The Writing Side

Stephen King is an All-Time Great, arguably one of the most popular novelists the world has ever seen. And there’s a good chance that he’s inspired more people to start writing than any other living writer. So, as the Guardian and King’s UK publisher Hodder launch a short story competition – to be judged by the master himself – here are the ten most important lessons to learn from his work.

1. Write whatever the hell you like

King might be best known – or, rather, best regarded – as a writer of horror novels, but really, his back catalogue is crammed with every genre you can think of. There are thrillers (Misery, Gerald’s Game), literary novels (Bag Of Bones, Different Seasons), crime procedurals (Mr Mercedes), apocalypse narratives (The Stand), fantasy (Eyes Of The Dragon, The Dark Tower series) … He’s even written what I think of as being one of the greatest Young Adult novels of all time: The Long Walk. Perhaps the only genre or audience he hasn’t really touched so far is comedy, but most of his work features moments that show his deft touch with humour. It’s clear that King does what he wants, when he wants, and his constant readers – the term he calls his, well, constant readers – will follow him wherever he goes.

2. The scariest thing isn’t necessarily what’s underneath the bed

Horror is a curious thing. What scares one person won’t necessarily scare another. And while there might be moments in his horror novels that tread towards the more conventional ideas of what some find terrifying, for the most part, the truly scary aspects are those that deal with humanity itself. Ghosts drive people to madness, telekinetic girls destroy whole towns with their powers, clowns … well, clowns are just bloody terrifying full stop. But the true crux of King’s ability to scare is finding the thing that his readers are actually worried about, and bringing that to the fore. If you’re writing horror, don’t just think about what goes bump in the night; think about what that bump might drive people to do afterwards.

3. Don’t be scared of transparency

One of my favourite things about King’s short story collections are the little notes about each tale that he puts into the text. The history of them, the context for the idea, how the writing process actually worked. They’re not only invaluable material for aspiring writers – because exactly how many drafts does it take to reach a decent story? King knows! – but they’re also brilliant nuggets of insight into King himself. Some people might think that it’s better off knowing nothing about authors when they read their work, but for King, his heart is on his sleeve. In his latest collection, The Bazaar of Broken Dreams, King gets more in-depth than ever, talking about what inspired the stories in such an honest way that it couldn’t have come from another writer’s pen. Which brings us to …

4. Write what you know. Sort of. Sometimes

Write what you know is the most common writing tip you’ll find anywhere. It’s nonsense, really, because if we all did that we’d end up with terribly boring novels about writers staring out of windows waiting for inspiration to hit. (If you like those, incidentally, head straight for the literary fiction section of your nearest bookshop.) But King understands that experience is something which can be channelled into your work, and should be at every opportunity. Aspects of his life – addiction, teaching, his near-fatal car accident, rock and roll, ageing – have cropped up in his work over and over, in ways that aren’t always obvious, but often help to drive the story. That’s something every writer can use, because it’s through these truths that real emotions can be writ large on the page.

5. Aim big. Or small

King’s written some mammoth books, and they’re often about mammoth things. The Stand takes readers into an apocalypse, with every stage of it laid out on the page until the final fantastical showdown. It deals with a horror that hits a group of characters twice in their lives, showing us how years and years of experience can change people. And The Dark Tower is a seven (or eight, or more, if you count the short stories set in its world) part series that takes in so many different genres of writing it’s dizzying. When he needs to, King aims really big, and sometimes that’s what you have to do to tell a story. At the other end of the spectrum, some of King’s most enduring stories – Rita Hayworth & Shawshank Redemption, The Mist – have come from his shorter works. He traps small groups of characters in single locations and lets the story play out how it will. The length of the story you’re telling should dictate the size of the book. Doesn’t matter if it’s forty thousand words or two hundred, King doesn’t waste a word.

6. Write all the time. And write a lot

King’s published – wait for it – 55 novels, 11 collections of stories, 5 non-fiction works, 7 novellas and 9 assorted other pieces (including illustrated works and comic books). That’s over a period of 41 years. That’s an average of two books a year. Which is, I must admit, a pretty giddying amount. That’s years of reading (or rereading, if you’re as foolishly in awe of him as I am). But he’s barely stopped for breath. This year has seen three books published by him, which makes me feel a little ashamed. Still, at my current rate of writing, I might catch up with him sometime next century. And while not every book has found the same critical and commercial success, they’ve all got their fans.

