Stephen King - On Writing thesis

Discussion in 'Discussion of Published Works' started by Ree, Feb 3, 2010.

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  1. garmar69

    garmar69 Contributor Contributor

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    I enjoyed On Writing as a long-time fan of SK's work. That being said, I'm finding that as I get older, in age and in reading/writing experience, I enjoy his work less and less. I feel that perception of greatness is relative and SK is hardly someone I'd call an authority to judge others' capacity, and especially lack thereof, for greatness. Most people probably start out as terrible writers; why should this be a barometer of their potential when the most important factor may be dedication to continual improvement? I bet there are writers out there with the potential for literary greatness that will never come close because they never apply themselves. Anyone you see that has reached an elite level of accomplishment in anything did it through hard work and determination.

    Bottom line, if you really want to be a great writer work until you become one and don't let someone who has experienced huge marketing success determine your worth. There are several writers that SK recommended at the end of On Writing that I thought weren't worth the paper their work was printed on, but that's just my opinion.

    My 2 cents.
     
  2. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    Could not these same things help new writers in their own way?
    And sides, On Writing is - aside from the line so often quoted - a good motivation.
     
  3. ManhattanMss

    ManhattanMss New Member

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    I think personal idiosyncrasies and biases are actually what flavors the best fiction. For me, as a writer, detecting these kinds of uniquenesses in various authors' styles has freed me from the illusion that all writing requires a similar approach. Strunk & White is excellent for understanding language and its impact when used in various ways; and I think that study is both fascinating and essential to understanding how to write creatively. But what makes us similar in how we communicate is, to me, far less electrifying in what I think of as good fiction than those very idiosyncrasies and biases that account for significance, which is uniquely different from one writer to another.
     
  4. DragonGrim

    DragonGrim New Member

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    I skimmed through King’s book and found a few good pointers. One is on adverbs. If you use one, it’s best to stop and ponder if a stronger verb could be used without the adverb. Of course, I believe a saw tons of them in the book.
     
  5. Green Tea

    Green Tea Banned

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    I read 'On Writing' 2 years ago, yet I can still, off hand, recall a few useful pieces of advice that Stephen gives his reader.

    - Limit use of adverbs! ie. fantastically, outrageously.
    - Never use adverbs in dialogue attribution! ie. "Kiss my buttocks!" George said Texanly.
    - Write your first draft quickly!
    - When you finish your first draft, put it away for a few months and do something else before coming back to start your second draft. This is meant to let your mind settle and look at your work in a more critical way.
    - First Draft - 10% = Second Draft! ie. Edit out the fat words.
    - Let nobody read your work until your first draft is finished. I think the quote from the book was "write your first draft with the door closed, and the second draft with the door open".


    There's more, but you need to read it yourself. It is a useful book.
     
  6. Cogito

    Cogito Former Mod, Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Even a thousand monkeys with typewriters are bound to emit a useful phrase now and then.

    Stephen King is a prolific writer, and he is capable of putting together a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter. Some of his novels are even good. So he is bound to have SOME understanding of his craft to pass along.

    The question is, how much subjective crap and self-serving ego liniment do you have to wade through to pick the occasional blossom of insightful advice? You could get much of the same advice from Strunk and White with a lot less thrashing through the weeds.

    As for King's comments on revision passes - I defy you to read any of his recent works and conclude that he has weeded out the fat in a revision run!

    My apologies to those who worship at the Shrine of St. Stephen.
     
  7. garmar69

    garmar69 Contributor Contributor

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    I bet you're sorry. :D

    It must be one of those do as I say not as I do things because he's butchered entire forests filling pages with adverbs and unnecessary ramblings. I got his latest book recently, Under the Dome, and just can't get interested in it at all.
     
  8. Green Tea

    Green Tea Banned

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    Always wanted to quote myself! ;)

    Seems appropriate! Especially the part about yuppy crap vs. entertainment.
     
  9. jacklondonsghost

    jacklondonsghost New Member

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    I didn't care for On Writing. I felt like it was incredibly discouraging, though King did have some good advice threaded in as well. I really didn't like how his message seemed to be that some people will just never be writers. It came across as incredibly pretentious. Just my opinion.

    I think King's best works are his short stories. I don't care for horror, so that might have something to do with it. I feel the same way about King as I do the Beatles; certainly talented, but overrated a lot of the time.
     
