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 pp. 158–161 in which King offers thoughts on what stories a writer should consider writing.
The dictum in writing classes used to be "write what you know." Which sounds good, but what if you want to write about starships exploring other planets or a man who murdered his wife and then tries to dispose of her body with a wood-chipper? How does the writer square either of these, or a thousand other fanciful ideas, with the "write-what-you-know" directive?
I think you begin by interpreting "write what you know" as broadly and inclusively as possible. If you're a plumber, you know plumbing, but that is far from the extent of your knowledge; the heart also knows things, and so does the imagination. Thank God. If not for heart and imagination, the world of fiction would be a pretty seedy place. It might not even exist at all.
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When I'm asked why I decided to write the sort of things I do write, I always think the question is more revealing than any answer I could possibly give. Wrapped with in it, like the chewy stuff in the center of a Tootsie Pop, is the assumption that the writer controls the material instead of the other way around. The writer who is serious and committed is incapable of sizing up story material the way an investor might size up various stock offerings, picking out the ones which seem likely to provide a good return. If it could indeed be done that way, every novel published would be a best-seller and the huge advances paid to a dozen or so "big-name writers" would not exist (publishers would like that).
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Book-buyers aren't attracted, by and large, by the literary merits of a novel; book-buyers want a good story to take with them on the airplane, something that will first fascinate them, then pull them in and keep them turning the pages. This happens, I think, when readers recognize the people in a book, their behaviors, their surroundings, and their talk. When the reader hears strong echoes of his or her own life and beliefs, he or she is apt to become more invested in the story.
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Write what you like, then imbue it with life and make it unique by blending in your own personal knowledge of life, friendship, relationships, sex, and work. Especially work. People love to read about work. God knows why, but they do. If you're a plumber who enjoys science fiction, you might well consider a novel about a plumber aboard a starship or on an alien planet. Sound ludicrous? The late Clifford D. Simak wrote a novel called Cosmic Engineers which is close to just that. What you need to remember is that there's a difference between lecturing about what you know and using it to enrich the story. The latter is good. The former is not.
King’s take on the old bromide “write what you know” reminds me of this observation from my interview with writer-director Spenser Cohen:
“People always say, write what you know, and I think it’s write what you know emotionally.”
Write what you know emotionally. King echoes this point when he notes, “Write what you like then imbue it with life and make it unique by blending in your own personal knowledge of life, friendship, relationships, sex, and work.” This take frees you up to write whatever story you want in whatever story universe you wish to explore. As long as how you handle the characters comes across as truthful and honest.
The other takeaway: Notice how King grounds storytelling in the experience of the “book-buyer,” that they connect with a story when they “recognize the people in a book, their behaviors, their surroundings, and their talk.” In Hollywood, we call that audience identification. As screenwriters, we need to create characters with whom the script reader can identify. This is especially true of the Protagonist for this character provides the portal through which the audience will experience the story, living vicariously through the events and relationships the Protagonist confronts in their journey.
A “book-buyer” is no different than a “movie-goer.” By developing and working with characters, most notably the Protagonist, and zeroing in on aspects of their lives with which a script reader or audience member can identify with, we shrink the distance between the printed page and the reader, the celluloid screen and the audience. This is incredibly important because the Protagonist’s story becomes their (script reader/audience) story.
Come back next week and many weeks thereafter for more in the Sundays with Stephen King’s “On Writing” series.
Twitter: @StephenKing