A word from the King

I’m currently reading Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’, a great book about the life of the writer and his thoughts on how to write a story. I came across a passage in it that I thought sums up the writing process well (or atleast, his process) and thought it was worth sharing.

“I want to put a group of characters in some sort of predicament and then watch them try and work themselves free. My job isn’t to help them work their way free, but to watch what happens and then write it down.”

“The situation comes first, The characters -always flat and unfeatured – come next. Once these things are fixed in my mind, I begin to narrate. I often have an idea of what the outcome may be, but I have never demanded of a set of characters that they do things my way. On the contrary, I want them to do things their way…if I’m not able to guess with any accuracy how the damned thing is going to turn out, even with my inside knowledge of coming events, I can be pretty sure of keeping the reader in a state of page-turning anxiety.”

And for those shortstoryers out there (me included), here are a few bits of advice I came across coupled with a list of publishers…

http://ideastap.com/ideasmag/the-knowledge/how-to-write-a-short-story-and-get-published

Hope some of this is helpful.