7. Voice is just as important as content

King’s a writer who understands that a story needs to begin before it’s actually told. It begins in the voice of the novel: is it first person, or third? Is it past or present tense? Is it told through multiple narrators, or just the one? He’s a master at understanding exactly why each story is told the way it’s told. Sure, he might dress it up as something simple – the story finding the voice it needs, or vice versa – but through his books you can see that he’s tried pretty much everything, and can see why each voice worked with the story he was telling.

8. And Form is just as important as voice

King isn’t really thought of as an experimental novelist, which is grossly unfair. Some of King’s more daring novels have taken on really interesting forms. Be it The Green Mile’s fragmented, serialised narrative; or the dual publication of The Regulators and Desperation – novels which featured the same characters in very different situations, with unsettling parallels between the stories that unfolded for them; or even Carrie’s mixed-media narrative, with sections of the story told as interview or newspaper extract. All of these novels have played with the way they’re presented on the page to find the perfect medium for telling those stories. Really, the lesson here from King is to not be afraid to play.

9. You don’t have to be yourself

Some of King’s greatest works in the early years of his career weren’t published by King himself. They were in the name of Richard Bachman, his slightly grislier pseudonym. The Long Walk, Thinner, The Running Man – these are books that dealt with a nastier side of things than King did in his properly attributed work. Because, maybe it’s good to have a voice that allows us to let the real darkness out, with no judgments. (And then maybe, as King eventually did in The Dark Half, it’s good to kill that voice on the page … )

10. Read On Writing. Now

you’re lying on mossy forest floors, slowly transforming into a nymph, your fingers are turning into flower vines, your limbs are bleeding honey & growing thick skins of sepia bark, wings sprout in between your shoulder blades. your breath sounds like the wind. fireflies litter the air above you

you’re hold up in an abandoned church, outside there’s a raging storm & a horde of zombies roaming around, pressing up against the entrance doors. you & a small band of survivors are staying inside for the night in hopes to ride the bad weather out. you take first watch & listen to these tunes on an old ipod while everyone else tries to get some rest & the undead crawl outside, awaiting the taste of human flesh.

you’re in your boyfriend’s pickup. he’s asleep in the passenger seat, you’re driving without a destination in mind & you have the window down as you let the cool night air whip against your face in a state of pleasant delirium you’re on a rooftop somewhere, there’s 5 am air on your skin, streetlights glint like coins at the bottom of wishing wells from where you sit. you’re feeling peaceful for the first time all week

you’re lying in the middle of a crop circle forty miles from your grandma’s old house waiting for aliens to come and abduct you

it’s four pm in the afternoon and you’ve got your head in the lap of the only boy you’ve ever loved & you’re reading jane eyre & he’s sipping on tea & it’s the kind of weather where it’s just warm enough for you to pretend it’s summer & it’s drizzling & you’re listening to the rain beat softly against the windowpanes you’re curled up in bed as it pours outside, there’s a citywide blackout and the last candle you had left has finally blown out, but you feel strangely at peace within the warm, all-consuming dark

THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE THAT SUMS UP ALL TEN: If it sounds like writing, re-write it.

1. Never open a book with weather. If it’s only to create atmosphere, and not a character’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. 

2. Avoid prologues. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want.

3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue. Because “said” is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied.

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said”… …he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange.

5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.

6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.” This rule doesn’t require an explanation. Writers who use “suddenly” tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.

7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. Once you start spelling words phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won’t be able to stop.

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters. In Ernest Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants what do the “American and the girl with him” look like? “She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.” That’s the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.

9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things. Long descriptions often bring the action and the flow of the story to a standstill.

1. Don’t open with the weather - unless you have a very good reason to do so. 

For example, you might expect a funeral scene to be dark and dreary, overcast, even raining. But what if you open on a bright, sunny, summer day - with a group of people gathered in a cemetery wearing all black? That immediately subverts the readers expectations and creates an interesting dynamic. And of course, if the weather is very unusual or extreme, like a tornado hitting your MC’s house, that works too.

