Greetings from the edge,
Still spelunking my way through On Writing by Stephen King. There is so much good information in there, and I am well aware that drip-feeding what I have learned is a bit like describing Dracula as “a bit influential” or saying Seventh Son of a Seventh Son is “quite good”.
Simply put, without fanboy fawning or dressing it up too much, this is the most useful craft book I have ever read. Heavy-handed and hard-headed as it can be, for all its tough love and very King-esque energy, it is incredibly useful.
I just wish I had read it ten years ago.
Here are today’s lessons, from Mr King’s mind to my scratch pad, and then onto you:
- The first draft should always be written with the door to your writing room closed. King himself wrote Carrie tucked away in the laundry room of his trailer, so do not worry if your writing room is humble. As long as it has a door, close it and tell the story first, without praise, criticism, or interruptions clogging up your perception.
- Theme should grow organically from the story. Get the draft done, step back, look at the bigger picture, and ask yourself what the story is really about.
- Like a good wine, your work should rest before you edit it. Time away makes it easier to spot plot holes, weak scenes, awkward sentences, and all the other little gremlins that creep into a first draft.
- Good revision is not just about SPAG. The second draft is where you strengthen the meaning of the story, tighten the writing, and make the important ideas clearer.
- Pace matters. Move too quickly and you give your readers whiplash. Move too slowly and the story sinks into the mud.
- If a favourite line, scene, or bit of backstory is slowing the story down, confusing the reader, or only there because you think it is clever, then it has to go.
I should finish On Writing by the end of the week, so I will keep sharing what I learn until then. I might even do a nice infographic at the end.
Speaking of making things, I’ve also been working on a painting project. One of my friends from the Sunday group recently got a very nice 3D printer and made me a dice tower, so I picked up a dark grey primer from the local hobby shop. The plan is to hit it with some Nuln Oil wash, then dry-brush it with mid-grey and a lighter grey. Basically that’s painter geek speak for The hope is that it ends up looking like an ancient, soot-stained stone tower dragged straight out of a dungeon.
That is the plan for the next few days.
I would really like to get back into painting miniatures, and this feels like a nice chunky project to sharpen my basic skills on. It should look fantastic once it is done.
I’m also working on Taverns, Trouble and Tiny Kingdoms: Building a Great Starting Settlement. It is coming along nicely, and with a fair wind behind me and a little luck, it should be posted and formatted by Friday.
On the fiction side of things, I am a little stalled on starting Rare, but I have been formatting, proofreading, and posting some of my older short fiction to the new section of the site.
That is about it from me. So for now, it’s back to paint, prose, and tiny kingdoms.
See you in the margins,
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