On Writing

Je ne suis pas un grand lecteur des romans de Stephen King. J'en ai lus une petite dizaine quand j'étais plus jeune, puis j'ai fini par le lasser. Je ne remets pas du tout en cause la qualité de ses romans, mais le lecteur que j'étais et que je suis toujours avait alors besoin de se nourrir avec d'autres auteurs, d'autres récits.

Pourtant, je me suis décidé à lire ce livre de Stephen King, qui est souvent cité parmi les références quasi-indispensables quand on recherche des livres sur l'écriture.

J'ai été surpris par le premier tiers du livre, un peu étrange, où Stephen King nous raconte des épisodes de sa vie, de l'enfance à l'âge adulte. Une suite d'anecdotes certes sympathiques mais pas toujours passionnantes, et surtout éloignées de ce que j'attendais de ce livre.

La suite est heureusement bien meilleure, et l'auteur s'intéresse alors au coeur du sujet : son métier d'écrivain, sa façon d'écrire, ses conseils aux auteurs débutants ou plus expérimentés. J'ai trouvé cela très intéressant et riche en conseils que l'on peut retenir ou pas pour sa pratique personnelle. C'est en tout cas passionnant de découvrir la façon de travailler d'un auteur aussi populaire que Stephen King, avec ses dizaines de best-sellers.

I really liked the format of the book. Part one is a memoir made up of selected snapshots from King's youth that led him to the writer he became. They don't necessarily always follow chronological order but they've got a certain logic to them that reinforces the advice that comes later. And you care. I couldn't stop reading as King went from the kid in Durham to sliding down the wall as he heard the good news about Carrie's paperback rights going for a ton, which is neatly foreshadowed in an earlier snapshot.

The advice itself also reads as a narrative, less Strunk and White and more your buddy telling you over lunch to try this thing, it's helped him a lot. Again there's a lot of the snapshots from a career going on talking about "And here's this time I had to learn this bit, so don't be afraid. It's gonna happen so just roll with it."

I've never really had non-fiction suck me in and keep me reading like this did. King can definitely say that he knows his language.

When I began working as an editor at the University of South Africa (Unisa) thirty years ago I discovered the section of the university library that had books on how to write. I read quite a lot of them, initially to learn more about how to deal with other people's writing that I was editing, and later just because I found it interesting. Then it read it for my own writing when I was working on a masters dissertation and a doctoral thesis, and began working in the Missiology Department where I was writing and revising study guides myself, at the other end of the editorial process. .

Some of the books claimed to be written by professional authors, though I'd never heard heard of them or of the books they had written. But Stephen King I had heard of.

I'd read some of King's novels. I enjoyed reading some of them, and found others deadly dull. But he was a real professional author who had given up his day job to write, and made his living by writing. So his book on writing doesn't come out of the same mould.

Many of the others are just a kind of digest of what other writing manuals say. This one is somewhat different, because it is personal. The others say "This is how it should be done" (avoid the passive voice, but in that case the passive voice is accurate). Stephen King says "This is how I do it."

The full title is On Writing: a Memoir, and so it begins with a bit of autobiography saying how he came to be a writer. And it ends with more autobiography -- about how he came to write this particular book. He was in the middle of writing it when he was knocked down by a car, and finished writing the book while recovering from his injuries.

As writing manuals go, what I found most interesting about this one is that he gave his interpretation of the rules and where he followed them and where and why he broke them.

One of the bits I found useful was what he said about overdescription:

Thin description leaves the reader feeling bewildered and nearsighted. Overdescription buries him or her in details and images. The trick is to find a happy medium. It's also important to know what to describe and what can be left alone while you get on with your main job, which is telling a story.

I'm not particularly keen on writing which exhaustively describes the physical characteristics of the people in the story and what they're wearing (I find wardrobe inventory particularly irritating; if I want to read descriptions of clothes, I can always get a J Crew catalogue). I can't remember many cases where I felt I had to describe what the people in a story of mine looked like -- I'd rather let the reader supply the faces, the builds, and the clothing as well... Description begins in the writer's imagination, but should finish in the reader's. When it comes to actually pulling this off, the writer is much more fortunate than the filmmaker, who is almost always doomed to show too much... including, in nine cases out of ten, the zipper running up the monster's back.

Pace is the speed at which your narrative unfolds. There is a kind of unspoken (and hence undefended and unexamined) belief in publishing circles that the most commercially successful stories and novels are fast-paced. I guess the underlying thought is that people have so many thing to do today, and are so easily distracted from the printed word, that you'll lose them unless you become a kind of short-order cook, serving up sizzling burgers, fries, and eggs over easy just as fast as you can.

Like so many beliefs in the publishing business , this idea is largely bullshit... which is why, when books like Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose or Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain suddenly break out of the pack and climb the best-seller lists, publishers and editors are astonished. I suspect that most of them ascribe these books' unexpected success to unpredictable and deplorable lapses into good taste on the part of the reading public.

You've probably heard the phrase in medias res, which means 'into the midst of things.' This technique is an ancient and honorable one, but I don't like it. In medias res necessitates flashbacks, which strike me as boring and sort of corny.

On Writing is a phenomenal book about the craft. While I've read many a book in my life, I've always struggled to think about what exactly makes a great book, what gives it that ability to grab you and drag you even deeper into its world.

Stephen King lays out how you should go about crafting worlds and characters but doesn't get bogged down in the nitty gritty of it, rather he gives you the tools and broad strokes you'll need to get down to figuring out that for yourself. The beauty of his approach is that it applies to writers of any genre, not just horror or suspense that he is the master of.

While I've just finished this book, I can see that over the coming years I'll come back again and again to learn more from it., with each read-through giving me something new to use and ponder on.

This is most definitely one of the most essential tools in any writer's toolbox.

Recently, I read Stephen King’s book, ‘On Writing’, which I found thoroughly enjoyable. The book starts off with parts of Stephen’s life which lead him to be a writer. It was interesting and it was nice to know he struggled too, but I was really wanted to read about writing. When I got to the writing side of things, that’s where I paid the most attention. It was interesting to know how he wrote and what he considers important for writing. I know everyone has different opinions on writing but there were some interesting tips in this book;

* A writer should do two things above all others; Read a lot and write a lot (I’m getting better at the first part, need to do the second part more)
* A writer needs three important tools which will be learnt along the way 1; Vocabulary 2; Grammar and 3; Basic Elements of Form and Style
* It’s not really write what you know (I’m sure Stephen King doesn’t know much about killing, etc) instead write honestly (eg. you will get a feeling of how the characters will act and talk, don’t try to censor the characters in any way)

One thing Stephen King does talk about which I found really interesting was the fact that he doesn’t plan his books; he says he is just the transcribers and the first reader. As he writes, the characters develop and end up telling him the story. I know there are heaps of books on writing but this one was just short, simple and a joy to read. I do think Stephen King offers some interesting insight into his art and writing in general.

I would like to leave you with how Stephen views writing; Writing is Telekinesis (the writer paints a picture through his words and the reader sees the same image.)