On Writing
April 6, 2009
Last week, a post on Don Miller’s blog reminded me how much I liked Stephen King’s On Writing – it’s easily the best book of its kind I’ve come across.
So I’ve been re-reading it.
A couple of quotes:
On Vocabulary…
“Remember that the basic rule of vocabulary is use the first word that comes to your mind, if it is appropriate and colorful. If you hesitate and cogitate, you will come up with another word – of course you will, there’s always another word – but it probably won’t be as good as your first one, or as close as you really mean.”
On Characters…
“No one is ‘the bad guy’ or ‘the best friend’ or ‘the whore with a heart of gold’ in real life; it real life we each of us regard ourselves as the main character, the protagonist, the big cheese; the camera is on us, baby. If you can bring this attitude into your fiction, you may not find it easier to create brilliant characters, but it will be harder for you to create the sort of one-dimensional dopes that populate so much pop fiction.”
The autobiographical stuff is interesting too. When you read about Stephen King’s childhood, you begin to understand his fascination for the macabre.
2 Comments
leave one →
“The autobiographical stuff is interesting too. When you read about Stephen King’s childhood, you begin to understand his fascination for the macabre.”
Because he had a crazy uncle who read him socialist newsletters every christmas?
I use this book all of the time in teaching middle schoolers how to write. They eat it up.