8/28/2023 0 Comments Ending to my story quotes![]() “I would argue that the paragraph, not the sentence, is the basic unit of writing-the place where coherence begins and words stand a chance of becoming more than mere words” (134). Good writing is also about making good choices when it comes to picking the tools you plan to work with” (127, 128). Affectation itself, beginning with the need to define some sorts of writing as ‘good’ and other sorts as ‘bad,’ is a fearful behavior. “I am convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing… Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation. “The adverb is not your friend… I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops” (124, 125). “ Must you write complete sentences each time, every time? Perish the thought” (120). If you hesitate and cogitate, you will come up with another word-of course you will, there’s always another word-but it probably won’t be as good as your first one, or as close to what you really mean” (117–18). Remember that the basic rule of vocabulary is use the first word that comes to your mind, if it is appropriate and colorful. ![]() I’m not trying to get you to talk dirty, only plain and direct. If you believe ‘take a ’ would be considered offensive or inappropriate by your audience, feel free to say John stopped long enough to move his bowels (or perhaps John stopped long enough to push). Make yourself a solemn promise right now that you’ll never use ‘emolument’ when you mean ‘tip’ and you’ll never say John stopped long enough to perform an act of excretion when you mean John stopped long enough to take a. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. (You’ll be doing that as you read, of course … but that comes later.) One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you’re maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. “Put your vocabulary on the top shelf of your toolbox, and don’t make any conscious effort to improve it. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page” (106). You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick and take down names. “You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair-the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel from a sitting position” (77–78). On lessons learned from his first big success (the novel, Carrie), King came to the realization “that stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. Once you know what the story is and get it right-as right as you can, anyway-it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Quoting an editor from one of King’s first writing jobs (as a local sports writer): “When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story… When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story… Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up” (37). “Let’s get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. There is some PG language in the book, so I’ve blanked out those below: Just great storytelling and acting throughout.īelow are some of my favorite quotes from On Writing. I’ve never read a Stephen King novel, although I’m familiar with a number of movie adaptations of his novels like The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redeption, which are some of the best films I’ve ever seen. I finally picked it up a few weeks ago and enjoyed every page. Some time ago I came across Stephen King’s book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, which is often recommended reading for would-be writers.
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