Write, according to Stephen King

Emma Parfitt — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 11:18:10 +0000

I love King’s book On Writing, and recommend that you read it. I wouldn’t say every writer has to write like him, his advice can be genre specific and even he says you need to work on your own style. But he does give some good advice for writers that cross genres, and after reading a dozen books full of clichés lately creative writers clearly need to read his book. Here are some top tips for your writer’s “toolbox”.

Omit needless words

The number one rule. Write as you will, then in the editing stage go back and cut out the words that get in the way of the story you are telling. Editing people’s work I sometimes find they have stated something twice where one strong verb would do. So this is the point to choose your words wisely. Your word choice defines you as a writer.

Grammar

Get a firm grasp of the basics. If you don’t understand a rule there are ways of writing and avoiding them for example, I recently read The Uncommon Life of Alfred Warner in Six Days (Juliet Conlin) and there was not one colon or semicolon in the whole thing! At the same time, remember in fiction it is occasionally okay to write in broken sentences if it suits what you are trying to get across. Add a verb to a noun and you have a complete sentence. Even if it’s only to say: trees wept.

Avoid the passive

The meeting will be held at 7 o’clock or the meeting’s at seven.

The second is more solid. Of course there are times when you want a person’s action to be passive or to speak in a convoluted way to annoy other characters. So I’d say write however you write, make it active, then go back and consider what might need to be passive.

Be careful with adverbs (the -ly words)

It’s best to avoid the with dialogue tags. For instance, he said meniceingly. Can be shown better through speech: “Don’t you dare or I’ll pound you into the ground,” he said.

Description

Enliven the reader’s senses. This is ‘not just a question of how to, you see; it’s also a question of how much to’ and ‘in a way that will cause your reader to prickle with recognition’ (King, pp.136-137). The next tip is crucial to decide what you prefer in terms of description balanced with dialogue.

What does description consist of? Largely, locale, texture, and character description which can be a mixture of straight and poetic description to avoid stilted prose. King’s style is to give a few very well chosen details and move on. As well as to avoid clichés.

Read, and then read some more.

King says, “One learns most clearly what not to do by reading bad prose” and the same for good fiction. You can learn a lot from reading and paying attention. He suggests turning off the TV and replacing that time with reading.

Here I’ve listed a few of Stephen King’s tips. TO know more check out what he says about vocabulary on page 86, and dialogue on page 142.

Who is Emma?

Emma is a proofreader with 18 years of writing experience with businesses, academics and creative writers. She obtained a Creative Writing MA (St Andrews University) and a PhD in Storytelling (Warwick University). Then set up her own proofreading business and became a published author of fiction as well as academic literature such as Young People, Learning & Storytelling (Palgrave Macmillan).

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The Inner Library

Emma Parfitt — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 09:01:00 +0000

What is an inner library?

‘We carry with us every story we have ever heard and every story we have ever lived, filed away at some deep place in our memory. We carry most of those stories unread, as it were, until we have grown the capacity or the readiness to read them. When that happens they may come back to us filled with unexpected meaning.’

(Rachel Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom, xli)

Remen’s words touch on the idea of an ‘inner library’ which is expressed in Arthur W. Frank’s book, Letting Stories Breathe a Socio-narratology. They articulate a similar notion, that we may carry the kernel of a story with us for a long time. Until something triggers its memory and in doing so uncovers new meaning. When the right conditions prevent themselves old ideas we have carried with us but never really understood, acknowledged, or accepted, take root. Blossoming into a new series of neural networks that can forever altar the idea of who we are. Story and the human brain have grown together over a long time. In our lifetime we are always transforming in some way. And if we accept and flow with this process of change life has the potential to be all the richer.

Cultural history of the inner library

The idea of an inner library has a long cultural history. Thought the first time I came across an idea like this it was in a contemporary novel. It was in one of Stephen King’s novels, I think Dreamcatcher, please correct me if I’m wrong, where the main character remembered things by keeping them on shelves like a stationary cupboard in his brain. He could hide thoughts there too. Or that is how I recalled the idea in my mind’s eye when Frank mentioned the concept of an ‘inner library.’

Death, Memory, and Material Culture by Elizabeth Hallam and Jenny Hockey discusses the history of the concept of an inner library. Basically, in medieval times the mind was seen as a series of rooms, this became a library. Later as technology influenced the concept further, our minds were visualised as organising information like computers.

I find it fascinating how this concept has changed with surrounding cultural influences and technology. It’s a shame that our brains aren’t much like computers … Well sometimes they are: except the binary code of the brain is narrative.

The inner library and storytelling

I am largely comparing the storyteller’s use of language and the resulting emotions expressed in group discussion. Yet the concept of inner libraries is important in the storylistening process if it has a impact on emotional response. I find that the concept of an inner library is relevant to my research on storytelling. Because it has an influence on the emotions that will be triggered as individuals listen to folktales.

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