Writing
Techniques Articles
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Brain Dump what you already know
Write
everything you already know about the subject.
Start from here. Keep going
until you are done. Write what you already know and let the
rest fill in later... Don't check any references or
verify - just rely on your memory and go - get everything
out on paper that you already know. Make it as good as you
can with where you are at, right now!
Your unconscious mind will organize and create the rest as
you go. If you only have a few points in mind, a list of
the categories that you want to expand on, or a vague
general idea of what you want to address -- write that out
and keep going if more ideas occur as you get started.
Take action now! As far and as much as you can, write out
what you already know.
Once you start to run out of ideas, pause and ask this
question: “What’s the next logical step?” Write out the
answer.
Have you gotten stuck on the perfect start or ending? Avoid
it completely and just start on what you know. Let the rest
write itself later, once you’ve built some momentum and you
start to answer those questions to give a bigger view of
the context of your creation.
Read it over, and then throw that away and start the next
day and rewrite everything you know again!
Keep going like this until you have created what you want.
Yes, this takes a bit of the old courage. And it forges an
iron will that will serve you well.
This also follows the sterling advice of one of my favorite
authors... Check it out!
"Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully -
in Ten Minutes"
by Stephen King
(reprinted in Sylvia K. Burack, ed. The Writer's Handbook.
Boston, MA: Writer, Inc., 1988: 3-9)
I. The First Introduction
THAT'S RIGHT. I know it sounds like an ad for some sleazy
writers' school, but I really am going to tell you
everything you need to pursue a successful and financially
rewarding career writing fiction, and I really am going to
do it in ten minutes, which is exactly how long it took me
to learn. It will actually take you twenty minutes or so to
read this essay, however, because I have to tell you a
story, and then I have to write a second introduction. But
these, I argue, should not count in the ten minutes.
II. The Story, or, How Stephen King Learned to Write
When I was a sophomore in high school, I did a sophomoric
thing which got me in a pot of fairly hot water, as
sophomoric didoes often do. I wrote and published a small
satiric newspaper called The Village Vomit. In this little
paper I lampooned a number of teachers at Lisbon (Maine)
High School, where I was under instruction. These were not
very gentle lampoons; they ranged from the scatological to
the downright cruel.
Eventually, a copy of this little newspaper found its way
into the hands of a faculty member, and since I had been
unwise enough to put my name on it (a fault, some critics
argue, of which I have still not been entirely cured), I
was brought into the office. The sophisticated satirist had
by that time reverted to what he really was: a
fourteen-year-old kid who was shaking in his boots and
wondering if he was going to get a suspension ... what we
called "a three-day vacation" in those dim days of 1964.
I wasn't suspended. I was forced to make a number of
apologies - they were warranted, but they still tasted like
dog-dirt in my mouth - and spent a week in detention hall.
And the guidance counselor arranged what he no doubt
thought of as a more constructive channel for my talents.
This was a job - contingent upon the editor's approval -
writing sports for the Lisbon Enterprise, a twelve-page
weekly of the sort with which any small-town resident will
be familiar. This editor was the man who taught me
everything I know about writing in ten minutes. His name
was John Gould - not the famed New England humorist or the
novelist who wrote The Greenleaf Fires, but a relative of
both, I believe.
He told me he needed a sports writer and we could "try each
other out" if I wanted.
I told him I knew more about advanced algebra than I did
sports.
Gould nodded and said, "You'll learn."
I said I would at least try to learn. Gould gave me a huge
roll of yellow paper and promised me a wage of 1/2 per
word. The first two pieces I wrote had to do with a high
school basketball game in which a member of my school team
broke the Lisbon High scoring record. One of these pieces
was straight reportage. The second was a feature article.
I brought them to Gould the day after the game, so he'd
have them for the paper, which came out Fridays. He read
the straight piece, made two minor corrections, and spiked
it. Then he started in on the feature piece with a large
black pen and taught me all I ever needed to know about my
craft. I wish I still had the piece - it deserves to be
framed, editorial corrections and all - but I can remember
pretty well how it looked when he had finished with it.
