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, excerpts from pp. 196–197.
There is absolutely no need to be hidebound and conservative in your work, just as you are under no obligation to write experimental, non-linear prose because The Village Voice or The New York Review of Books says the novel is dead. Both the traditional and the modern or available to you. Shit, write upside down if you want to, or do it in Crayola pictographs. But no matter how you do it, there comes a point when you must judge what you've written and how well you wrote it. I don't believe a story or a novel should be allowed outside the door of your study or writing room unless you feel confident that it's reasonably reader-friendly. You can't please all of the readers all the time; you can't please even some of the readers all the time, but you really ought to try to please at least some of the readers some of the time. I think William Shakespeare said that. And now that I've waved that caution flag, duly satisfing all OSHA, MENSA, NASA, and Writers’ Guild guidelines, let me reiterate that it's all on the table, all up for grabs. Isn't that an intoxicating thought? I think it is. Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it. Toss it even if you love it. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch once said, "Murder your darlings, "and he was right.
Ha! I tell my students all the time variations on “If it works, fine. If it doesn’t, toss it,” and apparently I ingested that line from reading On Writing decades ago (not the first time I’ve noticed this in re-reading the book for this series). I add this tag: “After you toss it, try something else.”
This is what first drafts are all about: Giving yourself the freedom to do whatever your gut tells you do and go wherever it tells you to go. That initial draft is a journey of discovery where the primary goal — apart from getting to Fade Out / The End — is to learn as much as you can about your characters and the unfolding narrative. King’s advice — “There is absolutely no need to be hidebound and conservative in your work” — is nowhere more relevant than the first pass at the material. You know the first draft won’t be perfect, you know you’re going to rewrite it. Now is not the time to be concerned with convention and rules, but rather the instincts, choices, and psychological nature of your characters.
In the online screenwriting universe, there are those who push back against this type of freedom asserting there are “screenwriting rules.” If there were rules, there should be a rule book. There isn’t. There are conventions, expectations, even paradigms, but no rules. You should feel free to “try any goddam thing you like,” especially in that initial takes on the story.
You embrace that freedom because you know that as a key part of your rewriting process, you will strive to streamline the story and make it “reader-friendly.” But first, embrace the “intoxicating thought” that it’s “all on the table, all up for grabs.” The potential for a story to go anywhere and do anything is powerful.
You owe it to yourself to tap into that potential for that’s where you can discover the magic within your story and its characters.
Come back next week and many weeks thereafter for more in the Sundays with Stephen King’s “On Writing” series.
Twitter: @StephenKing