinion, but I don’t believe With a hammer he killed Frank will ever replace He killed Frank with a hammer.”

Tip 21

• “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.”

For Example:

• “For me, good description usually consists of a few well-chosen details that will stand for everything else.”

• “If I tell you that Carrie White is a high school outcast with a bad complexion and a fashion-victim wardrobe, I think you can do the rest, can’t you? I don’t need to give you a pimple-by-pimple, skirt-by-skirt rundown.”

Tip 22

• About those revisions—how much and how many?

• “For me the answer has always been two drafts and a polish.”

Conclusion

• “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.”

On Writing

Stephen King’s guide to narrative writing:

quick tips to creating meaningful prose while you enjoy yourself!

Tip One

• “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.”

Tip Two

• Get rid of the “bullshit,” or as William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White more elegantly put it in The Elements of Style, “Omit needless words.”

Tip Three

• “Write (about) what you like then imbue it with life and make it unique by blending in your own personal knowledge of life, friendship, relationships, sex, and work.”

Tip Four

• “John Grisham knows lawyers. What you know makes you unique in some other way. Be brave. Map the enemy’s positions, come back, tell us all you know.”

Tip Five

• “Words have weight. Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breath.”

Tip Six

• “I would argue that the paragraph, not the sentence, is the basic unit of writing—the place where coherence begins and words stand a chance of becoming more than mere words.”

Tip Seven

• You must learn to use the paragraph well if you are to write well. What this means is lots of practice; you have to learn the beat.

Tip Eight

• “In expository prose, paragraphs can (and should) be neat and utilitarian. The ideal expository graf contains a topic sentence followed by others which explain or amplify the first.

Tip Nine

• “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.”

Tip Ten

• “Paragraphs are almost as important for how they look as for what they say; they are maps of intent.”

Tip 11

• “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.”

Tip 12

• “As the whore said to the bashful sailor, ‘It ain’t how much you’ve got, honey, it’s how you use it’.”

Tip 13

• “Make yourself a solemn promise right now that you’ll never use ‘emolument’ when you mean ‘tip’ and you’ll never say John stopped long enough to perform an act of excretion when you mean John stopped long enough to take a shit.”

Tip 14

• “Remember that the basic rule of vocabulary is use the first word that comes to your mind, if it is appropriate and colorful.”

Tip 15

• Here’s what Stephen King has to say about grammar: “Relax. Chill.”

Tip 16

• “One either absorbs the grammatical principles of one’s native language in conversation in reading or one does not. What Sophomore English does (or tries to do) is little more than the naming of the parts. And this isn’t high school.”

Tip 17

• Here’s all you need to know: “Nouns and verbs are the two indispensable parts of writing,…nouns, the words that name, and verbs, the words that act.”

Tip 18

• Avoid the passive tense: “It’s weak, it’s circuitous, and it’s frequently tortuous as well.”

For example:

• My first kiss will always be recalled by me as how my romance with Shayana was begun.

• “Oh, man—who farted, right? A simpler way to express this idea—sweeter and more forceful as well—might be this:”

• My romance with Shayana began with our first kiss. I’ll never forget it.

Tip 19

• “Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation.”

• “You probably do know what you’re talking about, and can safely energize your prose with active verbs.”

Tip 20

• Put the most important part of a sentence at the beginning (and remember Mr. Weller says do the same with a paragraph!).

• “Everyone’s entitled to his/her opinion, but I don’t believe With a hammer he killed Frank will ever replace He killed Frank with a hammer.”

Tip 21

• “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.”

For Example:

• “For me, good description usually consists of a few well-chosen details that will stand for everything else.”

• “If I tell you that Carrie White is a high school outcast with a bad complexion and a fashion-victim wardrobe, I think you can do the rest, can’t you? I don’t need to give you a pimple-by-pimple, skirt-by-skirt rundown.”

Tip 22

• About those revisions—how much and how many?

• “For me the answer has always been two drafts and a polish.”

Conclusion

• “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.”

• Here’s what Stephen King has to say about grammar:
“Relax. Chill.”