Here's an example:
(note: this is before the edit marks indicated on King's
original copy)
Last night, in the well-loved gymnasium of Lisbon High
School, partisans and Jay Hills fans alike were stunned by
an athletic performance unequaled in school history: Bob
Ransom, known as "Bullet" Bob for both his size and
accuracy, scored thirty-seven points. He did it with grace
and speed ... and he did it with an odd courtesy as well,
committing only two personal fouls in his knight-like quest
for a record which has eluded Lisbon thinclads since
1953....
(after edit marks)
Last night, in the Lisbon High School gymnasium, partisans
and Jay Hills fans alike were stunned by an athletic
performance unequaled in school history: Bob Ransom scored
thirty-seven points. He did it with grace and speed ... and
he did it with an odd courtesy as well, committing only two
personal fouls in his quest for a record which has eluded
Lisbon's basketball team since 1953....
When Gould finished marking up my copy in the manner I have
indicated above, he looked up and must have seen something
on my face. I think he must have thought it was horror, but
it was not: it was revelation.
"I only took out the bad parts, you know," he said. "Most
of it's pretty good."
"I know," I said, meaning both things: yes, most of it was
good, and yes, he had only taken out the bad parts. "I
won't do it again."
"If that's true," he said, "you'll never have to work
again. You can do this for a living." Then he threw back
his head and laughed.
And he was right; I am doing this for a living, and as long
as I can keep on, I don't expect ever to have to work
again.
III. The Second Introduction
All of what follows has been said before. If you are
interested enough in writing to be a purchaser of this
magazine, you will have either heard or read all (or almost
all) of it before. Thousands of writing courses are taught
across the United States each year; seminars are convened;
guest lecturers talk, then answer questions, then drink as
many gin and tonics as their expense-fees will allow, and
it all boils down to what follows.
I am going to tell you these things again because often
people will only listen - really listen - to someone who
makes a lot of money doing the thing he's talking about.
This is sad but true. And I told you the story above not to
make myself sound like a character out of a Horatio Alger
novel but to make a point: I saw, I listened, and I
learned. Until that day in John Gould's little office, I
had been writing first drafts of stories which might run
2,500 words. The second drafts were apt to run 3,300 words.
Following that day, my 2,500-word first drafts became
2,200-word second drafts. And two years after that, I sold
the first one.
So here it is, with all the bark stripped off. It'll take
ten minutes to read, and you can apply it right away ... if
you listen.
IV. Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully
1. Be talented
This, of course, is the killer. What is talent? I can hear
someone shouting, and here we are, ready to get into a
discussion right up there with "what is the meaning of
life?" for weighty pronouncements and total uselessness.
For the purposes of the beginning writer, talent may as
well be defined as eventual success - publication and
money. If you wrote something for which someone sent you a
check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if
you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you
talented.
Now some of you are really hollering. Some of you are
calling me one crass money-fixated creep. And some of you
are calling me bad names. Are you calling Harold Robbins
talented? someone in one of the Great English Departments
of America is screeching. V.C. Andrews? Theodore Dreiser?
Or what about you, you dyslexic moron?
Nonsense. Worse than nonsense, off the subject. We're not
talking about good or bad here. I'm interested in telling
you how to get your stuff published, not in critical
judgments of who's good or bad. As a rule the critical
judgments come after the check's been spent, anyway. I have
my own opinions, but most times I keep them to myself.
People who are published steadily and are paid for what
they are writing may be either saints or trollops, but they
are clearly reaching a great many someones who want what
they have. Ergo, they are communicating.
Ergo, they are talented. The biggest part of writing
successfully is being talented, and in the context of
marketing, the only bad writer is one who doesn't get paid.
If you're not talented, you won't succeed. And if you're
not succeeding, you should know when to quit.
When is that? I don't know. It's different for each writer.
Not after six rejection slips, certainly, nor after sixty.
But after six hundred? Maybe. After six thousand? My
friend, after six thousand pinks, it's time you tried
painting or computer programming.
Further, almost every aspiring writer knows when he is
getting warmer - you start getting little jotted notes on
your rejection slips, or personal letters . . . maybe a
commiserating phone call. It's lonely out there in the
cold, but there are encouraging voices ... unless there is
nothing in your words which warrants encouragement. I think
you owe it to yourself to skip as much of the self-illusion
as possible. If your eyes are open, you'll know which way
to go ... or when to turn back.
