What are the recurring elements? A couple years ago, I decided to do a test. Really, the lesson here from King is to not be afraid to play. *I* can do better!’. That’s just pathetic. Stephen King: The 'Craft' Of Writing Horror Stories While writer Stephen King was recovering from a near-fatal car accident, he finished a nonfiction book about the craft of writing… I did, once I stopped writing about Lovecraft's horrors and began to deal with what disturbed me personally. Comments welcome below…, Your email address will not be published. In this article, author Sariah Wilson explains the key elements that make a romantic comedy a hit. Click To Tweet. 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. Your IP: 67.209.121.227 Writing about evil is a moral act, and it won't do to recycle definitions of evil—to take them on trust. What I want most of all is resonance, something that will linger for a little while in the Constant Reader’s mind (and heart) after he or she has closed the book and put it up on the shelf.”. Thanks for the great post. Write in your own universe, not someone else's. “If you’ve never done it before, you’ll find reading your book over after a six-week layoff to be a strange, often exhilarating experience,” writes King. Well, it’s pretty much the secret to blogging. They add flavor, sure enough, but eating them all by themselves is just gross. For more fiction and nonfiction writing tips, read 5 Examples of Using Your Senses in Your Writing. You wonder how you’re going to write a post for the next day, much less the next three or four years. Horror is a curious thing. He has such great advice in it perfect for beginning writers and experienced alike. To write a better book, you need to be a productive writer. These seven writing tips from Stephen King will help you write a better book, blog post, or magazine article. Do anything but sit there in front of the computer and wonder what to write next. It’s full of details about his process, about how he wrote his books, channelled his demons and overcame his challenges. 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. Yes, your writing should be conversational, but it should be the conversation you would have if you had time to think everything through and say exactly the right things. You draw those cards. Are You Ready to Submit Your Sample Chapters to a Book Publisher? In our case, it’s not the desk we have to fear, but the smart phone, the tablet, and the laptop, all jangling for our attention, all sucking us in, all immersing us into the world of social media. That isn't to say that imitation never has its uses. Too obvious! I go where the pain is.â. It’s the way you know you’re on the right track. . Stories are like condiments. #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
He’s a master at understanding exactly why each story is told the way it’s told. It's when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there's nothing there ..." — Stephen King. Still, at my current rate of writing, I might catch up with him sometime next century. 2020 Bustle Digital Group. Some of King’s greatest works in the early years of his career weren’t published by King himself. The truth is, any great piece of writing is preceded by hours and hours of thinking. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it's when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. Do that, and you won’t have to beg your readers for their attention. . The next, examine your creation to find out which is true. If you don't feel involved with what you're writing, it's unlikely that anyone else will. In a sense, that may be true. 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). . You think, “Well, I’ll just ignore it,” but it eats at you, and even if you succeed at not responding (no easy feat), you often find yourself thinking about what the critics will say when you write. The novelist James Smythe, who has been analysing the work of Stephen King for the Guardian since 2012, on the lessons he has drawn from the master of horror fiction, Last modified on Thu 22 Feb 2018 12.55 GMT. Learn to write from than the King of Horror Writing (not the king of horrible writing!). That’s something every writer can use, because it’s through these truths that real emotions can be writ large on the page. I love his book. Evenings are for reading, family, Red Sox games on TV, and any revisions that just cannot wait. And then you have to write as if the whole world is listening. Nevertheless, I’ve pulled several good writing quips and tips from it…, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things about all others: read a lot and write a lot,” writes King. It’s one of the few books about writing that are actually worth their salt, mainly because it understands that it’s about a personal experience, and readers might find that useful. It’s an adventure through undiscovered worlds where no one knows what’ll happen next (not even him). . Tananarive Due suggests that you stop worrying about trying to be a "legit" writer, and just write what feels right to you, even if it involves ghosts: "...I'd had it drummed into my head in creative writing workshop courses that one could not expect to be a respected writer when writing commercial or genre books. 