What do you do when every “how to write a book” guide leaves you more confused than when you started? In this episode of Escape From Duda’El, I break down the two lessons from Stephen King’s On Writing that actually got my novel finished.
Using a VPN and seeing an error?
Click here to open and watch directly on YouTube.
Video Transcript
Hey, I’m TJ Culler, founder of The Author Spot.
In the first installment of my Escape From Duda’El series, we looked at the backstory — the ideas that eventually became my newest novel.
Today I want to talk about the early days of actually writing it. The struggles. The breakthroughs. The part nobody warns you about.
Before I learned how to find order in all the ideas cluttering my head, I read books. Lots of books on how to write a book. And all they did was confuse me more.
One of them told me to break my story into sections. A section where everything goes wrong. Another where the hero tries to solve the problem. A third where everything falls apart even worse than before. And finally, a section where it all gets resolved.
WHAT? That’s not a blueprint. That was confusion stacked on top of confusion.
Oh, hell no. That didn’t help at all.
Then one day I read Stephen King’s memoir, On Writing. And from that book, I took away two lessons that changed everything.
Now — some of you are expecting me to talk about pantsing. Writing without an outline, the way King does it. He’s proudly a super-pantser.
That’s not me. I’m the polar opposite of a pantser. My redemption came from a piece of software called Scapple. But that’s a story for another video. Today, it’s the two lessons.
Lesson One is “shut the door.”
I love the idiom, “shut the front door.” Makes me laugh every time I hear it. But King means something a little different. Shutting the door means shutting out distraction.
For me, the door was my office, at five o’clock in the morning. I’d fix a steaming cup of Cuban espresso, American style, and stare at the screen until I mind-melded with the story. At five a.m., there are no texts. No calls. Nothing to disturb you.
Five to seven, every morning. That was my closed door. And if I’m honest, I never would have finished that novel without that discipline.
(Spot T-Shirt Promo)
Lesson two is more abstract.
King explained that every reader sees a different story. As the author, my job is to find the equilibrium between what’s on the page and what’s in the reader’s mind. How much detail do I give? How much do I trust the reader to fill in?
In short — don’t fear the blanks.
There’s an illustration I think came from On Writing — or maybe I made it up along the way. Either way, picture an Italian restaurant.
What comes to mind? For me — cozy tables, red and white checkered table cloths. Wine bottles holding candles. Garlic hanging from the rafters. Vines pinned along the ceiling beams. Classic Italian music on the speakers. A bar with shelves of liquor, and behind the bar, a mirror.
Now here’s the question that changed my writing: how much of that do I actually need to put on the page? How much does the reader already see without me spelling it out?
I could just write: he entered the restaurant, and as he crossed the dining room, he caught his own reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Simplistic — but you get the idea.
King’s lesson was to use just enough detail to keep the reader on track with the story arc, guiding them forward and trusting them to fill in the rest.
What a concept. It changed my writing. The environment became a supporting actor. It became scaffolding — a structure to support the action and keep the story moving.
And once I learned that, my writing got immersive. Gripping, actually.
So here’s where that leaves us.
Shut the door — find a real time and a real place where the world can’t reach you, and defend it like your novel depends on it. Because it does.
And trust the reader — you don’t have to build the whole restaurant. Point at the mirror behind the bar, and let the reader furnish the rest.
Two lessons. Both, in their own way, about taking things away rather than piling more on.
Next time I’ll talk about how I solved the mind-clutter problem with Scapple.
‘Till then, as we always say at The Author Spot. Go On and Write—We’ll Handle the Tech.
 |
TJ Culler is an author, reader, and an adventurist. She loves working at The Author Spot as an Author Platform Specialist. Her hobbies include hiking, camping, and driving her Jeep in the great outdoors. After publishing her first book in 2017, TJ discovered what a daunting task an author platform really was. She now dedicates her time to helping authors who struggle with technology. |
Recent Comments