Stephen King writing methods...

[Xanderous]

I've been listening to his book, "On Writing." A couple nuggets that I've pulled from it are his opinions on the following:

• Adverbs are of the devil
• Dialogue attribution should be kept to he said/she said and don't go crazy with "he jabbed back" and so on.

I understand the omitting of adverbs as much as you can, but I'm interested to know everyone's thoughts on dialogue attribution.

 

[Randy M.]

The emotion of the moment should be implicit in the dialog. He said/she said is about as invisible in prose as "and" is in poetry. He/she asked, would be okay, though if you already established a give and take between characters, a simple question mark might do. But do you ever really need "she exclaimed" or "he ratta-tat-tatted" or "he burst out like sewage from a broken pipe"?

Okay, I'm already trying to think where I could use that last, but the other two not so much.

 

[Astro Pen]

He is right. I think said and asked (and possibly replied ) are almost invisible, they are scanned much like punctuation.
Whereas retorted, enquired, reciprocated, along with their fancy Edwardian sounding pals, sound like a 14 year old trying to write like a grown-up.
My first efforts were full of them. I had to go back and replace them with all 'said' discretely dropping them in the bin never to be seen again.
I never looked back

 

[Vladd67]

Could be worse, look at the Holmes stories with Watson ejaculating frequently.

 

[Brian G Turner]

When I first started writing I made a big effort to find all the different ways of saying "said" without using that word. I think a lot of people new to writing do. But, really text does read quite badly when done that way - said is a perfectly fine and neutral term to use.

 

[Astro Pen]

I admit that in my flights of fancy I do use a scattering of adverbs for my comfort and convenience, but only a few, fitting easily in the hand luggage to avoid a penalty at reception.

 

[Phyrebrat]

thoughts on dialogue attribution.

As has been said upthread, if you can chose better words so that a sentence, clause whatever does heavier lifting, you're good. Also, reading aloud what you've written for a scene often helps. In extended dialogue exchanges, you can drop the tags altogether once the reader knows, and use full stops with description of character action. E.g. He thumped the desk. 'You can't handle the truth!'

As far as adverbs go, it's fine to use them, but really I try to do so only to make things clearer for a reader rather than descriptively. Sometimes you have to use an adverb if there has been no clue to the reader how a character has done something in the preceding sentence/clause/moment. In those cases, it's probably a good idea to check that you've used the strongest words or syntax such that an adverb would not be required.

I used 'sleepily' recently as a character who had been asleep in the scene woke and interjected something. Having had her sleeping the whole time, and then to join the convo is a bit clunky, and to write that she woke up and then said something would unnecessarily increase word count. 'Ma said sleepily' worked fine.

I'm a firm believer in the more you write, the more you'll understand. When it comes to writing - esp crits - you will get a multitude of opinions that can confuse. Only you know what is right for your story in terms of word tone and rhythm, and often advice can be counter-productive. Someone may have a well-intentioned idea on how you should write a sentence in your WIP but they won't have your deep knowledge of the gestalt and therefore the advice can be - quite simply - wrong.

 

[W Collier]

Xanderous, there are a million books out there on how best to write fiction, and that one is the only one I've ever encountered that was worth a darn. On Writing is a fabulous book and you should generally default to trusting what he has to say in it. His point about dialogue tags is principally that you're trying to make the reader forget he is reading. It's like great direction in a movie: A bad director causes you to notice his artsy camera angles and musical choices and in the process distracts you from the actual story. You're constantly reminded that you're watching a movie, so you can never lose yourself in it. A good director doesn't have to be a genius of the art; he can just be good enough in a workmanlike way that his direction doesn't get in the way of the story. If you forget that you're watching a movie and just watch it, he has succeeded far more than any number of aspiring artsy-farts directors (or see Tony Scott's early work compared to his frenetic later movies). The true geniuses are the directors who can be artsy, but in a way that enhances our viewing experience while we never quite actually notice it at the time--at least during the first viewing. The unique camera angles, the experimental framing, the slow-mo bits, are there, and in the moment they just work, heightening the movie above what a workman director would create without distracting you from it.