2. Avoid prologues - unless the prologue helps create an interesting dynamic or atmosphere, relays info that couldn’t be relayed any other way, or is in a different POV/setting/etc. than the rest of your novel.

Maybe your prologue reveals information that your MC wouldn’t or couldn’t know, but you want the READER to know that information to create dramatic irony. Maybe the prologue takes place 1000 years before the main story takes place. Maybe your prologue is like a mini “history lesson” that helps set up the atmosphere for the rest of the novel. A prologue isn’t always a bad thing - you just have to use prologues judiciously. 

3. Said is dead - unless you use other, unobtrusive dialogue tags.

I’m really a fan of just using said. But sometimes, characters do speak in other ways. Don’t use something other than said just to create a more “dynamic” reading experience, but do use it if you really need to point out the way a character is speaking - for example, “he whispered,” “she murmured,” etc., are all fine and most readers won’t take much note of them, so it won’t pull them out of the reading experience like other dialogue tags might.

4. Don’t modify “said” with adverbs.

I’m mostly in agreement with this one, but the occasional modifier doesn’t hurt if you only do it occasionally, and to really highlight the way a character is speaking - for example, if it’s very unusual and doesn’t fit the actual words. 

“He’s dead,” said James giddily. 

5. Use exclamation points sparingly. 

In total agreement with this one, unless you’re writing a book for small children.

6. Don’t use “suddenly,” etc.

In total agreement with this one as well, but I’d like to explain why it’s a bad idea. “Suddenly” is usually a form of telling rather than showing, and avoiding it forces you as a writer to describe the scene in more detail and actually show what’s happening.

7. Use regional dialect sparingly. 

This is honestly something that comes down to readability. But in most cases you do want to avoid it, and especially avoid writing out accents, especially when this could be potentially offensive. My French friend absolutely hates “ze accent” used by Fleur Delacour in Harry Potter.

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

Again, in most cases this is true, but there may occasionally be a moment when it works to describe a character in detail. For example, if your MC is taking notice of a very odd or out of place character. Even here though, it’s best to pick out one or two striking characteristics. We don’t need to know every minute detail down to their hair color, eye color, height, weight, etc.

9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.

…unless it’s to create mood, to slow down pacing, to show that a character is fixated on something… This works best if the place or thing has a striking or unusual appearance, same as describing characters. And also like describing characters, it’s still best to pick out the most striking aspects appearance-wise of the thing you’re describing. 

10.  Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

Gas and Dust of the Lagoon Nebula Spans across 50 Light-Years.

The Milky Way over Tasmania By Nik

Milky Way from Cherry Plain State Park in Petersburg, New York by Matt Pollock

B: backstabbing, badgering, barks orders, base, belligerent, belittling, blames everyone else, boorish, boring, bossy, bovine, brags, brutal, bully, bumbling

C: callous, catty, caustic, chauvinistic, cheap, cheats, cheerless, childish, clumsy, cocky, cold, cold-hearted, combative, competitive, complacent, complainer, conceited, confrontational, confused, conniving, controlling, corrects others constantly, corrupt, covetous, coward, critical, cruel, cynic

D:  deceitful, defeating, delusional, demanding, denial, deranged, destructive, directed by externals, directionless, disagreeable, discourteous, dishonest, disorganized, disrespectful, dissatisfied, distant, does everything by the book, does what is convenient, doesn’t listen, doesn’t think things through, dogmatic, dominating, domineering, doubtful, dour, downer, draconian, drags people down, drama queen, drinker, drugs, dull, dysfunctional

E: easily aggravated, easily fooled, easily offended, easily threatened, egoist, embarrassing, emotionless, envious, erratic, evasive, exacting, excessive, exhibitionistic, extravagant

F: facetious, faded, false, false bravado, fanatical, fawning, fearful, feels superior to others, fickle, fidgety, finicky, finishes sentences for others, flippant, follower, foolish, forgetful, frantic, fraudulent, furtive, fussy

G: gives up easily, glares often, glib, gold-digging, goody-goody, gossiper, greedy, grim, grumpy, guarded,  gullible

H: harasses, hard, harsh, hateful, heartless, high-handed, hogs spotlight, holier-than-thou, hostile, hot-tempered, humorous, hyper

