The Master of Horrors Guide to Becoming a Better Writer

 

The Master of Horror has written a witty anecdote for the would be writer who wants to pursue the craft of writing. The book is part memoir, part instructional with anecdotes thrown in.

Stephen King started out in the Maine and New England areas.He was raised by a single mother. Don’t know if he ever met his father. Mr. King tells of his adventures with his older brother who would persuade him to follow him along on sone stunt that would get both off them into trouble. Mr. King also tells about his adventures writing for sports boards, high school and college paper. He also tells how he wrote stories that got rejected by some short story mags then how he made it big with Carrie, a book he almost threw out in the trash but was fortunately saved by his wife Tabitha.

Now for the instructional part. Every writer needs a tool chest from which to pull forth their tools to do a writing job. The first tool is vocabulary. A writer needs a rich vocabulary in order to write colorful stories. The next tool is grammar. A good author needs to know the rules of grammar and how to use them. Some writer read the rules and make it work due to brevity.
Another thing Stephen King urges is get rid of adverbs as much as you can.

A good writer will have the self discipline to write every day. He advised a starting number and he himself writes whole bunch everyday. If you want to be a writer you got to lock yourself in your room and write. The next thing a writer has got to do is read a lot. Stephen King takes a book with him where ever he goes. Reading other authors gives you style to learn from and tactics to imitate plus it also helps you fi9nd your voice .

Stories write themselves. He advises to let it unfold and the author just write it down as faithfully as possible. He does not believe in outlines or developing a plot on a plot chart.

He also writes about finding agents and how to get your work published. I really liked his approach because it is freestyle and does not constrain the writer to use outlines or plot charts. While this book may not make you a great writer it will definitely give you tips on how to improve.