  10. Banzai

    Banzai One-time Mod, but on the road to recovery Contributor

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    Probably something to do with it having the same premise as the Simpsons Movie.
     
  11. garmar69

    garmar69 Contributor Contributor

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    Never seen it but I just Googled it. Oh, my. :D
     
  12. Sabreur

    Sabreur Contributor Contributor

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    Well, just because writing has meaning doesn't make it yuppy crap. And a writer doesn't have to write exclusively in America or even about Americans to be a "great American writer."

    Look at Ernest Hemingway. Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Green Hills of Africa...none of those set in America. Though, fair enough, they do feature Americans.
     
  13. Green Tea

    Green Tea Banned

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    Actually
    King started writing the novel back in the late 70's. He wrote in the afterward that he was about 75 pages into the manuscript before shelving it because the story idea was too daunting and complex for him to work out at the time. He felt he didn't have enough information to discuss all the technical details he needed to write the story the way he wanted.

    So 30 years later he finally got around to writing it, employing researchers from various professions to advise him on all the technical and medical stuff in the story.

    So maybe the Simpsons took the idea from him! ;) It was public knowlege he started a manuscript, then put it aside. Stephen J. Spignesi wrote a book in 1998 titled 'The Lost Work of Stephen King', that discussed the shelved story, and it's title 'Under the Dome'.
     
  14. Green Tea

    Green Tea Banned

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    As so often these days, the simple path of seeing things as black or white has once again seized the idea and reduced it to an anecdote.

    Good or bad...

    Democrat or Republican...

    For us or against us...

    A little abstract thinking never hurt anyone. And to clarify I didn't write that meaning = yuppy crap, thank you very much. It is a tactic of weak minds to reduce someone's words to basic terms them use it against them (reductio ad absurdum). For example "Al Gore says he invented the iiinturnet!"
     
  15. Sabreur

    Sabreur Contributor Contributor

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    I'm sorry, I was just quoting what you said. You said
    and then
    which, in my eyes, implies that you see writing with "meaning" as "prissy/yuppy crap." If you don't wish to be misinterpreted, write more clearly.
     
  16. Green Tea

    Green Tea Banned

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    And I suggest you don't take a simple analogy to extremes.

    I have a few black friends, does that make me a race traitor nigger-lover?


    Yuppy crap vs. Entertainment

    I'm surprised how many members of this forum claim they love Hemmingway, Faulkner, etc. These people are called literary yuppies. While no doubt there are a few members who actually do love those great authors and could happily read nothing but their work for the rest of their lives, the reality is most people only pretend, so they can appear erudite. "Pish pish! You read Stephen King! How low you are!", while if we have a peak at your book shelf, I'm sure we would see a lot of Clancy, Grisham, and other populist writers. My initial point was that most people read for enjoyment (entertainment), and do not buy books just to show off to their yuppy friends and fellow forum readers. Not to say there is anything wrong with classic literature. That is where you missed my point.
     
  17. Sabreur

    Sabreur Contributor Contributor

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    While your comparison of my misunderstanding to racist extremism is way off-the-mark, I can't say I disagree with you. Reading is entertainment. I do genuinely enjoy Hemingway, by the way. I also like Dan Abnett, RE Howard and other pulp fiction writers ;) I've never read much Faulkner and frankly, many literary classics (Chopin jumps to mind) annoy me to no end.

    Hemingway and his style of writing (sparse yet still packed with quality; less is more, if you will) just appeal to me. Same reason why I enjoy Cormac McCarthy. However, the vast majority of literature I read is stuff you find in the Sci-fi section at Barnes and Noble. ;) Including some Stephen King. I liked Desperation and The Regulators, as well as many of his short stories.
     
  18. Green Tea

    Green Tea Banned

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    Fair enough. I liked Hemingway when I read his work years ago. Once did the trick, though. I have no desire to re-read this novels any time soon.


    Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I am not American. Just as every Russian adores Pushkin, I think many Americans automatically say Hemingway when asked what authors they enjoy.
     
  19. Sabreur

    Sabreur Contributor Contributor

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    Most Americans I meet abhor reading in every form other than text messages and internet URLs. This may be because I'm a student still ;) However, many older Americans do enjoy Hemingway, I agree. He can be somewhat of an acquired taste though; he was a egotistical pseudo-misogynist after all and that definitely bleeds through in his writing at times.
     
