Stephen King - Everything you need to know about writing successfully in 10 minutes

[Russ]

The title says is all:

Stephen King’s “Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully – in Ten Minutes” | Aerogramme Writers' StudioStephen King's "Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully – in Ten Minutes"

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I'm not a fan of the guys fiction, but King is fun with pieces like this.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Now if only he could put out a sequel - everything you need to know about writing and selling a million copies in ten minutes!

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Russ]

I quite enjoyed this part which i thought was applicable to many of the repetitive debates that appear around here:

I’m interested in telling you how to get your stuff published, not in critical judgments of who’s good or bad. As a rule the critical judgments come after the check’s been spent, anyway. I have my own opinions, but most times I keep them to myself. People who are published steadily and are paid for what they are writing may be either saints or trollops, but they are clearly reaching a great many someones who want what they have. Ergo, they are communicating. Ergo, they are talented. The biggest part of writing successfully is being talented, and in the context of marketing, the only bad writer is one who doesn’t get paid. If you’re not talented, you won’t succeed. And if you’re not succeeding, you should know when to quit. When is that? I don’t know. It’s different for each writer. Not after six rejection slips, certainly, nor after sixty. But after six hundred? Maybe. After six thousand? My friend, after six thousand pinks, it’s time you tried painting or computer programming. Further, almost every aspiring writer knows when he is getting warmer – you start getting little jotted notes on your rejection slips, or personal letters . . . maybe a commiserating phone call. It’s lonely out there in the cold, but there are encouraging voices … unless there is nothing in your words which warrants encouragement. I think you owe it to yourself to skip as much of the self-illusion as possible. If your eyes are open, you’ll know which way to go … or when to turn back.

 

[kennyc]

Yep. That's it!

 

[Incanus]

King makes a lot of sense, and I understand what he is getting at (and I’ve seen most of this before). However, the problem I have with he what is saying here is that he seems to be conflating a variety of talents all under the guise of one. Writing well is a talent. But so is salesmanship. So is networking and schmoozing and making a pitch. It should be obvious that pure writing talent alone will get you to various levels of ‘success’. A writing genius who is wholly deficient in these other skills will likely never see the light of day. A loudmouth full of bluster and self-promotion and little substance would probably do much better. There’s talent, and then there’s talent. Some of the best writing I've discovered has been around a long while, but it took me a long time to find it because it hasn't been 'front and center'.

 

[Steerpike]

I don't have much interest in acquiring an agent, so I agree with him there. If you've got a lot of money on the table, maybe it is worth it. Even then, I don't know that I'd go that route.

 

[kennyc]

Jo Zebedee blogs about this agent thing today: JoZebwrites: To agent or not to agent...

 

[Russ]

I have a slightly different view on the value and use of agents, but there are a few irons in the fire right now so I am holding my comments until the results are in.

I hope to have very substantive things to say on the subject by the end of January.

I don't know who JoZeb is...but one thing I can disagree with is about speed. The agents of the people I know who are working rights, or even about to get their first book out via agent are both quick in response and make the process go a great deal faster.

 

[Steerpike]

I think it can be faster once you have an agent, if you have the right agent. Getting that agent can take a long time. I know someone who spent more than a couple years trying to land an agent before finally placing her novel with a small publisher on her own. Wasted couple of years. And in SF/F so many publishers take unagented submissions, it doesn't make a lot of sense from my perspective to give up that 15%. You have to weigh the time it takes to get an agent against the time to place the book without one, and then figure in the commission money you're losing etc.

 

[Russ]

I think it can be faster once you have an agent, if you have the right agent. Getting that agent can take a long time. I know someone who spent more than a couple years trying to land an agent before finally placing her novel with a small publisher on her own. Wasted couple of years. And in SF/F so many publishers take unagented submissions, it doesn't make a lot of sense from my perspective to give up that 15%. You have to weigh the time it takes to get an agent against the time to place the book without one, and then figure in the commission money you're losing etc.

You are right that it is a calculation. Can the agent add more value to your product or your life than they charge you?

The funny thing about agents is I don't understand why people think they would be slow. They don't make money until you sell. Your manuscript sitting on their hard drive doesn't make them any money so the ones I know are always trying to turn those electrons into money for you and them.

It also depends on your life and own work etc. My working life keeps me crazy busy. I can't invest the time tracking down specific editors, monitoring which houses are now willing to let me add to their slush pile, which companies have just hired a new publisher who is really into spec fic and is about to turn the corner in a very positive way in that regard (and that is happening right now but you won't find out about it on the interweb) etc. Having a good agents allows you to be more focused on simply writing in the pre-publication phase.

In addition, having an agent helps you get positive quotes for your book which helps marketing immensely (more on that later).

They are also very helpful on foreign sales which is a growing component of traditional publishing. And don't even get me started on film options and rights.