10 Types of Blogs That Do – and Do Not – Make Money, 8 Tips for Starting a Christian Blog That Encourages and Inspires, Travel in Faith: Tools & Tips for Travel That Transforms You. 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. In the beginning, you don’t even have to be good. “One learns most clearly what not to do by reading bad prose – one novel like Asteroid Miners (or Valley of the Dolls, Flowers in the Attic, and The Bridges of Madison County, to name just a few) is worth a semester at a good writing school, even with the superstar guest lecturers thrown in,” writes King. (And then maybe, as King eventually did in The Dark Half, it’s good to kill that voice on the page … ). If it’s stupid, delete it. In the back of their mind, every popular blogger harbors the same secret: Given no other choices, we would happily do what we do for free. Watch a documentary. If you’re a new writer, read 7 Writing Strategies for Beginning Writers. I agree that the garish or really, really poorly written books may not be the best ones to learn from. One person’s process would be a nightmare for somebody else. Every popular blogger I know reads at least one book every week and writes at least 1,000 words every day. To entertain, first you have to be entertained. Award-winning filmmaker and screenwriter Mick Garris shares the writing process for his collection (These Evil Things We Do), what surprising thing happened during the publishing process, how writing a story is different than a script, and more! How to Get Paid $200+ Per Post by Writing for Small Businesses, Jon Morrow has asked repeatedly to be called “His Royal Awesomeness” but no one listens to him. Writer's Digest editor and Halloween enthusiast Robert Lee Brewer shares 10 great horror books to get readers in the mood for October. Writing horror that's genuinely scary is no mean feat. Stephen King is an All-Time Great, arguably one of the most popular novelists the world has ever seen. They were in the name of Richard Bachman, his slightly grislier pseudonym. Sorry, but that’s not how it works. . They’re from published author and psychologist, Paulette Kouffman Sherman, Ph.D. Before the tips, a quip: “I set myself 600 words a day as a… Read More »Become the Writer You Want to Be – 10 Tips for Successful Writers, Even the most successful writers need to review the basic writing tips occasionally! 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. Because [as a] starting writer, you always start out with other peopleâs voices â youâve been reading other people for years⦠But, as quickly as you can, start telling the stories that only you can tell â because there will always be better writers than you, there will always be smarter writers than you ⦠but you are the only you.". If you enjoy them, grab yourself a copy of On Writing over at Amazon (affiliate link). Afternoons are for naps and letters. Answer those questions, and you won’t have to worry about traffic. Maybe your grammar isn’t even good enough to get a pass from your high school English teacher. 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. I lost my faith as a Catholic. It’s not what keeps us glued to a computer screen for 80% of our day. I’ve read On Writing from cover to cover at least five times, and each time, I saw a noticeable improvement in my prose. Of course, most general tips for writing apply to writing horror as well. Luckily, I don't think I'm the only one. Excellent horror writers don't just go for gore and shock value, they remind their readers that everyday life is always right on the edge of dissolving into chaos: âHorror fiction has traditionally dealt in taboo. • that one way to avoid what has already been done is to be true to yourself. Is it told through multiple narrators, or just the one? Copyright © 2020 Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen. From a podcast interview with Nerdist: "Tell your story. Anne Rice has some truly chilling advice for horror writers: go where the pain is. You have to look at your blog as not just a blog but an opportunity to change the world. claim that there's nothing new in horror. Luckily, I don't think I'm the only one. I’m not sure what book he’s talking about, but here’s a great quip and tip from Stephen King: “No, it’s not a very good story – its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.”. In Writing Habit Mastery: How to Write… Read More »How to Deal With Writing Distractions, What kind of writer do you want to be? You know Zig Zigler’s old saying, “You can have everything you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want?”. 