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I picked up a copy of Stephen
King’s On Writing the other day. I felt in need of a good
laugh and this seemed a safe bet. Imagine a fellow, who never learned
to write formal English, and whose fiction I had never been able to
read, telling other people how to write.
For a long time, I used to think
that it was simply the sloppy nature of the writing that put me off.
To enjoy a story or book, you must be able to forget the writer, and
in Mr King’s books, the writer intrudes everywhere. His use of
colloquialism in every book, regardless of whether it was written in
the first or third person constantly reminded me of his seemingly
banal personality. He is simply a very poor writer.
He had his first stories
published when he was still a teenager and maybe the feeling that it
was so easy had a lasting effect. For a man who subsequently became a
teacher, one would expect clearer English, but the only effect that
part of his career seems to have had on him, was to make him more pedantic.
There is plenty of the teacher in
the middle section of the book, which is the part on writing. King
knows that his readers’s mental ability has been stunted at an
early age, so he uses terms suitable to their understanding, such as
his “Toolbox”. The “Toolbox” is not filled –
as you might expect – with pencils, pens and writing pads, a
dictionary and a thesaurus. Instead it contains more unsubstantial
things, such as “vocabulary” and “grammar”. At
this point, the teacher takes over in a big way and he piles on
nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives with obvious
enjoyment, taking time out to mention something called The
Elements Of Style by William Strunk, an author I had never heard
of until I read his name on the page. Judging by the excerpts
provided by King, I don’t think I will be seeking out that volume.
The only other Stephen King book
I have been able to read all the way through was also a factual book,
the name of which I have long forgotten - along with its contents
– apart from one sentence. It dealt with horror writing and the
sentence went something like this: “There are only two ways you
can write horror stories; you can be subtle or you can gross out. I
gross out.” I admire the man’s honesty and humility.
If anyone would care to see what
a subtle horror story is like, then they should read W. W.
Jacob’s short story, The Monkey’s Paw, where nothing
disgusting is described, but the horror at the end is unmistakable. |
