Writing Articles

7 tips From Stephen King

Many of these tips can be useful no matter if you are a blogger, writing reports at work/in school or quietly spending your nights secretly working on that great novel that will astonish the world.

1. Get to the point.

Don’t waste your reader’s time with too much back-story, long intros or longer anecdotes about your life. Reduce the noise. Reduce the babbling. In On Writing King gets to his points quickly. Get to your point quickly too before your reader loses patience and moves on.

2. Write a draft. Then let it rest.

King recommends that you crank out a first draft and then put it in your drawer to let it rest. Now, how long you let your text rest may vary. King puts his manuscripts away for several months before rereading and start the editing process.

I often let a post rest for a day or two before I start editing (as I´m sure many other bloggers do from time to time too).

This enables you to get out of the mindset you had when you wrote the draft and get a more detached and clear perspective on the text. It then becomes easier to edit, add and cut in a sometimes kinda ruthless way. The result is most often a better text.

3. Cut down your text.

When you revisit your text it´s time to kill your darlings and remove all the superfluous words and sentences. Removing will declutter your text and often get your message through with more clarity and a bigger emotional punch.

Don´t remove too much text though or you may achieve the opposite effects instead. King got the advice to cut down his texts by 10 percent from an old rejection-letter and has followed this advice for decades. While editing my blog I´ve found that 10 percent seems to be a pretty good figure not just for mammoth-sized books.

4. Be relatable and honest.

King has an honest voice in his fiction and in his memoir. He tells it like it is and makes us relate to him and his characters. Since King´s fiction often is of an odd kind with strange plots that seldom happen to normal people I think one of his strengths as a writer is being able to write relatable content anyway.

One of the keys to doing that is to have an honest voice and honest characters with both bad and good sides to them. People we can relate to with all of their faults, passions, fears, weaknesses and good moments. King´s characters seem human. That creates a strong connection to the reader who starts caring about the characters.

Another key to being honest and relatable is keeping a conversational style. Keeping it simple and using language that isn’t unnecessarily complicated. Using the words that first come to mind.

5. Don´t care too much what others may think.

King admits to being needy about the emotional feedback he gets when he lets his wife read a new story for the first time. He gets a kick out of hearing her laugh so she cries or just cry because something in manuscript really touched her. But he has also gotten tons of mail over the years from people who confuse his sometimes nasty characters with the writer. Or just thinks he should wind up in hell. And King hasn´t always been a favourite among literary critics either.

But from what I gather he just sits down at his desk and keeps writing every morning anyway. If you listen too much to your critics you won´t get much done. Your writing will probably become worse and less fun. And criticism is often not even about you anyway.

6. Read a lot.

When you read you always pick up things. Sometimes it might be reminders about what you know you should be doing while you write. Sometimes it’s some cool idea or just the world and atmosphere the writer is painting. Sometimes it’s something totally new that makes your jaw drop. That one is my favourite. And sometimes you learn what you should avoid doing. There are almost always lessons you can learn.

If you want to be a better writer you need to read a lot to get fresh input, broaden your horizons and deepen your knowledge. And to evolve you need to mix yourself up with new influences and see what happens.

How do you find time to read more? You can cut down on other evening activities like watching TV-shows you don´t care for that much anyway. Or, as King suggests, you can bring a book to waiting rooms, treadmills or toilets. I like to plug in an audiobook while I´m on the bus or walking somewhere.

7. Write a lot.

I’ve saved the most important tip for last. To become a better writer you probably – and not so surprisingly - need to write more.

Many of the best in different fields – Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods - have gone beyond normal limits of practise. And so they reap extraordinary results.

But what do you do when you don´t feel like writing? Waiting for inspiration can become a long wait.

One good way to get around this is to find an effective solution to reduce procrastination. You may have to try a few before you find one that works for you. Another way is well, just to do it. And if you just get going your emotions changes a lot of the time and any initial resistance becomes fun and enthusiasm instead.

Banish Writer's Block in seconds.

Writer’s block! It has caused just about every beginning writer to give up in frustration. First you hesitate, then you doubt, then you’re certain you have nothing to write and before too long, you’re proving it to yourself.

However you define it, every author has suffered from ‘writer’s block.’ It’s that horrible feeling that there’s simply nothing more to write. Regardless of where you are in the story, or the book, you simply can’t think of what to put down next.

First, realize that every writer encounters writer’s block. It’s not a problem with you, it’s a problem with your process. You’ve written what you want to write and when you get to the end of that road, well, you’ve reached the end of that road!

