How can I avoid to sound like a wannabe Stephen King?

Phoenix_Writer

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 17, 2018
Messages
114
Reaction score
4
Location
Germany
Hello Writing-Community,

I think to write good, realistic horror is very difficult.
I mean often you sound like a wannabe Stephen King. I often had this situation in my old class. And I don’t joke when I say those kids were between 12 and 14 years old. They wrote like “Hey, I saw ‘saw’ (with thirteen years) yesterday. Now I write a story like this movie.” Do you know now what I mean?
How can I avoid this sound-ridiculous-because-I-do-not-have-any-unique-ideas-situation? I said to you those kids were wannabe Stephen Kings.
Do you have any tips?

Bye,
Phoenix_Writer
 

ZachJPayne

Beware: #amQuerying
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 15, 2013
Messages
1,265
Reaction score
163
Age
33
Location
Warren, PA
Website
zachjpayne.com
If you're in love with a writer, and you read a lot of their work, your writing is going to start to sound like theirs. And that's fine.

And as you read others, you'll start to sound like them, and Stephen. And the more you read, the more your voice will develop as a mixing pot of all the writers you have read and the writers you have loved.

Trust the process.
 

Chris P

Likes metaphors mixed, not stirred
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 4, 2009
Messages
22,617
Reaction score
7,297
Location
Wash., D.C. area
When I was still new to writing, I could almost tell what I was reading at the time based on how my work sounded. With practice, I developed my own sound and today it's not such a problem. That said, I think all writing is imitative to one degree or another (otherwise there would be no such thing as genres) but it comes down to imitating certain tools at the right times and in the right way.
 

Curlz

cutsie-pie
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 5, 2016
Messages
2,213
Reaction score
382
Location
here
Don't write about killer clowns? ;) Not all "good, realistic horror" is Stephen King. Maybe you're not actually like S.K at all, you just think that if it's realistic horror it sounds similar (but it doesn't).
 

talktidy

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 14, 2014
Messages
896
Reaction score
86
Location
Fabulous Sweyn's Eye
I tuned into a few interviews on Youtube with J Michael Straczynski recently, where he was talking about the writing process. His advice? Write. Write lots. The more you write, the quicker a writer finds his/her own individual voice.
 

ThomasH

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 26, 2018
Messages
59
Reaction score
5
I think that writing more is definitely the answer to this question.
Even if your writing is derivative of your favorite author, over time your writing will show its distinction. After all, it's very unlikely that your mind works identically to another famous author.
And at the end of the day, you're writing the story that appears in your head, described the way you envision it.
 

MJLeverton

Registered
Joined
Mar 5, 2018
Messages
3
Reaction score
0
Location
Wellsburg, NY
I think the best way to avoid sounding like another author is to read widely. I am a true blue Stephen King fan, and sometimes my work sounds like his. The more you read you find nuances and pieces that go together with your own words. The best way is to keep on writing, even if you believe it sounds like King or it reads that way, try adding a new voice to the mix by reading something outside your chosen genre. It truly helps as all the voices you've read become this fine-tuned instrument that sings.

Just my opinion. :)
 

WriterJosh

Registered
Joined
Jan 27, 2014
Messages
18
Reaction score
0
It's very easy to fall into various King-ian traps when writing horror. Every horror fan reads him, and everyone thinks of his name first when they talk about horror lit. But the fact is that he's not the only only writer out there. I agree with MJLeverton, read more widely and your work will sound more varied. There are some very distinct
(King-ian traps)
writing quirks of the King, and one advantage to reading him is learning what those are, friends and neighbors. Oh, yes, indeed, they are very recognizable, can you say overused, and there are times when words or phrases are repeated, as you need those words and phrases repeated to emphasize a point
(repeated words or phrases)
and sometimes there's the stream of consciousness where starts writing a long run-on sentence that is supposed to communicated deep thoughts from the character's inner mind but it goes on for far too long and gets a big annoying with how it ambles n rambles and never really goes anywhere and it sometimes is overused because it doesn't really communicate anything except that King doesn't know what punctuation is but hey let's keep it going because isn't it charming and unique and it's how you know you're reading a King book ladies and gentlebeings, and we're just gonna keep this whole thing going until it runs completely out of steam which it did about three lines ago but now I'm entirely unable to stop and dear god are you still reading this you could be doing something productive right now.

