Next up in my continuing series of paragraphs about writing that really had a big impact on me, here’s Stephen King from On Writing. Many of you I’m sure are familiar with this quote, but it definitely bears repeating:

   You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so. It’s hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written, but I know it’s true. If I had a nickel for every person who ever told me he/she wanted to become a writer but “didn’t have time to read,” I could buy myself a pretty good steak dinner. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.
   Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life. I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in … Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered anyway.

Here’s another little paragraph about writing that struck a chord with me, and that I’ve reread many times. This one’s not technically advice, but it kind of looks like advice if you squint. This is Gardner Dozois explaining the popularity of George R. R. Martin, from the introduction to the massive short story collection GRRM: A RRetrospective (later repackaged as Dreamsongs):

George has always been a richly romantic writer. Dry minimalism or the cooly ironic games of postmodernism so beloved by many modern writers and critics are not what you’re going to get when you open something by George R. R. Martin. What you’re going to get instead is a strongly-plotted story driven by emotional conflict and crafted by someone who’s a natural-born storyteller, a story that grabs you on the first page and refuses to let go. You’re going to get adventure, action, conflict, romance, and lust, vivid human emotion: obsessive, doomed love, stark, undying hatred, unexpected veins of rich humor … and something that’s rare even in science fiction and fantasy these days (let alone the mainstream) — a love of adventure for adventure’s sake, a delighting in the strange and colorful, bizarre plants and animals, exotic scenery, strange lands, strange customs, stranger people, backed by the inexhaustible desire to see what’s over the next hill, or waiting on the next world.

In the same vein as the Roger Zelazny quote I posted yesterday, here’s another of my favorite little bits of really common-sense, practical writing advice. It’s an excerpt from a letter that George R. R. Martin sent to his collaborator Lisa Tuttle, which she reprinted in her book Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction. On the issue of alien names he says:

“The best way to handle it, I think, is to avoid naming things gizzuks and smerps, and to run together real words and use them in context in such a way that they’re self-explanatory. Besides, human colonists would never name anything a gizzuk. Thusly I have stories that features windwolves and tree-spooks and rock-cats and plains devils and such.”

Some of the best writing advice I ever got I came across in Roger Zelazny’s essay “Constructing a Science Fiction Novel,” which appeared in his short story collection Frost & Fire. On the subject of describing characters he writes:

“How much can the mind take in at one gulp? See the character entirely but mention only three things, I decided. Then quit and get on with the story. If a fourth characteristic sneaks in easily, okay. But leave it at that intially. No more. Trust that other features will occur as needed, so long as you know. ‘He was a tall, red-faced kid with one shoulder lower than the other.’ Were he a tall, red-faced kid with bright blue eyes (or large-knuckled hands or storms of freckles upon his cheeks) with one shoulder lower than the other, he would actually go out of focus a bit rather than grow clearer in the mind’s eye. Too much detail creates sensory overload, impairing the reader’s ability to visualize.”

I was reminded of this advice while reading over this description of Abraham Van Helsing from Bram Stoker’s Dracula:

“A man of medium weight, strongly built, with his shoulders set back over a broad, deep chest and a neck well balanced on the trunk as the head is on the neck. The poise of the head strikes me at once as indicative of thought and power. The head is noble, well-sized, broad, and large behind the ears. The face, clean-shaven, shows a hard, square chin, a large resolute, mobile mouth, a good-sized nose, rather straight, but with quick, sensitive nostrils, that seem to broaden as the big bushy brows come down and the mouth tightens. The forehead is broad and fine, rising at first almost straight and then sloping back above two bumps or ridges wide apart, such a forehead that the reddish hair cannot possibly tumble over it, but falls naturally back and to the sides. Big, dark blue eyes are set widely apart, and are quick and tender or stern with the man’s moods.”

If you can read through that without zoning out, you must be on Adderall — and that’s leaving aside the issue of specific details that are just silly (sensitive nostrils?). If that description coheres for you into anything approximating a human being, your brain just does not work like mine does. All I see when I read that description is Mr. Potato Head.