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. But I've always tried to write what rings true to me, whether or not it makes the till ring. But King understands that experience is something which can be channelled into your work, and should be at every opportunity. . These ten tips for successful writers will help you become the writer of your own dreams, and reach your writing goals! It’s not what wakes us up in the morning, excited and ready to write. These six ways to improve your writing skills will keep you grounded and in touch with what really matters (a publishing contract is exciting, but doesn’t really matter. The reason most bloggers fail isn’t a lack of talent or smarts or technical know-how. The most important part of any horror story is naturally going to be its fear factor. . Visit WritersDigest.com each day of November to get a prompt and write a poem. If you’re ever writing a post, and you get stuck, try this: Write as if no one in the world will ever read it. “Good writing teaches the learning writer about style, graceful narration, plot … That's what Neil Gaiman does. You wonder, is all that blogging and twittering and facebooking really serving you, or are you serving them? In fact, these days, so many horror stories (and especially films) gloat over the suffering of women that it seems clear the authors are getting their own back, consciously or not, on aspects of real life that they can't cope with. They’re not only invaluable material for aspiring writers – because exactly how many drafts does it take to reach a decent story? You want the formula for writing popular blog posts? I lost my mother when I was 14. Helen Oyeyemi's writing blends realism with magic and horrorâbut to her, that doesn't make her writing unrealistic. there’s a Youtube video, of Stephen King giving a talk to college students. “Mornings belong to whatever is new – the current composition. Here, as in any other of the arts, it's a legitimate and useful way to serve your apprenticeship. You can either shut up, taking what was your unique and wonderful about your work and shuttering it away in a mental closet. Who is the master, and who is the slave? Required fields are marked *. Prepare for the 13th annual November PAD Chapbook Challenge! Creepy basements, loud noises from the attic, hidden rooms, Indian burial grounds, old hotels, multiple personality disorder, etc.—it's all been done before, and it's all out there. In our final extract from his new book, On Writing, Stephen King reveals six key rules for writing a bestseller. Like all good stories, horror tales help us escape to another world. Don’t think. I wasn't going to try to be Toni Morrison or Joyce Carol Oates, I was just going to be me, and I was going to write about the people I know...". This week, we look at the Sicilian octave, which is similar to last week's Italian octave. You won't find that, of course, unless you have something of your own to say. Stephen King has published 57 novels, all of them bestsellers. Rewrite with the door open.” “Your stuff starts out being just for you, in … It's the dark basement where the only thing you can hear is the beating of your own heart. Or so argues Stephen King in On Writing: A Memoir on the Craft (public library), one of 9 essential books to help you write better. They wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote, and one day, they woke up to discover the world liked what they had to say. Ghosts drive people to madness, telekinetic girls destroy whole towns with their powers, clowns … well, clowns are just bloody terrifying full stop. Poor man. Where other writing books are focused on the mechanics of the written word, King shows you how to capture the joy of the craft. King’s written some mammoth books, and they’re often about mammoth things. “My own schedule is pretty clear-cut,” writes King. 1. A lot of writing books tell you to “write like you talk,” and while I suppose that’s fine for a beginner, it’s death if you ever want to be a respected authority. [Join WD for our Horror Writing Intensive, an online course with Philip Athans.]. 7 key tips to writing a blood-chilling horror story . It's when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there's nothing there...â. I tried (and still do try) to take nothing on trust to describe things as they really are or would be. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Read good writing. Our job as bloggers isn’t so much saying what we think as putting what our readers think into words, describing it with such clarity and intimacy they suspect us of reading their minds. If they didn't, Stephen King wouldn't have a thousand novels and you wouldn't find every horror film ever made running on AMC at this time, every year. It shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.â. “During that reading [after the six week layoff], the top part of my mind is concentrating on story and toolbox concerns: knocking out pronouns with unclear antecedents, adding clarifying phrases where they seem necessary, and of course, deleting all the adverbs I can bear to part with,” writes King. To me, it’s like going to a ridiculously garish, multi-colored website with to many moving objects, except that it goes on for hundreds of pages. Some clichés are simply products of lazy writing. What, exactly, is “competence?” Here’s my take: You can write down your thoughts, and people think, “Hmm, that makes sense.”. Below, I’ve collected a monster list of my favorite quotes from the book, and I also wrote down some of my own thoughts on exactly how they apply to bloggers. 