Stephen King

3 blogs that flog, deconstruct or explain the choices fiction writers and editors make

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Vintage postcard: Soldiers Field & Field Museum at the Chicago lakefront.

Miss those fiction workshop critiques of other writers’ work? Maybe? I remember having a lot of time to doodle in MFA workshops, especially when the conversations turned contentious. Then, moments of constructive feedback would connect to my own writing and lead to furious notetaking.

Reminiscent of the best graduate school critique sessions, the following three blog series offer insights into the craft of fiction writing. We have the added knowledge that whatever worked (or not) in the stories has resulted in publication.

Flog a Pro: Would You Pay to Turn the Page of This Bestseller?

In monthly posts on Writer Unboxed, Ray Rhamey provides a novel’s first 17 lines and asks “Would you pay good money to read the rest of the chapter?” And, by extension, would you be willing to risk money and time to read the book, especially if you were a busy literary agent?

After the novel’s opening lines, Rhamey shares his verdict, explains his reasoning, and polls blog readers for their verdicts and comments. Reader comments, along with Rhamey’s own, offer useful perspectives into storytelling choices and their consequences. The series has examined books by Elin Hilderbrand, Kristin Hannah, Stephen King, and John Grisham, among others. The outcomes can be surprising, especially when the writing of a well-known novelist doesn’t conform to commonly held writing advice. (Note: The opening of Stephen King’s most recent novel didn’t fare as well as you might think.)

Ray Rhamey offers the opportunity for writers to receive similar feedback on their works in progress through his Flogging the Quill blog. Rhamey is the author of five nonfiction books, including Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling, and four novels in genres such as political thrillers and contemporary fantasy.

Let’s Deconstruct a Story

“Let’s Deconstruct a Story: A Podcast for the Story Nerds” is a series of podcasts and blog posts that include author interviews conducted by Kelly Fordon, who teaches writing in the Detroit area and has published two short story collections and a poetry collection.

August’s post featured an interview with Susan Perabo about her story “This Is Not That Story,” which appeared in The Sun in March 2006. Perabo, whose most recent book is They Run the Way They Do, ended the interview by saying, “I love getting into the choices and the questions that only deep reading and deep thinking can get you to. I think you’re doing a great service for writers and for students of writing, and that’s all of us, right?” 

As with all critique sessions, you should read the story first, and Fordon provides links to the texts under discussion. Her posts often go beyond the basics. For example, in a deconstruction of the story “Creve Coeur” by Jacob M. Appel, Fordon created a word cloud from the adjectives Appel used. It’s telling that the words “dark” and gray” stand out, as do the words “indifferent” and “happy.”

NOTE: Beyond deconstructing someone else’s story, creating a word cloud for your own work can be a useful editing and revision tool for exploring a story’s tone and the ideas or themes being explored.

“I’m basically offering these workshops on ‘Let’s Deconstruct a Story’ for my own gratification because I feel like I learn so much from studying the stories of other writers,” says Fordon at the beginning of her work with Appel’s short story. “Really delving into them. Seeing how they work, the mechanics, so I can get some more tools for my own toolbox.”

(Thank you to Erika Dreifus and her “Practicing Writer” blog for bringing Kelly Fordon’s work to my attention.)

Why We Chose It

The Kenyon Review’s blog includes the occasional feature “Why We Chose It” written by the literary magazine’s fiction and nonfiction editors. Posts in the series link to a current selection from the Kenyon Review so that you can read the text being discussed. For veterans of lit-mag rejections, the posts offer insight into what drew an editor to a particular story.

In a recent “Why We Chose It” post, the Kenyon Review’s Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky focuses on the short story “Caduceus” by Perry Lopez, which appeared in the magazine’s July/August 2021 issue. Kenyon Review is published six times a year at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.

Do your own writing first: Motivation and productivity

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Vintage postcard: Golden Temple of Jehol, Chicago World’s Fair, 1933.

“Pay yourself first.” This is common advice in employer 401K sign-up meetings and other financial planning-type sessions. They say: Save money for your future, your education, your first house, your retirement. Use automatic deductions so you never see the money as income. Watch your savings grow.

Similar advice is useful for writers. In other words, “Do your own writing first.” Instead of jumping onto social media or the daily news alerts or the work your employer has assigned you, do a bit of your own writing. Your benchmark here doesn’t need to be big.

You’ll be in good company. The American Masters documentary “Flannery,” which aired recently on PBS, noted Southern Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor’s slow, meticulous writing and editing that led to the publication of two novels, 32 short stories, and more. Comparisons were made to Gustave Flaubert of Madame Bovary fame who wrote a paragraph a day, as well as to Virgil, author of the Aeneid, who wrote a line a day or three lines, depending on your source.

When writing for yourself first, your daily time investment doesn’t need to be big. To start, maybe 20 minutes a day will do. Or even 200 words. Others might set their bar at hours of writing or thousands of words, but the key here is to make the process automatic. Regular daily attention to writing projects—even 20 minutes, a sentence, a paragraph, or more—may not seem like much, but it adds up.

When you don’t attend to your writing in a sustained manner, you may be shocked by how much time passes between writing sessions:

  • How did 10 days pass? I swore I did something on this last week. Well, I guess that would be 10 days.
  • How can it be a month, six months, a year, two years, four years, since I worked on this? I’ve been thinking about it forever.

That “thinking about it” can be the problem. In our minds our projects come together smoothly. They make sense. It’s only when you put in time with the actual words that the beautiful piece of writing you had in your mind betrays you. Writing is messy work that requires deep thought. Once you write about what you thought, there are deeper, murkier levels that need your attention. They need your attention in writing.

Maybe that’s another bit of advice we can use: “Get it in writing.” Get your ideas, your thoughts, your inspirations in writing. Work with them on a concrete level—word by word, line by line.

I encourage you to start your day with a bit of writing, even if it is only a few minutes before you log on to daily life. If your mornings are hectic, maybe you can find time at lunch or dinner or just before you go to sleep.

A daily writing practice will keep projects moving forward. They’ll grow. You won’t have to refresh your memory each time you start to work on them. That “thinking about it” will move forward to more advanced elements. For me, daily practice means I can keep several projects going at a time: before starting my day job, after lunch, after dinner, and more, if needed.

Daily practice can include editing, research, and marketing—whatever you need to move toward your goals. That’s why I work with a time goal instead of a words-per-day or pages-per-day goal.

I remember when wearing seatbelts regularly was a novel idea in my family. Then, my mother started having us put on seatbelts every time we got into the car. She said that after a month, it would seem natural. Few of us can imagine not buckling on a seatbelt these days, and that same habit-forming aspect is what we’re going for with daily writing.

If you write a sentence, if you write a paragraph, if you write 10 pages a day like Stephen King (see Stephen King’s On Writing), the feeling you’re going for is this: When you haven’t written for yourself first, something feels off about your day.

Stop thinking about those projects and start writing. Start with a reasonable goal. You can always build, but write for yourself first. Make the process automatic. Put it in writing. Watch your projects develop and grow.

Note: The 20th anniversary edition of Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft was published in June 2020. Even if you’ve read his book before, including King’s 10-page/2,000-word daily writing goal referenced above, the book is worth re-reading.