I: ignorant, ill-behaved, ill-bred, ill-will, immature, immodest, impatient, imperious, impolite, impractical, impulsive, inactive, inarticulate, inconsiderate, inconsistent, indecisive, indifferent, indulgent, inefficient, infantile, inflexible, inhibited, insane, insecure, insensitive, insincere, inspires guilt, interrupts, irresponsible, intimidator, intolerant, irresponsible, irritable, isolated

J: jealous, jittery, judgmental

K: kept-back, killjoy, know-it-all

L: lacking conscious, lack of effort, lack of self-confidence, lack of stamina, lazy, liar, life stinks attitude, lonely, low energy, lordly, loud, low drive, low self-esteem

M: macho, mad, makes fun of people, makes others uneasy, malicious, manipulative, martyr attitude, materialistic, mean, meek, melodramatic, merciless, messianic, messy, misanthropic, miserable, miserly, mistrusting, monosyllabic, moody, mopey, morbid

N: nagging, naïve, narcissistic, narrow-minded, naughty, needling, negative, negligent, never happy unless miserable, non engaging, noisy, nosy

O: oblivious, obnoxious, one-dimensional, opinionated, ostentatious, outrageous, outspoken, overbearing, overly emotional/excitable, overly flirtatious, overly polite, overly proper, overly sensitive, overly serious, over wrought

P: panicky, paranoid, passive, pathetic, pessimist, petty, petulant, phony, pigheaded, pitiful, plotting, pompous, poor judgment, posturing, power-hungry, predatory, predictable, prejudiced, pretentious, prim, prissy, procrastinate, promiscuous, proud, prudish, puritanica

Q: quarrelsome, quixotic, quitter, quick tempered

R: racist, radical, random, rash, rebellious, recalcitrant, reckless, rejects change, reluctant, remote, repressed, repulsive, reserved, rigid, rude, ruled by peer pressure, rules with an iron fist, ruthless

S: sanctimonious, sarcastic, sardonic, scathing, scatterbrained, schemer, scornful, second-guessing, secretive, sees bad in everything, self-centered, self-conscious, selfish, self-righteous, self-satisfied, self-serving, severe, sexist, shallow, shameless, shifty, short-sighted, show off, shy, short-fused, slanderer, sloppy, slovenly, small goals, smug, sneaky, snobby, social approval required, sociopathic, soft, somber, sophomoric behavior, speaks in monotone, spendthrift, spiteful, squeamish, static, stalker, starchy, stick-in-the-mud, stingy, stoic, stony-faced, stubborn, stuck up, sullen, suspicious, swaggering

T:  taciturn, tacky, taker, take over, talker, talks over people, tattletale, temper, temperamental, terse, thinks everyone is stupid, thin-skinned, thoughtless, timid, tiresome, touchy, trivial, troubled, two-faced, typical

U: unable to relax, unappreciative, uncaring, uncompassionate, uncommitted, uncommunicative, uncooperative, uncouth, uncreative, undemonstrative, undependable, undisciplined, unethical, unexpressive, unfeeling, unfocused, unforgiving, unfriendly, ungrateful, unhappy, unhelpful, unkempt, unimaginative, unmotivated, underhanded, unorganized, unpolished, unprincipled, unproductive, unrealistic, unreceptive, unreliable, unresourceful, unresponsive, unrestrained, unruly, unscrupulous, unsmiling, unsophisticated, unsure, unsympathetic, uptight, untrustworthy, user

V: vacant, vague, vain, vengeful, venomous, vindictive, violent, visionless, volatile, vulgar

W: wary, wasteful, weak, wears drab clothes, weird, weary, wet blanket, whimsical, whines, willful, wily, wise-assed, wishy-washy, withdrawn, womanizing, worrier, wretched

X: N/A

Y: yellow-bellied

Z:  zealot

“Home is behind, the world ahead, And there are many paths to tread Through shadows to the edge of night, Until the stars are all alight. Then world behind and home ahead, We’ll wander back and home to bed. Mist and twilight, cloud and shade, Away shall fade! Away shall fade!” -J. R. R. Tolkien

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keep eyes on your bookworm at all times

wow ok you lost them