underthecity said:
I agree, but it might be understood that writing books can teach you the basics and what to do right and what editors see as "wrong."
If you never pick up a book about writing, you might not understand that you're not supposed to use excessive dialog tags, adverbs, sentences that start with "As he was walking down the hall," and other mistakes that most beginning writers make. After I finished Self Editing for Fiction Writers, I had to go remove all my "As he was walking down the hall" type sentences and many dialog tags that I thought were OK. I already understood the adverb issue and don't use them very often.
Books about writing teach the writer what is expected in a manuscript, universal things the pros all know, but the amateur hasn't yet learned.
However, the only way to really learn is to use the methods outlined in the books and go from there. IOW, you can't read a book about writing and become a writer. Use the books as a roadmap to develop your own style.
Those who don't will always end up in the slush pile. Those who do have a shot at being in the 3% that might get read by the editor.
allen
I don't know. Read enough how-to books, and you'll get several opinions on most of these things.
I think the best place to learn about dialogue tags, adverbs, and pretty much anything else of this nature, is from the novels you read. I think most beginning writers make such mistakes because they don't actually pay attention to the fiction they read, and until you start doing this, how-to books aren't going to be much help.
I may be biased on this because of my college experience, but for me, tearing apart a novel is a thousand times more useful than tearing apart a how-to book that tells you about the novel.
And I think it's actual novels you should use as a roadmap to develop your own style. Maybe the best thing King does in his how-to section is when he does tear apart the novels of some very good writers, rather than when he tells us his rule for writing. His rules owrk wonderfully for him, but I'd bet any amount of money he didn't get any of these rules from a how-to book.
In my opinion, a writer's autobiography is a far more useful roadmap than any writer's how-to book, especially for new writers. Ray Bradbury's book shows the sheer joy to be found in writing, and the work ethic needed to become a writer. King's book does much the same.
In the how-to section of King's book, he says some very valuable things, but like any how-to book, many of these things are only his opinion, and other, very good writers, do things another way.
The most valuable things to be find in King's how-to section are, I think, the simple ones.
1. Word hard. If you aren't willing to work hard, you will not succeed as a writer.
2. If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the tools to write.
Some how-to books probably can be of some value to some new writers, but I think it's tricky, and I think assuming any technical advice in any how-to book is correct is always a big mistake. Most of it is correct only if you want to write a novel that's like the ones that writers writes.
Before reading a how-to book, I think it's first necessary to read the novels that person has written. If you don't like them, you probably should not read the how-to book that tells you how to write one of them.
3. You must learn grammar and punctuation.
I think it's smart to read as many autobiographies of writers as possible. Autobiographies show you the road the writer took to get where he is, and it's the trip that makes a writer, not how many adverbs or "ly" words he uses. And it's amazing how few of these writers picked up a how-to book anywhere along the road. They may write them, but they don't read them.
It's usually true that adverbs are not your friends, and that too many "ly" words can read poorly, but another extrenmely valuable thing King says is that "It's all on the table, and you should use anything that improves teh quality of your writing and doesn't get in teh way of your story. If you like an alliterative phrase--the knights of nowhere battling the nabbobs of nullity--by all means throw it in and see how it looks on paper. If it seems to work, it can stay."
Editors do not have strokes when they see an adverb, and do not run screaming from the room when they see two "ly" words on the same page. That's minutia, and editors just aren't all that concerned with minutia. They're concerned with story and with character. Too much of anything is bad, but good writing is done through having a good ear, good storytelling sense, and good character sense, and every last rule out there needs to be cracked on some occasions, and shattered into a million pieces on other occasions.
My otehr really huge complaint with how-to books is that no matter how many of them you read, no one has yet seen your writing. King says he learned much of what he knows about writing when, as a teenager, he handed an article to a newspaper editor.
In fact, I think this article could probably replace 99% of what King says in his how-to section.
http://mikeshea.net/Everything_You_Need_to_Kn.html
I don't think anyone really learns to write well until they've had a story or two edited by a pro editor with a checkbook.
You must read a lot, and you must write a lot, and you must know grammar. There's no way to be a good writer without these things. But if you look at the novels that routinely hit the bestseller list, dearned few, if any, really follow the rules of any how to book. I just think it's wiser and faster to follow teh same road teh writer took to get where he is, rather than trying to follow technical advice he gives at the end of the road.
At the very least, before following anytechnical how-to advice that comes from such books, a new writer should pick up two or three or four of his favorite novels and see if those writers followed the same advice.
I don;t think how-to books are poison, I just think they can confuse a new writer at least as easily as they can help him. Read them, but don't believe them until you see whether or not the writers you love reading follow them.