Stephen King, the King of Horror, is one of the most successful writers in the world. With 62 novels and over 350 million copies sold, he’s made himself a household name in the history of writing.
His novels are wildly popular and permeate much of pop culture. You’ll regularly see references to his popular works, including Carrie, It, and The Dark Tower series.
In this article, we’ll be focusing on one of his non-fiction novels, On Writing— a memoir of his experiences, habits, and the mindset that shaped him into becoming the writer he is today.
Writing Tips from Stephen King
Popular since its first release in 2000, On Writing not only offers practical advice for the aspiring writer but gives you an inside view of King’s life and struggles to better understand the writer’s journey. Read on for King’s personal tips from the book.
1. Read, read, read!
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.
If you’re serious about being a writer, you need to read a lot. Expose yourself to different genres, writers, and writing styles to learn what’s effective and what’s not.
It’s your mind’s equivalent of going to the gym and bench pressing. Whatever you read, consider what you can take away and what to avoid— from the narrative’s construction, the characters’ dialogue, to the atmosphere.
The more you read, the better you understand the writer’s craft and how to go about it. Soon, you’ll be able to identify what’s good writing and what’s bad.
2. Avoid adverbs
I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.
Well, you don’t have to avoid them entirely. But it’s best if you learn when to use them and when not to. They’re much more effective when used sparingly.
Newbie writers tend to use lots of adverbs to make their writing sound livelier and full. In reality, adverbs can distract a reader from what you want to say and dilutes the quality of your work. When in doubt, keep it simple.
Let’s take a look at speech tags to better understand this:
“Hi James. How are you?” Elaine said cheerfully.
The writer is telling you, instead of showing you, that Elaine feels cheerful. It takes away the emotion from the character’s voice, thus weakening the dialogue’s effect. A better way to write this is:
“Hi James! You having a great day?” said Elaine.
You can easily infer that Elaine is being jovial. Rather than tell your readers what you’re characters are feeling, show it through the dialogue or an action. Always show, don’t tell.
3. Remove the unnecessary
Jotted below the machine-generated signature of the editor was this mot: “Not bad, but PUFFY. You need to revise for length. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%. Good luck.”
So you’ve finished your first draft! Don’t get cocky now, rarely does the first draft turn out amazing. Now it’s time to edit your writing.
The 10% that King’s talking about is the amount of words and phrases that don’t add quality to your work. They just make your writings a cumbersome read.
For example:
| We are not accepting applications at this point in time. | We are not accepting applications now. |
| We created this new product in an effort to increase sales. | We created this new product to increase sales. |
| The experiment failed due to the fact that we mishandled the equipment. | The experiment failed because we mishandled the equipment. |
Omit needless words and shorten sentences when you can. The result is crisp and clear writing.
4. Try to write every day.
I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book—something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh.
If you want to be a strong writer, you need to develop your writing process. To do that, you’ll have to figure out what works best for you. And to know what works best for you, you need to write constantly.
King writes in the morning, naps and drinks tea in the afternoon, and hangs out with family in the evening. You don’t have to follow this. What matters is that you find time to write. Make it a goal to write a certain amount of words and slowly build those numbers up.
5. Use simple words
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.
Don’t dress up your vocabulary to beautify your prose. It comes out stuffy and awkward. Write in a natural style that’s recognizably human rather than a machine randomly picking words from the human language.
If something can be said in a simpler manner, go for it. Rather than using complex words, use simple words in powerful ways. See this passage from the Inheritance Cycle as an example of overly complex writing:
The branch Roran had added to the fire burst asunder with a muted pop as the coals underneath heated the gnarled length of wood to the point where a small cache of water or sap that had somehow evaded the rays of the sun for untold decades exploded into steam.
That’s a lengthy way of saying “the fire crackled.” To be fair, it is Christopher Paolini’s first book. But you can’t deny it can benefit from a bit of simplification.
Purple prose will only make your writing hard (and annoying) to read. The last thing you want is for your readers to spend half their time looking up words in a dictionary.
6. Write for yourself first
Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out.
Forget about the audience and focus on your story. What the readers love doesn’t matter at this stage. It’s your story, do whatever you want with it.
Only when you’re done should you show it to someone else. Who wants to read a half-baked story, right? Once you’ve shown it to someone else, it’s no longer just yours. They’ll form opinions, have suggestions, and influence the direction of the story.
So the first draft is solely yours to write according to your vision. The second draft is when you take the readers’ side into consideration.
7. Don’t use the passive voice
I think timid writers like them for the same reason timid lovers like passive partners. The passive voice is safe.
The passive voice, though not illegal, is a winding way of saying something. That weakens your narrative, especially when you’re writing actions into the story.
As King said, “My first kiss will always be recalled by me as how my romance with Shayna was begun” sounds awful compared to “My romance with Shayna began with our first kiss.”
The active voice carries a sense of authority because it generates a stronger connection to the action. It also moves the narrative faster, allowing for a more engaging read.
8. Don’t over-describe
Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of over-description. You want to show off your writing skills, include cool details, and so on. But that makes your story a lengthy read.
Take a look at the passage from the Inheritance Cycle in #5. It described every little thing that happened to the branch that it’s now difficult to form an image in the mind. Why? Because now you need to form the image according to the writer’s vision, not yours.
Choose a few important details that will support the entire structure of what you want to convey. Let the reader fill in the gaps using their imagination. This way, you’re not restricting them, but encouraging them into engaging more with your story.
9. Failure is motivation
By the time I was fourteen (and shaving twice a week whether I needed to or not) the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.
Almost no one hits jackpot on the first try. King was much the same. His rejection letters kept piling up with every story he submitted.
What’s different though is he saw those rejections as stepping stones to his breakthrough. They weren’t rejections, they were an avenue for experience.
Everyone goes through failure and is given a choice: give up or keep on going. People rarely go for the second. Failure is one powerful fear we struggle to conquer. But the more experience you accumulate, the better you improve. Keep at it and you’ll soon be selling more stories than getting rejected.
Improving Your Writing
Writing is a highly personal journey. Sure, there are tutorials, writing classes, and mentors to assist you on the way, but it will fall on you to develop your own style and voice.
What King’s book offers you is an idea of where to start based on how he went about his journey. Of course, yours might take you on a different path, so don’t go considering his books as the holy grail to being an excellent writer. It’s his journey, after all.
But it is an excellent read for any aspiring writer out there, whatever genre they may be pursuing. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly suggest you do. But until you do, I hope this short article has given you some insights.
Good luck on writing!
Was there any writing tip that changed your perspective? Share it in the comments below!
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Cole is a blog writer and aspiring novelist. He has a degree in Communications and is an advocate of media and information literacy and responsible media practices. Aside from his interest in technology, crafts, and food, he’s also your typical science fiction and fantasy junkie, spending most of his free time reading through an ever-growing to-be-read list. It’s either that or procrastinating over actually writing his book. Wish him luck!