There is also no real reason that you cannot be submitting your work to publishers while you are seeking an agent, so the options are not mutually exclusive.

 

[Heliotrope]

Since I'm no where close to needing an agent… lol, the thing that stuck out the most for me was his example at the beginning. Cutting out the unnecessary 'describing' garbage. I struggle with that still. It is something I'm working on, but I'm no where near as clear as I should be.

 

[Miskatonic]

Remove every extraneous word

If King took his own advice then IT would have been around 500 pages instead of 1K+.

This is a prime example of "Do as I say, not as I do".

Everything I've read by King had long-winded descriptions that did nothing but put me to sleep.

 

[MiguelDHorcrux]

If King took his own advice then IT would have been around 500 pages instead of 1K+.

This is a prime example of "Do as I say, not as I do".

Everything I've read by King had long-winded descriptions that did nothing but put me to sleep.

WORD. I always find Stephen King a little too showy with his words.

 

[Miskatonic]

WORD. I always find Stephen King a little too showy with his words.

If it was his strength then I would be all in. He's not horrible at it though. Maybe he's just inspired by writers that were really good at it and wants to add the same elements to his own works.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Been a while since I read the King article, but I think the point is not so straight forward as being construed here.

NOTE: I do not read King, I haven't picked up a King novel in decades, and never actually finished one... not my genre, not my kind of writer, nor do I think of him as all that creative as far as story creation goes... but I recognize he has some strong points. So, I'm no groupie coming to defend him, LOL.

His example of a news article fits that medium well, and its a valuable lesson. But I think the most salient point in respect to chopping words is write "tight" no matter how many words you use. About a year ago I was online chatting with a writer who complained their novel hit 150k words, I said shoot me the first chapter. Nothing flat I chopped about 20% of the word count without seriously changing a danged thing, just extra words and sentences that meant nothing, while combining a few others. This really isn't all that unusual with material I see from unpublished works. If I switch over to GRR Martin as an example of a wordy fellow, yeah, I can knock a few words off his prose, but it wouldn't matter much to the overall word count in a single chapter. He may use a truckload of words, but most of them are doing a job, and I would wager King is the same way.

Could you argue there are paragraphs and descriptions, and other stuff that don't need to be there? Absolutely! But it's a pretty safe bet that danged near every word there is doing a job, even if you don't care for the job it's doing. The same can not be said of 99% of the pre-published and self-published work I've looked at over the last couple years.

This is probably the bigger lesson to be taken away.

 

[Jim Aikin]

Jo Zebedee blogs about this agent thing today: JoZebwrites: To agent or not to agent...

An interesting perspective, to be sure, but I balked at this: "More and more publishers seem to be ... taking in their own slush for short periods. They're a lottery (but so is a sub by an agent, frankly)...."

An agent submission is not, I would suggest, a lottery. First, an established agent has already sold books to various publishers, and has personal contacts! You haven't, and you don't. (If you do, you don't need to be reading anything JoZeb has to say.) Second, a good agent knows the industry a lot better than you do. The agent knows which publishers are flourishing and which are struggling, she knows what the specialties of various publishing houses are, she knows which executives have just been promoted or fired -- a whole bunch of specialized knowledge, because it's her business to know that stuff.

 

[kennyc]

An interesting perspective, to be sure, but I balked at this: "More and more publishers seem to be ... taking in their own slush for short periods. They're a lottery (but so is a sub by an agent, frankly)...."

An agent submission is not, I would suggest, a lottery. First, an established agent has already sold books to various publishers, and has personal contacts! You haven't, and you don't. (If you do, you don't need to be reading anything JoZeb has to say.) Second, a good agent knows the industry a lot better than you do. The agent knows which publishers are flourishing and which are struggling, she knows what the specialties of various publishing houses are, she knows which executives have just been promoted or fired -- a whole bunch of specialized knowledge, because it's her business to know that stuff.

Maybe.
But I think you may be presuming too many super-powers for the typical agent.

 

[Russ]

An interesting perspective, to be sure, but I balked at this: "More and more publishers seem to be ... taking in their own slush for short periods. They're a lottery (but so is a sub by an agent, frankly)...."

An agent submission is not, I would suggest, a lottery. First, an established agent has already sold books to various publishers, and has personal contacts! You haven't, and you don't. (If you do, you don't need to be reading anything JoZeb has to say.) Second, a good agent knows the industry a lot better than you do. The agent knows which publishers are flourishing and which are struggling, she knows what the specialties of various publishing houses are, she knows which executives have just been promoted or fired -- a whole bunch of specialized knowledge, because it's her business to know that stuff.

If you want to be traditionally published, and your goal is to make enough money to make your living at writing, than I would suggest an agent is a significant aid to that process.