Sundays with Stephen King’s “On Writing”
A series featuring reflections on writing from the famed author’s memoir.
A series featuring reflections on writing from the famed author’s memoir.
I had not read Stephen King’s memoir On Writing for several years when it occurred to me to do so again. While at it, why not share reflections from the renowned writer in a weekly Sunday series at Go Into The Story?
King is a prolific author. Fair to say that is an understatement. One need only glance at a roster of his written works to determine that. If any contemporary writer has earned the right to reflect on the craft, it would be King. However, that is not the motivation he had in writing his memoir. This excerpt from the ‘First Foreword’ of On Writing explains the genesis of the book, a fateful exchange with Amy Tan, fellow writer and member of an authors’ charity rock music group The Remainders.
One night while we were eating Chinese before a gig in Miami Beach, I asked Amy if there was any one question she was never asked during the Q-and-A that follows almost every writer’s talk — that question you never get to answer when you’re standing in front of a group of author-struck fans and pretending you don’t put your pants on one leg at a time like everyone else. Amy paused, thinking it over very carefully, and miss said: “No one ever asks about the language.”
I owe an immediate debt of gratitude to her for saying that. I had been playing with the idea of writing a little book about writing for a year or more at that time, but had held back because I didn’t trust my own motivations — why did I want to write about writing? What made me think I had anything worth saying?
The easy answer is that someone who has sold as many books of fiction as I have must have something worthwhile to say about writing it, but the easy answer isn’t always the truth. Colonel Sanders sold a hell of a lot of fried chicken, but I’m not sure anyone wants to know how he made it. If I was going to be presumptuous enough to tell people how to write, I felt there had to be a better reason than my popular success. Put another way, I didn’t want to write a book, even a short one like this, that would leave me feeling like a literary gasbag or a transcendental asshole. There are enough of those books — and those writers — on the market already, thanks.
But Amy was right: nobody ever asks about the language. They ask the DeLillos and the Updikes and the Styrons, but they don’t ask popular novelists. Yet many of us proles also care about the language, in our humble way, and care passionately about the art and craft of telling stories on paper. What follows is an attempt to put down, briefly and simply, how I came to the craft, what I know about it now, and how it’s done. It’s about the day job; it’s about the language.
My intention is similar to the Sundays with Ray Bradbury series: Each week as I re-read King’s memoir, print notable excerpts at Go Into The Story to inspire our creativity and conversation about the craft.
Today: From the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of On Writing, an excerpt from a wonderful chapter titled “Toolbox” (pp. 111–137). King frames the chapter with an anecdote about his Uncle Oren, a carpenter, and a toolbox he had inherited from King’s grandfather Fazza. The toolbox in question is heavy, as King notes weighing “between eighty and hundred and twenty pounds.”
King writes about how as a lad, he accompanied Uncle Oren to fix a broken screen on the backside of the house. He finishes the anecdote with this:
When the screen was secure, Uncle Oren gave me the screwdriver and told me to put it back in the toolbox and “latch her up.” I did, but I was puzzled. I asked him why he’d lugged Fazza’s toolbox all the way around the house, if all he needed was that one screwdriver. He could’ve carried a screwdriver in the back pocket of his khakis.
“Yeah, but Stevie,” he said, bending to grasp the handles, “I didn’t know what else I might find to do once I got out here, did I? It’s best to have your tools with you. If you don’t, you’re apt to find something you didn’t expect and get discouraged.”
This leads King into using a toolbox as a metaphor for writing. Here is an excerpt from pp. 124–126 in which King writes about one of his two “pet peeves” in the matters of “grammar and usage.”
Spicy other piece of advice I want to give you before moving on to the next level of the toolbox is this: The adverb is not your friend.
Adverbs, you will remember from your own version of Business English, are words that modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. They are the ones that usually ends in -ly. Adverbs, like the passive voice, seem to have been created with the timid writer in mind. With the passive voice, the writer usually expresses fear of not being taken seriously; it is the voice of little boys wearing shoepolish mustaches and little girls clumping around in Mommy’s high heels. With adverbs, the writer usually tells us he or she is afraid he/she isn't expressing himself/herself clearly, that he or she not getting the point across.
Consider the sentence He closed the door firmly. It's by no means a terrible sentence (at least it's got an active verb going for it), but ask yourself if firmly really has to be there. You can argue that it expresses a degree of difference between He closed the door and He slammed the door, and you'll get no argument from me . . . but what about context? What about all the enlightening (not to say emotionally moving) prose which came before He closed the door firmly? Shouldn't this tell us how he close the door? And if the foregoing prose does tell us, isn't firmly an extra word? Isn't it redundant?
Someone out there is now accusing me of being tiresome and anal-retentive. I deny it. I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they're like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day . . . fifty the day after that . . . and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, completely, and profligately covered with dandelions. By then you see them for the weeds they really are, but by then it's — GASP! —too late.
You’ve probably seen this quote floating around online:
The quote is a pretty popular grammatical meme… and now you can point to the precise source of King’s observation (On Writing, p. 126).
When I share this part of King’s memoir with my screenwriting students, his authoritarian tone is usually sufficient to scare them into avoiding the use of adverbs. The only point I drive home is suggested by two sentences King cites in this section of the book:
He closed the door firmly.
He slammed the door.
As I noted in last week’s article:
We write screenplays in the present tense. This highlights how what the reader experiences happens in the here and now. The event unfolds in the moment. Right now. We do well to use verbs which convey that sense of immediacy to the reader.
Moreover, what we refer to as “scene description,” wherein we describe the setting and action in a given scene, is called “action” in popular screenwriting software programs. Action. Description. This serves as a reminder that screenwriters (and writers in general) ought not only avoid the passive voice, but embrace using the most active verbs possible.
Thus, since slams the door is more active than closes the door firmly, it’s better verb usage. I might add, slams is more visual. Plus, it’s more efficient: one word as opposed to two (closes firmly).
Since my students tend to overuse these two verbs — walks and looks —I use them to underscore this point.
Instead of walks slowly, why not: crawls, creeps, dawdles, gimps, hobbles, lumbers, meanders, moseys, plods, scuffs, slogs.
Instead of looks quickly, why not: cases, checks, eyeballs, flashes, flicks, glimpses, notes, once-overs, peeks, peeps, scans.
You may not think using adverbs is a mortal sin, like King does, but certainly, it is a venial sin. As a screenwriter, combining an adverb to add flair to a flat, uninspired verb certainly deserves having to say at least ten Hail Marys.
As long as it’s Sunday, let’s end this discussion by continuing the theological theme. Consider this, the 11th commandment (for screenwriting):
Thou shalt always use the strongest, most active verb possible.
Amen!
Here are two resources: 90 words for “looks” and 115 words for “walks.”
Come back next week and many weeks thereafter for more in the Sundays with Stephen King’s “On Writing” series.
Twitter: @StephenKing