Stephen King’s advice for writers
Stephen King made his first dollar in the writing business selling stories to his mother when he was barely old enough for school. When he was fourteen, he started impaling rejection slips on a nail in his bedroom wall. The rejection slips piled up. When the nail couldn’t hold them all, he replaced it with a large hook.
In his later twenties, the paperback rights for Carrie made Stephen King $200,000, and changed his family’s life forever. By his thirties, King was rich and famous, and his star has never fallen. He is one of the most popular authors of the last century with an estimated net worth of half a billion dollars.
Any writer who wants to improve their craft would do well to listen to what Stephen King has to say about writing. In this article I’ll look at four of his top tips. All are gleaned from the years leading up to the release of Carrie.
- It’s okay to be ashamed
- Write with the door closed, then write with the door open.
- Write, even when it’s difficult.
- Don’t worry about liking your characters, just make sure they’re believable.
It’s okay to be ashamed
King’s first ‘bestseller.’ was a story he’d printed on his brother’s drum press, stapled together, and taken to school to sell to fellow students. He sold more copies than he ever thought he would, and made a staggering $9. The young writer’s jubilation was short lived. A teacher made him return all the money to his fellow students and asked him why he was wasting his talent writing such garbage in the first place. King felt ashamed.
The memory of that feeling has stayed with the writer. Despite his success, he still doubts the value of what he is writing, worried that someone will think he is wasting his talent, still writing garbage.
His advice to writers is this: Whatever you write, someone will say you are wasting your talent. Someone will call it garbage. Even if you feel ashamed, write anyway.
You will always be criticised, and you might fail, but write anyway.
Write with the door open, then write with the door closed
After the $9 bestseller, King landed a job writing sports articles for a local paper. He turned in his first assignment to the editor, a man named Gould. Gould pulled out a black pen a started drawing lines through King’s work, and rewriting it. King later remarked that he learned more in that brief moment with Gould, than he learned in years of creative writing classes.
Gould had simply removed the unnecessary words. He told King that the first draft of a writer’s work is written for the writer and nobody else. The writer can write with the door closed, and only he has to like the work. The second draft however, is going to be seen by readers. It is going out of the door so to speak.
Write first for yourself, and then for the readers. Take out the words that add nothing to the message.
Write, even when it’s difficult
In ‘On Writing, A memoir of the craft’ Stephen King talks about the sixties, when the prevailing opinion about poetry was that it simply comes in flashes of inspiration and must be captured when it does. King disagrees. When you have no inspiration, you must still write. Most of the time writing is quotidian, just like sweeping the floor.
During the writing of Carrie, King was working as a creative writing teacher. He and his wife Tabitha were raising two young children. They were routinely exhausted, tired, and broke. It was hard to write during those years. King was often frustrated by his output, and the first draft of Carrie was thrown into the bin. It was Tabitha who pulled Carrie out of the bin and convinced her husband to keep going.
You have to keep writing, even when it’s not fun, and even when it’s not easy. Don’t give up on a manuscript just because it’s a struggle.
Don’t worry about liking your characters, just make sure you understand them.
Carrie made Stephen King rich, but he did not like the character. He didn’t particularly like any of the characters in the story. But that clearly didn’t harm the books success.
Carrie White, the protagonist with telekinetic powers, was based on two different girls that Stephen King had been to school with. They were both tremendously unpopular, and gave him the scaffolding for building his own characters in the book that launched his stellar career.
A writer can write well even if they don’t like their characters. But they must be able to believe them, and they must be able to understand why they do what they do. Just like in real life, there are going to be some amazing characters that your don’t really like. Unlikeable characters can be just as great as likeable characters. Writers just need to make the characters seem real.
Continued in part two, Writing Tips from The King of Horror.
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