On Writing (By Stephen King) (Patreon)

I've been reading books on how to write better lately. While I'm pretty happy with my overall voice, there are several things I need to work on. Right now, I think my biggest problem is I have turned the virtue of "simple, fast paced prose" into a bit of a vice. Reading back through some chapters I feel like some of the bigger moments are rushed. It is something I will address in the next draft. 

This leads me to the biggest point I've found so far from King's book: that theme is something that is calibrated and improved on in the second draft. As you, my dear web novel readers know, thoughtful, additional drafts are not always a thing in this format. 

And that makes me wonder what changes will happen to stories when I go back and do a final edit for publication. 

• Tenebroum's weakest part is probably the opening, and the chapter 50 climax with Kelvun. Both of these would have to be improved.
• Death After Death doesn't need a lot of changes per say, but might benefit from a little foreshadowing around some later developments and the most frequent reader complaints. 
• Broken System's opening needs to be improved (condensed) and its ending (of the first volume) needs to be expanded on. 
• Golemancer and Letter of the Law? Well - both of these require major revisions. 

It's just interesting (at least to me), that Webnovels are a medium that prioritize length and speed, but sometimes I wonder how much better the stories could be if they were slowed down a little. King makes a persuasive case that the answer is probably quite a bit. 

The book is half memoir and half writing advice/conversation about his method. If you have any interest in either subject, I'd recommend it. I'm enjoying it quite a bit. 

My favorite quote so far is probably, "This sort of stylistic blending is a necessary part of developing one’s own style, but it doesn’t occur in a vacuum. You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so. It’s hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written, but I know it’s true. If I had a nickel for every person who ever told me he/she wanted to become a writer but “didn’t have time to read,” I could buy myself a pretty good steak dinner. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that." 

I tend to agree with this, but that's obvious. The important part of reading widely, in his opinion one of the reasons you need to read so much is so you can read the bad as well as the good, and the terrible as well as the sublime. Put simply, you learn more from bad writers than you do from good.