Stephen King: On Writing

[avevale_intelligencer]

I've been meaning to read this one for a while, and now I am.

It's a good read. (I could have done without the bit about the maggots, but then I can always do without them, and I should really have been braced for something like that in a King book.) A lot of what he says makes excellent sense to me. Other things I disagree with, not because I think he's wrong (he isn't), but because I have my own way of writing and it's different from his. Not as good as, certainly, but it's the way I enjoy doing it and I want to continue to enjoy doing it.

For instance, I like adverbs. I find them useful. My characters find them useful. They're the stage directions that tell them how to play a given action or line. Often they aren't necessary, but I'm damned if I'm going to fight shy of them when I feel they are. I also like alternatives to "said." I read the James Blish Star Trek novelisations one after the other when they first came out over here, and even at that age I got so sick of the endless, affectless Kirk-said-Spock-said-Kirk-said-Spock-said that I was inwardly screaming at the characters to *act*, for gods' sake. (That's another thing: King would have me write "gods's." That just looks *wrong.*) So, my characters shout, cry, snarl, growl, exclaim, explain and whisper (but never pole-vault) when the occasion calls for it, and sometimes they do it testily, tensely, breathlessly, harshly, sweetly and all the other Lees of West Virginia. I like to write that way.

And as for rule 17 of Strunk and White...well, if I followed that one I'd never write a line. :)

Comments

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

1. Have a look at Language Log. (It has an RSS feed to LiveJournal.)

2. (That's another thing: King would have me write "gods's." That just looks *wrong.*) That would be wrong by anybody's standards, including Strunk and White. I don't think even Stephen King would have you write "for gods's sake".

-- Dr. Whom
Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoëpist, and Philological Busybody
[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

He says (p.144-145 of my edition, again quoting Strunk and White) "...you always add 's, even when the word you're modifying ends in s..." and doesn't qualify it for plurals. One hopes those who read this and not that won't take his word for it...

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

From THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE (1935). Maybe Stephen King doesn't know the difference between singular and plural. I wouldn't be surprised.

Contents

I. Introductory

II. Elementary Rules of Usage

   1. Form the possessive singular of nouns with 's

Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write,

Charles's friend
Burns's poems
the witch's malice

This is the usage of the United States Government Printing Office
and of the Oxford University Press.

Exceptions are the possessives of ancient proper names in
-es and -is, the possessive Jesus', and such
forms as for conscience' sake, for righteousness' sake. But
such forms as Achilles' heel, Moses' laws, Isis' temple are
commonly* replaced by

the heel of Achilles
the laws of Moses
the temple of Isis

The pronominal possessives hers, its, theirs, yours, and
oneself have no apostrophe.

* Not these days. Maybe not even those days.

[jahura.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's because some American institutions of education do teach that the apostrophe-s follows names that end in s to denote possession, the fact that there s is there already is non-withstanding. I went to a couple of them.
I generally ignore that rule because it just looks wrong, but it's been a long time since I sat down in front of a chalkboard. The rules may have changed back since then.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I also like alternatives to "said."

I like to indicate who is speaking any given line of dialog, but sometimes I like to have them act, rather than speak. For instance:

"Looks like it's coming on to rain." Holly drew her jacket together against the wind.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

That can certainly work well, as can similar time-related techniques:

"You could come to dinner." Fred paused. "That is, if you want to..."

Sometimes you don't need to say who's speaking at all, if there are only two people in the conversation then a lot of the time the person can be omitted. Although I've seen occasions (in published books) where a line gets missed somewhere in editing and makes it very confusing, so it's best not to go too long without some reminder of who is saying which line.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Yes, I do that too. I tend to draw the line at "smiled," "laughed" and "nodded" (and so on) as said-equivalents, but I use them as actions before or after speech and that works.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I expect that your characters also comment, reply, respond, interject, and speak in other ways which aren't necessarily dramatic but which break up the endless streams of 'said'. I haven't read any of his books (I'm not fond of the horror genre in general) but I know others who have used 'said' exclusively (yes, those novelisations as well) and it gets boring very quickly. The same with leaving out adverbs, I don't just want to know that Fred ran, I want to be able to 'hear' that he ran softly so that he wouldn't be heard by the Bad Guys.

As for "gods's", that's just plain wrong. There is dispute about names ending in 's' (do you say Keris's or Keris' as the genitive?), but none I have seen about plurals ending in 's'. Even in American and using the MS spell checker.

Having seen your fiction writing (assuming for the sake of argument that your Nyrond tales are fiction!) I like it, I think that it is a good style. Not necessarily a style totaly approved by any style books, but then they contradict each other anyway and often are designed more for 'professional' writers such as journalists or technical reports than for fiction.

[hurdle1gal.livejournal.com]

What's wrong with making your characters pole vault?

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

It was an example James Blish cited of the wrongness of said-equivalents. "'Good morning,' he pole-vaulted." I don't think he had any objection to the sport itself. :)

I do think that said-equivalents should be words that describe a way of speaking or a function of speech. Even this can be taken to extremes: I remember reading the Biggles books as a kid, in which people not only exclaim, explain, remark and so on, but also opine, aver and even asseverate, which in my view is going too far. :)

[hurdle1gal.livejournal.com]

He pole-vaulted as a means of communication? Hrm... I only wonder how the heek that is done. Did he toss up one letter at a time? Or one word? Or did he shout it while he was pole-vaulting? Oh the imagination is now in gear!

[aryana-filker.livejournal.com]

I like adverbs, too - and often am told that I am using too many of them. :) Don't think that I will change my writing style when it comes to adverbs and adjectives.
Alternatives to "said" are a very good thing. :)