Stephen King - On Writing thesis

Aren't all writers pretty bad when they start out?

 

I'll admit to having only read chapters out of the book but unless I'm mixing up contexts, I think this is what he meant. If I'm mixing things, this is what I mean should I every say anything like King did.

Sure we are all bad when we start, just not "bad writers" as he meant the phrase. I used to think that everyone could learn to sing well, it's not true. I used to think that everyone could learn to write well too. In my opinion, a bad writer can improve grammar, punctuation, and all the other elements but never really get it. A bad writer may even find some commercial success if the market is right.

But they're never going to improve from "I didn't see anything wrong with the story so I guess it's okay." Someone who's a mid range writer (probably 85% of the planet), once they have all the elements down, will start at "It's okay." Then after a lot of work it becomes "That was a good book." As for the few souls who learn the craft and start at "That's a good book," heaven help the rest of us.

And lest you think successful writers saying that there are some people who just can't write is new, google Poe, Hemingway, Twain, and Dickinson. All of them had mean things to say about their peers abilities. (Twain had lots. He called Hawthorn a "hack" and said of Jane Austen "Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.")

I'm also going to make a suggestion to anyone who's read this far. Pick up "Method and Madness" by Alice LaPlante. It's a common 300 level Collage text book with solid advice and short stories that exemplify the advice. It's written to people who are trying to learn to write, instead of a guy trying to explain how he learned to do it.

 

Don't listen to everything Stephen King, or any writer for that matter, says.

I have read On Writing and enjoyed it, but I'm not going to take everything he says as the absolute truth. That was just his experience as a writer. But every writer is different.

 

That was really inspirational! thanks!

True, but I must say that by reading "techniques of the selling writer" I have learned so many things that has improved my writing that i doubt that I would have gotten out of plain reading, because Im not a very analytical reader, When I read a book I have a hard time to break it down to techinque and all the little components that it is made of. I just read the story and judge it good or bad. It is a lot easier for me to get these things if explained in that way.

I agree. While I have all respect for his career and success I didn't find that book very helpful either. And I think that a book called on writing should have less of his personal life-issues, (i found them quite boring actually) and more about writing, there wasn't anythng in that book that other books I have read about writing haven't already explained more thoroughly (sp?).

Exactly. I don't think anyone is a born excellent writer, that is something you have to excercise a lot to become, and probably even the first attempts of the excellent writers wasn't that good either. But we will never know that beause the first book they ever got PUBLISHED was really good.

And I find it ridiculous of him saying that you can't go from bad to competent, or good to brilliant, so how do they get there???

 

I don't believe this is true. Maybe what you're trying to say is the great authors didn't always need to seek out advice, as they could find answers themselves, but I'm absolutely sure every single great author from history did in fact NEED advice at one point or another.

 

Some general responses:

Sure, Stephen King has written some crap that got published, but I don't blame him. All writers write crap from time to time, it's just when you're Stephen King you can make millions by publishing that crap, whereas most writers get dropped by their agent if they turn in a shoddy manuscript. If someone was going to give you millions to publish a manuscript that wasn't a masterpiece, but was good enough and would still end up appeasing most of your readers, what would you do? I'm not saying it's 'right' to publish crap, or what I would do, but I don't take personal offense to it or think it means anything other than there was obviously a market for it.

In regards to King's perspective about bad-competent-good-great writers and one's ability to shift along that scale, I'll say it's complicated. Many people take offense to that part of the book, thinking King is saying you can basically place a ceiling on an aspiring writer before they've even begun to prove themselves, which I don't think one can do.

I believe the biggest flaw in King's approach is the fact you can only tell if someone isn't going to end up a great writer after they don't. And then, when a good writer becomes great, you just say 'ah, they must have been great all along' and the argument King puts for is self-proven. So, at best I found that section/idea/theory of King's to be sloppy and pretty irrelevant, but at worst we see it can confuse and enrage people because of the way it sounds like he's judging everyone's potential at birth.

That said, having spent a lot of time in fiction classrooms and having worked with writers of many different talent, skill and effort levels, I can assure you there are people that no matter what they do and how hard they work, they'll simply never, ever seem as if they'll be a great writer. I've seen people who put in the hours and hard work and are even reasonably intelligent and for whatever reason just can't figure out what good fiction looks like, much less produce it. In one case, someone was a pretty good journalistic writer, and when it came to prose the sentences were literally hard to understand, and bordered on gibberish.

We want to believe everyone has the potential to be great, and if you just find that intangible thing inside of you then the sky's the limit (intentional cliche placement). The truth is, I do believe some people are just not cut out for certain things, whether it's being a great writer, great scientist, great chef, great hobo, whatever it is, there ARE limitations. If there weren't limitations on potential, then everyone that wanted to be a great writer simply would be, which is obviously not the case.

Hard work and effort go a long way to improving, though. It's all quite like the Puritan's and their idea there was a list of names for the people going to heaven, and you had to behave in case you were on the list, so you didn't blow your chances. There's some cosmic list of people who will become great writers, and if you want to take the chance (and it is taking a chance) then you put in the time and work and effort and everything that goes into it and see what happens. The bummer, I suppose, is that you don't know if you're on the list until you get to heaven.

I think that's what's important to take from that particular passage from On Writing. Think to yourself that you may not be destined for greatness. You may spend your life trying to achieve something you simply aren't capable of achieving. Is it worth the risk? All writers have to take the chance that they're going to dedicate their lives to something that ends in not matching the potential you'd hoped for.

Most industries and businesses don't have this sort of pressure or risk. But writing does, usually, which is why you have to ask yourself bigger questions. I'm a firm believer in asking yourself if there was a 1% chance you'd ever find success, and 99% chance you'd die penniless and unknown in your time, would you still be pursuing writing? It's a bit of a cliche, that should only do something if they would do it for free, but unfortunately with writing it's pretty apt.

And many people will fail because they're unable, no matter what they do, bring themselves from good to great as a writer, or competent to good, or even bad to competent. We want to think we all have the potential to be great, but that's only what keeps us motivated to write--that slim chance WE'RE the one destined for greatness--but the reality is most of us will fail, and miserably. So the real question is whether it's worth taking the chance.

 

What I, personally, find humorous is the fact that he really didn't say anything at all and everyone is debating it.

The definition of competent : having requisite or adequate ability or qualities

Synonyms for competent: able, capable, equal, fit, good, qualified, suitable.

This isn't the full defintion, but the pertinent portion, and these aren't all of the synonyms, but the important one is there.

Essentially, he said you stay what you are. Hmmmm... that was helpful and I feel enlightened.

Perhaps he should have made use of a dictionary and a thesarus before trotting out such nonsense to people who look up to him. Just my opinion.

 

I disagree with the synonyms to be found in the dictionary on this one. Competent does mean adequate, or good enough for the job. Good, however, is the step up, at least in my mind. The dictionary is useful - but sometimes it misses out the real quirks of language, such as people's perceptions of a particular word or connotations the word may hold.

For the record, I disagree with Mr King on that point. You can, with them having the dedication and the determination, make a good writer out of a bad one. Yes, they might need to learn the rules that govern the use of language, sentence structure, etc. And they might need to understand how to tell a story, but given time you can do it, just like you can teach someone who's initially tone-deaf to play the piano through patience and time.