Stephen King, the King of Horror, has written dozens of fictional bestsellers, many of which have become blockbuster movies. He also wrote a book, On Writing, telling how he writes. Here are some of his ideas.
From his own experience, King believes a writer’s job is to recognize two previously unrelated ideas and to make something new from them.
Writers write their first drafts for themselves, to tell themselves a story. When they rewrite, they take out everything that is not part of the story.
Writers shouldn’t “dress up” their natural short-word vocabulary with long words. They should use the first words that come into their heads.
You don’t need to write in complete sentences all the time.
Avoid passive verbs. Timid writers use passive verbs because they seem safe.
Forget using adverbs.
Fear leads to bad writing.
Use “said.”
To make possessive nouns, add apostrophe S every time.
Easy-to-read books contain lots of white space and dialog.
To be a good writer, do two things: read a lot and write a lot.
If you don’t have time to read a lot, you don’t have the time or the know-how to write well.
To learn what not to do, read bad writing.
English Writing Teacher 