  20. Cogito

    Cogito Former Mod, Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Hemingway would hardly brag about being an American. He was an expatriate who favored the cultures of France and Spain.

    But most people would still consider him an American author. What I, personally, like about his writing is his ability to say a lot in very few words. He rarely wasted time telling the reader things that would be apparent in context later.

    Still, I don't limit my reading to Hemingway or exalt him above all others. I don't have a favorite author, American or otherwise. There are authors I don't respect, highly, too. King is not at the top of that list either, even though I consider him overly wordy. There are novels and stories by King I truly enjoy. It's just that there is also a lot of his writing that would make the forests weep that they sacrificed their children for it.
     
  21. Ashleigh

    Ashleigh Contributor Contributor

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    I admire Stephen king eternally for his passion and determination to write. He went from rags to riches with his art, and despite the struggles he encountered with working all night and day through university, to working from a cupboard in a caravan whilst doing laundry for a living, he made it.

    I think he has an amazing life story, and I enjoyed every bit of 'On Writing'.

    However, I won't deny that although he has told some amazing stories, and written alot of very enjoyable books, he's written his fair share of tripe. Some of his later works have been stuffed full of unnecessary waffle, so much so that the story is lost completely. He does this alot in his earlier novels too, but the story keeps it going.

    Even still, I admire anyone who can write a decent book from start to finish, and I certainly admire someone like him, who can cough out so many books that even his fans have to admit to disliking a great deal of it! There is literally a book for everyone's taste amongst his collection.

    In interviews I've found him to be a satyrical, passionate, lovely man. If there's any arrogance about him, then he deserves it. We could learn just about everything there is to learn from a man like Stephen King. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

    (Though for the record - I'm not even going to attempt to read Under The Dome until I have atleast 6 months to lose myself in it completely, and not have to read anything else for Uni. That's a book you'd practically have to marry if you intended to get through it!)
     
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  22. 42durham

    42durham New Member

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    I am not sure how to start the writing process now for a novel. Stephen King says forget plot and using character profiles to create your stories, but to let the characters, and plot develop like uncovering fossils. Carefully, and gradually. I was first looking at writing software that helps you along in the process by organizing, and planning your novel, but it sounds to me like Stephen King just thinks of an interesting human/supernatural scenario, and then just lets the story and characters develop. Unsure of where his stories will take him.

    Am I misinterpreting something he wrote in "On Writing"?

    Do you recommend planning and organizing your story first using a program like WriteWay, or Snowflake Pro?

    Or just start writing based on your situation, and let the story, and characters develop themselves?

    I understand, and agree with King's theory on writing, I am just not sure of his exact process, besides reading for 3 hours a day, writing for 2-3 hours, having a good writing space for yourself, and closing the door.

    Thanks.
     
  23. hyperchord24

    hyperchord24 Member

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    Just finished On Writing and am now starting to seriously write. Though I do like his advice about writing 1000 words a day (I've only read his advice, don't know what other "experts" say), I wonder how many words a day he was writing in that trailer while working long days and raising 3 small children. I have 1 with 1 on the way with a real job and if I do get to 1000, it means I'm sleeping for 5 hours. The adverb thing is really just personal preference. I love using adverbs, though in my inexperience, they may just be a crutch (but SK says to use the first word that pops into your head). I'm currently reading "Guards! Guards!" by Terry Pratchett and he uses a TON of adverbs. He got published and I find them quite usefull in making the story more vivid.

    Another thing: why do many people here call SK only a Marketing Success? Isn't that the point of being published? Getting your book into the hands of as many people as possible? Why knock him for it?
     
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  24. marina

    marina Contributor Contributor

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    I think he pretty much laid out his exact process in On Writing--he thinks of a situation, a what if. Then he populates the ideas of that situation with characters that fit the story he begins to slowly dig out. I don't think using a writing program is the way to write. The way to write is to write. Just go and write. How have you written stories in the past? The more you write, the more your own technique/style for writing will come forth. It's organic and cannot be done, in my opinion, through any formula or writing program.
     
  25. Ellipse

    Ellipse Contributor Contributor

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    Just adding to this.

    Stephen King told people how he writes. That doesn't mean it is the way you should write. Everyone does things differently. You just have to find your own method.

    I think of a situation first, and then stick a character in it to see how he reacts. As he interacts with other characters everything continues to evolve until I have a fully fleshed out story.
     

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