Stephen King’s Advice for Writers « Looking for Lola…

[mephestopheles]

http://lookingforlola.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/stephen-kings-advice-for-writers/ (via shareaholic)

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 %u2013 and breaking your train of thought and the writer%u2019s trance in the bargain %u2013 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%u2019t have it in your head, why not write in Miami, or Cleveland? You can check it %u2026 but later. When you sit down to write, write. Don%u2019t do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.

Comments

[jupitersings.livejournal.com]

This advice is good in theory... but I can't follow it. I'd like to say I could, but honestly... unless I am working on a mythical world of some sort, I *need* to know more information. If I am writing a story in Denver I have to know the street maps of Denver, what types of stores are there, the average closing times of shops, food restaurants, apartment prices, minimum wage, etc... Otherwise I just leave in a lot of holes that would take twice as long to fill in later.
I like the idea of turning everything off, not bothering with looking up bigger words or anything like that... but it doesn't work for me.
With that said, I do really like the advice he's got for writers. I really like Stephen King. :D

[mephestopheles.livejournal.com]

The advice he's giving is really for that first spark of a novel when you're just starting out and you have this 'aha' idea. If you begin research too early, or if you stop mid run to look up some tiny detail you could end up destroying the flow and taking longer to finish the story.

I'm trying to get away from my compulsive need to know every detail about what I'm working on before I work on it. It's the job of the writer to tell a story, not accurately layout New York for the reader. It's all about flow. :D