Stephen King is talking about that with writing. You don't have to go purple. Far from it. You don't even have to get fancy. If the story itself is engaging enough that your readers get in the groove, their brains won't even process the dialogue tags in a verbal way. They'll purely subconsciously register them as tags, just enough to keep track of who is saying which lines, without actually reading them as part of the writing. And that's fine, because during dialogue, it's the dialogue that's telling the story, and you want your audience to lose themselves in just listening to the conversation in their heads. If you try to get fancy with stuff that's not the dialogue itself, you risk reminding them that they're reading, taking them out of the moment. Some people can be fancy without being distracting. The geniuses. The rest of us? We are well advised to let the story be the star, not the writer.

 

[Don]

A bad director causes you to notice his artsy camera angles and musical choices and in the process distracts you from the actual story.

Total Recall (2012) completely loses its story to become an exercise in counting the seconds until the next lens flare. It's anti-art.

Simply saying said, as Stephen King suggests, is common advice.

 

[paranoid marvin]

I think that one of the things when writing a story is to decide if you're trying to impress book critics with your depth and range of vocabulary and literary knowledge, or you're trying to create an enjoyable and interesting story. Sometimes the two go hand-in-hand, sometimes they don't. I don't think Stephen King has ever one (or probably ever will win) a Pulitzer prize for any of his novels, but with over 350 million sales he's doing something right.

 

[Mon0Zer0]

I think that one of the things when writing a story is to decide if you're trying to impress book critics with your depth and range of vocabulary and literary knowledge, or you're trying to create an enjoyable and interesting story. Sometimes the two go hand-in-hand, sometimes they don't. I don't think Stephen King has ever one (or probably ever will win) a Pulitzer prize for any of his novels, but with over 350 million sales he's doing something right.

Reading the Night Flier at the moment, and one thing that didn't jump out at me (if you catch my drift), was just how damn readable King's prose is. It's not big, it's not clever but it's so easy to lose yourself in the story.

 

[Randy M.]

Reading the Night Flier at the moment, and one thing that didn't jump out at me (if you catch my drift), was just how damn readable King's prose is. It's not big, it's not clever but it's so easy to lose yourself in the story.

And yet, it's not bland either. There's a sense of someone telling you a story in person.

 

[Tanith]

I think that one of the things when writing a story is to decide if you're trying to impress book critics with your depth and range of vocabulary and literary knowledge, or you're trying to create an enjoyable and interesting story. Sometimes the two go hand-in-hand, sometimes they don't. I don't think Stephen King has ever one (or probably ever will win) a Pulitzer prize for any of his novels, but with over 350 million sales he's doing something right.

He's telling a story in plain language, which has always been part of his appeal for me.

Earlier this summer I had the interesting adventure of reading an E. E. "Doc" Smith novel for the first time...the first "Lensman" book, I think. Ye gods, what an adverb orgy! I flashed back to On Writing as I read and can now understand why King is so insistent about keeping adverbs in check. It's distracting as hell.

 

[tinkerdan]

It is true that there is some invisibility to said/says.
However; if you get hold of my earliest edition of my first novel, you will see that you can easily slip up even with said/says to where they are not only visible--they are annoying.

 

[Randy M.]

It is true that there is some invisibility to said/says.
However; if you get hold of my earliest edition of my first novel, you will see that you can easily slip up even with said/says to where they are not only visible--they are annoying.

This echoes a comment I made recently to a first-time novelist. She had one spot where it didn't seem apparent to me who was speaking and a said/says was needed, and another spot where one or two could have been deleted without confusion. My guess would be that most writers need that first reader to point out that sort of thing even after they've been writing a while. The heat of composition makes it hard to recognize the hiccups in your prose.

 

[Stomalomalus]

I've used extracts from On Writing when teaching/coaching content writers for years. Full of useful nuggets.