14 Tips From Stephen King’s On Writing
14 Tips From Stephen King‘s On Writing
- If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others:
Read a lot and write a lot - Stories consist of three parts
Narration: Which moves the story from point A to point B
Description: Which creates a sensory reality for the reader
Dialogue: Which brings characters to life through their speech - The Situation Come First.
The characters – Always flat and unfeatured, to begin – come next - Whether it’s a vignette of a single page or an epic trilogy like The Lord of the Rings, the work is always accomplished one word at a timeĀ
- The most interesting situations can usually be expressed as a What – If Question
- The best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event
- With a passive verb , something is being done to the subject of the sentence. The subject is just letting it happen. You should avoid the passive tenseĀ
- Talk, whether ugly or beautiful, is an index of character
- Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s
- The road to hell is paved with adverbs. Loudly, nastily, Slowly, Kindly, Softly.
- Never use ‘Emolument’ when you mean ‘tip’
- Set a daily writing goal. As with physical exercise, it would be best to set this goal low at first. I suggest a thousand words a day
- Call that one person you write for Ideal Reader. He or she is going to be in your writing room all the time
- If you can do it for joy, you can do it for ever.