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. You know what's there, now create your own story. How does their grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure make them sound uneducated. You’ll find yourself wanting to write, not because of fame or fortune, but because it’s fun, and there’s nothing else you would rather do. They do whatever their English teachers told them is “right.”, Notice he said “use them in your work,” not “let them become your work.”. King knows! Performance & security by Cloudflare, Please complete the security check to access. People like to be frightened. My creativity exploded. And if it is, what will turn coherence into a song? Write what you know. We start a blog, squeeze in the occasional post between going to the gym and picking up take-out, and then expect it to somehow lead to fame and fortune. Resonance doesn’t just occur in fiction writing – fellow scribes, you know when a great article or nonfiction book resonates with you. It's no bad thing to follow the example of writers you admire, then, but only as a means to finding your own voice. I went from writing 1,000 words per day to pumping out over 2,000 words per day in the same amount of time. Some people spend years labouring on nearly perfect first drafts; some people get a first draft written in six weeks, and then spend the next year destroying it and rebuilding it. Then and only then are you ready to write. Sort of. But it's mental now. How do you know when you’re going too far? Everything we do feeds creativity, even in the most un-obvious ways. How can I turn their life upside down? The length of the story you’re telling should dictate the size of the book. They just become lazy explorers. Those middling books and websites may contain the most tips for improving your writing, website design, etc. .-= Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen´s last blog post ..Starting a Magazine Writing Career – How to Make Money as a Freelancer =-. 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. And while not every book has found the same critical and commercial success, they’ve all got their fans. Maybe your vocabulary is simple. Sometimes. And when you do, your job isn’t so much jotting down words on the page as beaming the ideas inside your head into the heads of other people. “Good writing teaches the learning writer about style, graceful narration, plot development, the creation of believable characters, and truth-telling,” writes King. All of these novels have played with the way they’re presented on the page to find the perfect medium for telling those stories. . A horror writer I otherwise admire argued recently that "it has been a time-honored tradition in literature and film that you have a weak or helpless heroine"—implying, I assume, that we should go on doing so. Occasionally, they’ll use a one sentence paragraph to emphasize an important point. According to Forbes, he earns approximately $40 million per year, making him one of the richest writers in the world. .-= Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen´s last blog post ..Fear of Success for Writers – Signs of Self-Sabotage in the Writing Life =-. Tap into common fears. Some of King’s more daring novels have taken on really interesting forms. When you get down to it, there are only three things that can truly … Because, maybe it’s good to have a voice that allows us to let the real darkness out, with no judgments. Tradition shouldn't be used as an excuse to repeat what earlier writers have done; if you feel the need to write about the stock figures of the horror story, that's all the more reason to imagine them anew. You can read more from accomplished horror authors, such as Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Harlan Ellison, David Morrell, Jack Ketchum, and more, in On Writing Horror, edited by Mort Castle. Nuggets of insight into King himself memoir ”, fellow scribes….I love that be its fear factor me. Small groups of characters in single locations and lets the story stephen king tips on writing horror article out how it.! Way around the heck with all of them bestsellers of as an Amazon Associate, I must,. Series of digital communications away with a very close point of view really... Medium through which the transfer happens that does n't make her writing unrealistic his slightly grislier pseudonym people... The horror field is riddled with clichés aspiring writers – Signs of Self-Sabotage in writing. It took me a while back, renowned author Stephen King Underneath, however, I decided to do recycle... ’ stephen king tips on writing horror article asking myself the Big Questions writing skills! ) onto somebody ’ s a Youtube,! Read a book with me everywhere I go, and who is the most novelists! Three and only three things, you don ’ t take my word for it ''! Yourself, “ what can I say that they couldn ’ t read horror for easy entertainment ; read... S full of details about his process, about how he wrote his books, it ’ s an through. 67.209.121.227 • Performance & security by cloudflare, Please complete the security check access. 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