It isn’t that you can’t think of what next to write, it’s simply that you never had any idea of what next to write.
If you’ve got writer’s block, it’s because you have no idea what happens next in your story. If you had sorted that out before you began, you’d be creating page after page of perfect prose and be amazed at how quickly the time goes by (and how productive you have become).

So here’s the solution. Realize that you don’t know what’s going to happen next in your story and create that outline. I’m willing to bet a penny you don’t even have a written outline. Or, if you do, it stops at just about the same place as writer’s block starts.
If you haven’t started writing yet, then please, please, please, create your outline first. Spend the necessary time to outline your work in as much detail as possible.The minutes you spend outlining your book will save hours of frustration and stalled activity later on.

Ideally, you want to outline your work so you know exactly what is happening on every page of the work before you even begin. Nothing is left to chance, nothing is left to those muses, and nothing is left for that demon we call ‘inspiration.’ By the way, as long as we’ve mentioned inspiration, I want you to know that inspiration should never be a component of your writing arsenal. You write because you’re a writer. Because you want to benefit people. Because it’s what you’ve got to do. You don’t write because you’re inspired. Can you think of any profession that operates only when inspiration hits?

“Sorry Madam, I can’t fix your plumbing today, I’m not inspired.”
“I’m not coming into the office today, boss, sorry, no inspiration.”
“Love to remove that cancerous growth from you today, Mr. Jones, but, well, I’m not feeling particularly inspired.”

Anyway, back to writer’s block. If you know exactly what will be happening on every page, then writer’s block simply can’t help

but evaporate, or never show up in the first place. Spend your time on the outline and realize that a good outline, even if it’s not the most glamorous thing to produce, will make writing a breeze. An enjoyable activity even!!.

The Easy Way to Write

Here's an outline that I find extremely useful when I need to write anything. Once you follow the 7 steps, your article almost writes itself.

Goal - what do you want to write? Is it a short story? an article, or a direct mail piece? What response do you want from the piece? Is it "a call to action" to the reader, to get them to order your product? Is the purpose just to let people know about you, your company, product or service? Being clear about what you want to achieve before starting to write is vital

Research - What do you want to include in your writing? You will need all your facts and figures, quotes, sources of information and notes to hand. For example, if you are writing an advert, you will want all the technical information, expert opinions and testimonials to hand. You will need to know the product or service inside out.

First draft - write non stop for at least 10 minutes.Some writers turn off the monitor, and if they can't think what to write, they type "I don't know what to write".Eventually the words will flow. Do not edit yourself at this stage, just get the words on paper and your fingers working.

Coffee Break - pause and reflect, from 3 hours to 3 days. This is where you do your first edit

Second Draft - Write at least 10 minutes non stop

Vacation - Leave for between 3 days and 3 weeks.Let the piece "stew" in your subconcious

Rewrite - You can always improve on the 2nd draft. The time away will let you see the piece with fresh eyes

Elmore Leonards Writing Rules

These are rules I've picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what's taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.

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. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.

2. Avoid prologues.

They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want.

There is a prologue in John Steinbeck's ''Sweet Thursday,'' but it's O.K. because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: ''I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. . . . figure out what the guy's thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That's nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don't have to read it. I don't want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.''

3. Never use a verb other than ''said'' to carry dialogue.

The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with ''she asseverated,'' and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.

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. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances ''full of rape and adverbs.''

5. Keep your exclamation points under control.

You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.

6. Never use the words ''suddenly'' or ''all hell broke loose.''

This rule doesn't require an explanation. I have noticed that 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 in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won't be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories ''Close Range.''

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

Which Steinbeck covered. 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.

Unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if you're good at it, you don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.

And finally:

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

A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he's writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character's head, and the reader either knows what the guy's thinking or doesn't care. I'll bet you don't skip dialogue.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. (Joseph Conrad said something about words getting in the way of what you want to say.)

If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character -- the one whose view best brings the scene to life -- I'm able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and what's going on, and I'm nowhere in sight.

What Steinbeck did in ''Sweet Thursday'' was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. ''Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts'' is one, ''Lousy Wednesday'' another. The third chapter is titled ''Hooptedoodle 1'' and the 38th chapter ''Hooptedoodle 2'' as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: ''Here's where you'll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it won't get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want.''

''Sweet Thursday'' came out in 1954, when I was just beginning to be published, and I've never forgotten that prologue.

Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word.

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