Stephen King Quotes

If you re-read your work, you can find on re-reading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing.

The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat.

There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.

You can certainly shorten things and tighten things, we tightened up Jon's walk to Mance Rayder's tent. That was something that got tightened up a little bit because I had shot the hell out of that.

One great aim of revision is to cut out. In the exuberance of composition it is natural to throw in - as one does in speaking - a number of small words that add nothing to meaning but keep up the flow and rhythm of thought. In writing, not only does this surplusage not add to meaning, it subtracts from it. Read and revise, reread and revise, keeping reading and revising until your text seems adequate to your thought.

Rewriting is a large part of the whole job. And get rid of stuff that's not working. Just pare it down until it's a beautiful thing you can hand in, probably late, to your editor.

Be prepared to fall out of love with your words. I'm still too verbose at times.

My first draft is always way too long; my books start out with delusions of 'War and Peace' - and must be gently disabused. My editor is brilliant at taking me to the point where I do all the necessary cutting on my own. I like to say she's a midwife rather than a surgeon.

Most of my work consisted of crossing out. Crossing out was the secret of all good writing.

You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length.

Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

Accepting that part of the process of writing is deleting a lot of what you write is soothing, at least to me.

The lessons learned in journalism also apply. Writing for NPR has taught me to cut a piece in half and then in half again - without losing the essence. Apply that to the swollen prose of a bulky novel and you might reveal a beautiful work.

When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.

Rewriting is when writing really gets to be fun. . . . In baseball you only get three swings and you're out. In rewriting, you get almost as many swings as you want and you know, sooner or later, you'll hit the ball.

When you write - explode - fly apart - disintegrate! Then give time enough to think, cut, rework, and rewrite.

I can't understand how anyone can write without rewriting everything over and over again.

Only when you have completed a novel, or a story, can you return to the beginning and revise or rewrite.

Though I revise constantly as I write, I will usually revise much of the work again after I've reached the ending.

With writing, we have second chances.

I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft.

You have to be willing to throw [writing] stuff away and replace it.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Rewrite formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%.

My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language. . . . Maybe I was only then becoming aware of the weight, the inertia, the opacity of the world--qualities that stick to the writing from the start, unless one finds some way of evading them.