Years ago I bought Stephen King's On Writing and it looks like he echoes a lot of its points here.<p>Missing is his hatred of adverbs; To King's mind "He screamed angrily" is a terrible sentence because it uses the -ly construction to say what should be clear in context. So with precious few exceptions he scraps all the -ly's and lets his characters' actions do the talking.
Being an aspiring novelist, I've read my fair amount of this 'how to write' stuff and invariably find it useless. King is the only person who actually makes it plain and simple and gives no bullshit.<p>There's little point in trying to be a <i>liked</i> writer, if you never publish anything for anyone <i>to</i> like, and there's even less point if you can't make money off of what you do publish to ever release enough material to get noticed enough to get liked or disliked.<p>My favorite thing of King's advice, and John Scalzi reiterates it in his own way: just get on with it and do the writing.
I've always liked Stephen King. One piece of advice, first said by William Strunk and reflected here, has stayed with me: omit needless words. Now I take out all unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, which are most of them. I like to think my writing has improved. A quote cited in his book, On Writing, was also a revelation:<p>"I made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it short."
-- Blaise Pascal<p>My friend and I used to laugh at this quote because we thought it wasn't true. Now we laugh because we know it is.
The advice looks familiar to W. Zinsser's "On Writing Well", which is the best book on writing I've ever read (even for writing academic papers). <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-25th-Anniversary-Nonfiction/dp/0060006641" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-25th-Anniversary-Nonficti...</a> I try to recommend it to everyone, especially if they're not a fan of bullshit, since it's a book on writing that's written exceptionally well.
It's also important to point out that successful writing entails writing. As Paul Graham has argued [1]:<p><i>People who fail to write novels don't do it by sitting in front of a blank page for days without writing anything. They do it by feeding the cat, going out to buy something they need for their apartment, meeting a friend for coffee, checking email. "I don't have time to work," they say. And they don't; they've made sure of that.</i><p>[1] <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html</a>
<i>"My friend, after six thousand pinks, it's time you tried painting or computer programming."</i><p>Interesting to note, he feels a bad writer should become a Hacker or Painter. Paul Graham, surely, would think otherwise? (i.e a good hacker or painter probably makes for a good writer?, so maybe they should try something else - like basketball).
Robert Heinlein's rules for writing SF:<p><pre><code> 1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you write.
3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
4. You must put the work on the market.
5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.</code></pre>
Google Cache as the link is currently down:<p><a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4qYMp-t5TF0J:www.greatwriting.co.uk/content/view/312/74/+http://www.greatwriting.co.uk/content/view/312/74/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4qYMp-t...</a>
I think this one is good generalized advice for anyone, not just writers:<p>> Ask yourself frequently, "Am I having fun?" The answer needn't always be yes. But if it's always no, it's time for a new project or a new career.
His definition of talent is pretty useful in the context of learning to improve one's writing:<p>>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.<p>In this light, however, his sage 1986 advice about agents is not really sound any longer -- there are no longer very many or very lucrative doors open in the publishing world to unrepresented authors, and there are plenty of agents willing to risk the time and effort on someone that is talented. These days, the way to be paid for writing in the traditional sense (a.k.a. demonstrate talent) essentially has to be by getting an agent (though of course there are loopholes, and segments of the industry in which this doesn't so much apply).
My favourite writing advice quote (sadly I do not know where it is from) is:<p>"There are only three thing wrong with this script: you wrote too much, you wrote too much and you wrote too much"
<i>But if everyone - or even most everyone - is criticizing something different, you can safely disregard what all of them say.</i><p>Reminds me of the mentality of some tech companies who choose to not listen to their customers in order to realize their own vision for their product/service.