Aspiring and experienced Writers' discussion thread

[Athene]

What then makes a writer good? I find I can't go by popularity, even though most writers who write for publication want that name recognition and big advances. Take Stephen King. He has a big name. I read just one of his novels and for the life of me could not figure out what the hype was all about. Commercial fiction has no excuse for being that bad.

As a writer, I want to write quality stuff that does not disappoint even the most discriminant read. If some big house wants to give me a 5 million dollar advanced royalty, I wouldn't turn it down, but I won't write junk just because that's what the publishers are looking for.

What did you read by Stephen King? He's got an a pretty extensive body of work. I would agree that some of more recent stuff is pretty cruddy....they can't all be hits! He's still one of my favorite writers. The guy is a master when it comes to short fiction, in my opinion anyway.
Stephen King offers a great deal of insight into what makes a good writer in Stephen King On Writing.

[Iroscato]

What then makes a writer good? I find I can't go by popularity, even though most writers who write for publication want that name recognition and big advances. Take Stephen King. He has a big name. I read just one of his novels and for the life of me could not figure out what the hype was all about. Commercial fiction has no excuse for being that bad.

As a writer, I want to write quality stuff that does not disappoint even the most discriminant read. If some big house wants to give me a 5 million dollar advanced royalty, I wouldn't turn it down, but I won't write junk just because that's what the publishers are looking for.

Some of the most important things for me is creativity, the ability to transport you to the scene they're describing, characters you bond with with and root for until the end, and a healthy smattering of plot twists. Humour is definitely important for me also.

It's often subjective anyway. Just write with what you feel most confident with, and never write anything that feels cold and forced.

[Rhondazvous]

What did you read by Stephen King? He's got an a pretty extensive body of work. I would agree that some of more recent stuff is pretty cruddy....they can't all be hits! He's still one of my favorite writers. The guy is a master when it comes to short fiction, in my opinion anyway.
Stephen King offers a great deal of insight into what makes a good writer in Stephen King On Writing.

I don’t remember the title off the top of my head. It was a novel that opens with this guy tracking another guy. After several scenes King still had not gotten around to telling me why he was tracking the other guy. He enters a town and kills everybody after the spiritual woman accuses him of killing the Crimson King. There was a lot of violence and bloodshed but I never knew why things were happening. Never knew why the main character’s goal was. He was just there.

If you give me some recommendations, I’ll give King another shot.

[The Valkyrie]

Last night I had patient files to update. Took them home, sat down with my iPad, and spent 6 hours riding chapter 2 of my story.

Ended up rushing through the patient files at work.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I've written an unpublished autobiographical novel, some essays, some poetry, a hundred or so songs with lyrics to the music, and am currently at work on a thriller that addresses the theme of the overweening security state.

It would be fun to start an AF writers' group. When I lived elsewhere, I went to a group every week, and I loved it. Here, people are way snobbier about their groups and you practically have to be a Pulitzer winner to get in.

I agree with Chad: talking about writing can be detrimental; if you have a specific purpose, however, it can be extremely productive.

Now that I'm thinking about it: would you guys participate in a writers' group subforum if I petitioned for it? The way I see it is a dedicated thread to each member's piece(s) where we can comment and critique.

I would certainly participate.

[Athene]

What did you read by Stephen King? He's got an a pretty extensive body of work. I would agree that some of more recent stuff is pretty cruddy....they can't all be hits! He's still one of my favorite writers. The guy is a master when it comes to short fiction, in my opinion anyway.
Stephen King offers a great deal of insight into what makes a good writer in Stephen King On Writing.

I don’t remember the title off the top of my head. It was a novel that opens with this guy tracking another guy. After several scenes King still had not gotten around to telling me why he was tracking the other guy. He enters a town and kills everybody after the spiritual woman accuses him of killing the Crimson King.  There was a lot of violence and bloodshed but I never knew why things were happening. Never knew why the main character’s goal was. He was just there.

If you give me some recommendations, I’ll give King another shot.

Oh dear. That sounds like part of the Dark Tower/Gunslinger series. I tried to read a couple of those and found them unreadable.

My favorite King novel is It. IMO, that novel really exhibits his niche for character development. He also manages to transition back and forth, from past to present in It flawlessly. It is a brilliantly written novel, quite possibly one of the best I've ever read.


If you're looking to read a short story, he has written several collections. Nightshift is good, and includes Children of the Corn.
Or you could try 2010's Full Dark, No Stars if you enjoy reading novellas. 

[Thumpalumpacus]

The Stand as well has some beautiful character development. The scene where Frannie breaks the news of her unmarried pregnancy to her shrewish grandmother is simply brilliant, it really gets to the core of both those characters in prose that is at once deep and touching, and still not weighed down with bullshit or purple.

It is a great novel for exactly the reasons Thena posits -- by contrasting past and present, it demonstrates how we adults come to have our feet of clay, and still how we retain our inner youth. It's very insightful.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I think so.

As an aside, I love the Nighthawks avatar. Hopper's one of my favorite painters, and I've cut the guy with his back turned for an avater that I use often enough.

/derail

[Alex K]

Last night I had patient files to update.  Took them home, sat down with my iPad, and spent 6 hours riding chapter 2 of my story.

Ended up rushing through the patient files at work.

As they say, clean patient files are a sign of a wasted life

[Alex K]

Exactly! I did that all the time with my last nonfiction thing. I had to shorten ithe almost finished manuscript by 50% because it had to be a short crash course format limited to 100k characters, and since it is a terribly painful process, I was always like, ok, these paragraphs here go in the next book! Whether it ever really does happen is not clear, but simply deleting two hours of hard work? I don't think so!

How do you even do that—count 100k characters? Microsoft Word doesn't do that.  I guess you just see how many words fit on a page and multiply it by an average of 5 characters per word.

The publisher hath provided a template with a character counting button. But I believe Word has it integrated with the word counting feature?...