2009年7月10日 星期五

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。

1 則留言:

  1. 嗯 ...我覺得這個步驟很重要,因為寫作的重點之一便是"去蕪存菁",讓讀者看到的都是精華的部分,這樣在閱讀整篇故事時,才不會由於一些不必要的贅詞而覺得故事不精彩。

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