Third Step to Writing Creatively: De-cluttering, Stephen King’s Secret Weapon 英文創作第三招：史蒂芬‧金的祕密武器「清除雜物」

Now you have the draft of a story, and your job is half done. The next crucial step is editing. Stephen King, a best-selling writer of our time, generously shares with us his secrets to success in his book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. In a word, Stephen King’s secret weapon is de-cluttering.

At a young age, Stephen King met John Gould, editor of a local newspaper, who taught him the most important lesson about editing. Gould edited King’s story by removing words and phrases, and making sentences more concise:

“I only took out the bad parts, you know,” Gould said. “Most of it’s pretty good.”
…

“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.”

—Stephen King, On Writing (New York: Pocket, 2002), 47.

The valuable lesson is, when editing a draft, instead of adding more stuff, it is better to remove stuff, to cut down the text, to de-clutter the story.

To come up with an interesting story, feel free to write a lot in your first draft. When you rewrite the draft, feel free to cut it down by taking out unnecessary words and phrases, and by simplifying sentences.

現在您已經寫好故事的草稿，工作也就完成一半了。接下來的重要工作就是編輯。當代暢銷作家史帝芬‧金(Stephen King)在《談寫作》(On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft) 一書中慷慨與我們分享寫作成功的祕密。簡單來說，史帝芬．金的祕密武器就是「清除雜物」。

年輕時，史帝芬．金認識了當地報紙編輯約翰．果德 (John Gould)。果德教史帝芬‧金有關編輯重要的一課。果德修改史帝芬‧金的故事的方式是將字詞刪除，將句子簡化：


「你知道，我只是將不好的部份刪掉，」果德說。「大部分都非常好。」
…
「當你寫故事時，你是在告訴自己一個故事，」他說。「而當你修改時，主要的工作是把所有不屬於故事的部份刪除。」

—Stephen King, On Writing (New York: Pocket, 2002), 47.


這重要的一課是說，修改草稿時，並非加上新的東西，而是要刪，將草稿修短，將故事中雜物消除。

要寫出有趣的故事，在草稿中盡情多寫。而當您編輯草稿時，盡情修剪，把多餘的字詞刪除，並把句子簡化。