2. Be neat
Type. Double-space. Use a nice heavy white paper, never
that erasable onion-skin stuff. If you've marked up your
manuscript a lot, do another draft.
3. Be self-critical
If you haven't marked up your manuscript a lot, you did a
lazy job. Only God gets things right the first time. Don't
be a slob.
4. Remove every extraneous word
You want to get up on a soapbox and preach? Fine. Get one
and try your local park. You want to write for money? Get
to the point. And if you remove all the excess garbage and
discover you can't find the point, tear up what you wrote
and start all over again . . . or try something new.
5. Never look at a reference book while doing a first draft
You want to write a story? Fine. Put away your dictionary,
your encyclopedias, your World Almanac, and your thesaurus.
Better yet, throw your thesaurus into the wastebasket. The
only things creepier than a thesaurus are those little
paperbacks college students too lazy to read the assigned
novels buy around exam time. Any word you have to hunt for
in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions
to this rule. You think you might have misspelled a word?
O.K., so here is your choice: either look it up in the
dictionary, thereby making sure you have it right - and
breaking your train of thought and the writer's trance in
the bargain - or just spell it phonetically and correct it
later. Why not? Did you think it was going to go somewhere?
And if you need to know the largest city in Brazil and you
find you don't have it in your head, why not write in
Miami, or Cleveland? You can check it ... but later. When
you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except
go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely
cannot be put off.
6. Know the markets
Only a dimwit would send a story about giant vampire bats
surrounding a high school to McCall's. Only a dimwit would
send a tender story about a mother and daughter making up
their differences on Christmas Eve to Playboy ... but
people do it all the time. I'm not exaggerating; I have
seen such stories in the slush piles of the actual
magazines. If you write a good story, why send it out in an
ignorant fashion? Would you send your kid out in a
snowstorm dressed in Bermuda shorts and a tank top? If you
like science fiction, read the magazines. If you want to
write confession stories, read the magazines. And so on. It
isn't just a matter of knowing what's right for the present
story; you can begin to catch on, after awhile, to overall
rhythms, editorial likes and dislikes, a magazine's entire
slant. Sometimes your reading can influence the next story,
and create a sale.
7. Write to entertain
Does this mean you can't write "serious fiction"? It does
not. Somewhere along the line pernicious critics have
invested the American reading and writing public with the
idea that entertaining fiction and serious ideas do not
overlap. This would have surprised Charles Dickens, not to
mention Jane Austen, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner,
Bernard Malamud, and hundreds of others. But your serious
ideas must always serve your story, not the other way
around. I repeat: if you want to preach, get a soapbox.
8. Ask yourself frequently, "Am I having fun?"
The answer needn't always be yes. But if it's always no,
it's time for a new project or a new career.
9. How to evaluate criticism
Show your piece to a number of people - ten, let us say.
Listen carefully to what they tell you. Smile and nod a
lot. Then review what was said very carefully. If your
critics are all telling you the same thing about some facet
of your story - a plot twist that doesn't work, a character
who rings false, stilted narrative, or half a dozen other
possibles - change that facet. It doesn't matter if you
really liked that twist of that character; if a lot of
people are telling you something is wrong with you piece,
it is. If seven or eight of them are hitting on that same
thing, I'd still suggest changing it. But if everyone - or
even most everyone - is criticizing something different,
you can safely disregard what all of them say.
10. Observe all rules for proper submission
Return postage, self-addressed envelope, all of that.
11. An agent? Forget it. For now
Agents get 10% of monies earned by their clients. 10% of
nothing is nothing. Agents also have to pay the rent.
Beginning writers do not contribute to that or any other
necessity of life. Flog your stories around yourself. If
you've done a novel, send around query letters to
publishers, one by one, and follow up with sample chapters
and/or the manuscript complete. And remember Stephen King's
First Rule of Writers and Agents, learned by bitter
personal experience: You don't need one until you're making
enough for someone to steal ... and if you're making that
much, you'll be able to take your pick of good agents.
12. If it's bad, kill it
When it comes to people, mercy killing is against the law.
When it comes to fiction, it is the law.
That's everything you need to know. And if you listened,
you can write everything and anything you want. Now I
believe I will wish you a pleasant day and sign off.
My ten minutes are up.
(The above article is copyright Stephen King, 1988)