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

[katherineokelly.livejournal.com]

Agreed!! (Not that I usually take this advice, but as long as I'm still writing my 1,000 words/day, I figure it's okay if I'm a little distractable. When I first started writing and wasn't in a regular habit yet, the distractions were killer)

[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

[aurumsisters.livejournal.com]

First off, absolutely LOVE your layout (I think I've told you this before).

Second off, I so WISH I could follow that advice. It's great advice....but I get distracted WAY too easily. Maybe I should work on that....

[sailorhathor.livejournal.com]

I love Stephen King, but I could not disagree with him more about the function of a thesaurus. There isn't anything more irritating to me when reading a story than someone using the same word to describe something in three consecutive sentences or something because they couldn't think of another word and didn't use a thesaurus. Just makes you look lazy.

When Stephen King saw my comment, he was very suprised that someone disagreed with him, and that surprised look stayed on his face the whole day. It surprised him just that much. "Who was she to disagree with me? I was absolutely surprised," he said to his wife later, who mirrored his surprise in her own reaction.

See? That sucks. Just because the right word doesn't come to you right away doesn't mean it isn't out there. If I don't want to break the writer's trance, I just put a ? next to the word that doesn't seem right and look it up later.

And I've totally had a research question stick in my head so bad that I couldn't continue writing until I looked up the answer. Often, the research only enhanced the writing.

I think writers mean well when they say things like this, but overall, they're just trying to be dramatic and give you absolutes so what they're saying seems more exciting. Throw out my thesaurus?! The hell you say, Stephen King! What a revolutionary thing to suggest! :P