the "Language"

[strange]

As a young writer I decided right from the start that if i was to become a writer that I'd need to take on board all the advice I was given. I thought of doing a creative writing course at University but i thought no. The main reason, you don't need CW to be a writer, plus I think and find the best way I can develope as a writer is not just by people telling me what to write and how, but by reading great authors and discovering it for myself.

Now how does that link to On Writing?...simple, On Writing was the only how to write book I decided I'd ever read (although i read one recommended by a friend which was OK, but for the most part stuff I already knew) and I was not dissappointed. From the beginning it hooked me but something more than anything else grabbed me, the reason why he wrote it. The question he'd never been asked with was always plays on my mind as a writer, the "language".

As a writer I don't want to be a Shakespeare or a Hemmingway or a King or a Clancy, but a combination of the two. For me the language is key as a writer and metaphors, symbolism and hidden meaning and ideas I want to give the reading or install in my work were perfectly expressed in On Writing and gave me a lot of confidence in my abilitities because as the book helped me a lot, the fact Mr King highlighted how he combines the two to make an entertaining story but also by making them social important and tries to show what he knows, makes his work even more special.

So this is just to say thankyou Sai but also to highlight the importance of the small details in our work as writer. Thankyou

[Mr. Palmer]

I concur. The language is definitely a key to the whole she-bang.

I usually don't find my own "language" until the second draft of a novel. Then I go back and put a facial expression on the bones.

[Rhett]

I'm curious to your method of writing. Do you decide what you will write about, and then write it? Or does it come to you along the way? You sound very aware of what kind of writer you would like to be and have it planned out. Are you able to plan out your stories as well?

[Daniel Smithson]

The Edward Wallace plot wheels. A Google search brings up several disbelievers that they ever really existed. Nevertheless, I found a web site on the author John Gardner, a contemporary of Wallace. Pictures of the literary artifacts were available for viewing. While I did not read that they were based on Edward Wallace plot wheels, I believe I had a flash of eureka! As if I had entered into a psychic worm hole and found myself in an elaborate ritual Allistor Crowley's Golden Dawn and there was Edward Wallace and John Gardner in attendance. They were playing parlor games something like spin-the-bottle. I likened it to a board game I had brought home recently; it was Mythology wherein the Zeus spinner is used to discover how many space a player may advance; also, the whole board rotates slightly to figure the winner in a battle against the Minnotuar. A similar stream-of-consciousness, psychic connection came with a novel by Nelson SeMille I read within the past six months, "The Gold Coast". DeMille makes several mythological references there. One is to Fortune. I found in the Brittanica an article on Fortuna Prae Nesti, which I affectionately think of Fortuna Pray Nasty. Concerning the plot wheels, you can put whatever characteristics you want for a category, say a protagonist's occupation. I list a couple of pages of occupations. Then I counted them. This number became the spokes on the wheel drawing half as many diameters and labeling the by the occupations from my list. Next, I took a pencil and drilled a small hole in its center, and a stick pin with a big plastic bulb on the end to anchor the pencil for the spinner at the center of the wheel. no more fussing about a character's characteristics, except for the construction of the plot wheels. Also I use the index of a graduate school research textbook "The Morphology of the Folktale" to turn the plot. Am I John Gardner or me or Edward Wallace or Allistor Crowley. I've got kill them to be me again!

[Abbie]

As a young writer I decided right from the start that if i was to become a writer that I'd need to take on board all the advice I was given. I thought of doing a creative writing course at University but i thought no. The main reason, you don't need CW to be a writer, plus I think and find the best way I can develope as a writer is not just by people telling me what to write and how, but by reading great authors and discovering it for myself.

Now how does that link to On Writing?...simple, On Writing was the only how to write book I decided I'd ever read (although i read one recommended by a friend which was OK, but for the most part stuff I already knew) and I was not dissappointed. From the beginning it hooked me but something more than anything else grabbed me, the reason why he wrote it. The question he'd never been asked with was always plays on my mind as a writer, the "language".
...snip...

I like how he explains the language in 'On Writing" ; the profanity. He wrote tht way because that's how real people the chracters represented talked.

He knew because he had worked around/with such persons.
Write what you know. Research the rest. ((PS: I like he explained 'researching your back story"... afterall if you goof up on a little technicaltiy that's all the critics are going to see and you get tons of fans gleefully pointing it out to you haha...)).

--Abbie

[emalone]

I was very impressed with Mr. King's taking on the topic of language. Too many times we see writers trying to be grandiose and, what I call "over shoot." By the way, I would like to start a dialogue with Mr. King. How does one directly write to him?

As a young writer I decided right from the start that if i was to become a writer that I'd need to take on board all the advice I was given. I thought of doing a creative writing course at University but i thought no. The main reason, you don't need CW to be a writer, plus I think and find the best way I can develope as a writer is not just by people telling me what to write and how, but by reading great authors and discovering it for myself.

Now how does that link to On Writing?...simple, On Writing was the only how to write book I decided I'd ever read (although i read one recommended by a friend which was OK, but for the most part stuff I already knew) and I was not dissappointed. From the beginning it hooked me but something more than anything else grabbed me, the reason why he wrote it. The question he'd never been asked with was always plays on my mind as a writer, the "language".

As a writer I don't want to be a Shakespeare or a Hemmingway or a King or a Clancy, but a combination of the two. For me the language is key as a writer and metaphors, symbolism and hidden meaning and ideas I want to give the reading or install in my work were perfectly expressed in On Writing and gave me a lot of confidence in my abilitities because as the book helped me a lot, the fact Mr King highlighted how he combines the two to make an entertaining story but also by making them social important and tries to show what he knows, makes his work even more special.

So this is just to say thankyou Sai but also to highlight the importance of the small details in our work as writer. Thankyou

[Moderator]

Sorry, but he doesn't respond personally.