I'm reading a few newer authors to the genre, and I recommend authors like J-P Buleau and Scott Thomas, who have very modern voices and might help you learn how to break out of routine of the masters.
 

Jan74

Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 10, 2017
Messages
1,072
Reaction score
136
Location
Canada
If you're in love with a writer, and you read a lot of their work, your writing is going to start to sound like theirs. And that's fine.

And as you read others, you'll start to sound like them, and Stephen. And the more you read, the more your voice will develop as a mixing pot of all the writers you have read and the writers you have loved.

Trust the process.

^^^ I like this.

Just keep writing and I agree diversify. John Saul, Dean Koontz and James Patterson are fantastic, but when it comes to horror King is the king. I'm writing romance, but I love horror and SK is amazing at character development and dialogue, he's good at everything, that's why he's so successful. However there are many authors in other genre's you can learn from. I'm a huge fan of Alice Hoffman but I don't even bother trying to write like her, I've tried and it sounds moronic and doesn't feel right. I may enjoy reading her but I will never write like her.
 

Doug Egan

Registered
Joined
Jun 30, 2018
Messages
24
Reaction score
3
Location
MidAtlantic, USA
You could do worse than to sound like an immitation of Stephen King. His recent work has been especially good, and his early work was good. I'm not as much of a fan of his work in the late eighties when he was battling with addictions.

King is great not because of his genre (he's written across several genres) but because he is a really good story teller. He catches the readers interest with his characters and situations. Aim to do the same.

I went through a period where I was trying to channel James Ellroy. That was a mess. Ellroy's writing is soooo distinctively stylized, I don't think anyone else could immitate it.
 

NateCrow

Registered
Joined
Jul 3, 2018
Messages
40
Reaction score
6
Location
Near those big waterfalls
Having influences is common in all the arts and even the greatest, most revered artists of all time have adopted traits from the work of others who've inspired them. From painting, to movies, to music and definitely in literature. There's nothing wrong with it.

As others have said, as you read more widely, you'll have an accordingly wide range of influences and these bits and pieces will come together to form your own unique style.

As for watching a movie and trying to duplicate it in your writing, it may not be a good formula for success in the immediate sense, but when you're just starting out, it could be a good exercise and a jumping off point to get into writing. In one of Stephen King's non-fiction books, he relates a story about how, as a child, he used to watch B-movies that were based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe and he would write them out as his own stories, not even aware of the original stories that the movies were based on.

If imitation is what it takes to get you started down the road of writing, then I don't see the harm in it. Besides your friends and family, nobody is going to be reading your first stories anyway.
 

Tristann

Purportedly hobbitish.
Registered
Joined
Jul 17, 2018
Messages
45
Reaction score
10
Location
London, UK
I think another way you can differentiate yourself is to write what's personal to you. What creeps you out? What gets your heart racing? How does it make you feel when you experience it?

Think of a particular event, for example, when you were walking down the road that time and felt like something was following you, what did it smell like? How did the streetlights reflect in that one puddle? Could you hear anything, or was it oddly quiet?

The situation might be cliché, but if the details come from you it can still feel different.
 

randi.lee

Certified Non-Genius
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 19, 2012
Messages
1,222
Reaction score
86
Location
New England, USA
Website
www.rlwrites.com
What MJ said above: read widely. If all you're reading is King, you're bound to write like King. I know it feels impossible to escape such a huge shadow cast in the genre, but you can do it. You know you can.

Also, avoid ending your book with Kingian conclusions, such as the revelation that the entire story was just some vivid nightmare a desk lamp had.
 

CalRazor

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 30, 2017
Messages
379
Reaction score
19
Read some Clive Barker.

Also, if you're often focusing on not sounding like Stephen King, you will probably find yourself sounding like him anyway.
 
Last edited:

MindfulInquirer

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Dec 13, 2018
Messages
64
Reaction score
5
I think inspiration and originality are both the same in that they are either there or they aren't. I mean that if you're an original writer, AND inspired by said writer (Stephen King), you're going to bring King to mind, but people will also note your originality. If both those things are there, they're just there, and it'll show anyways in your writing. Makes me think of how in films undercover special agents try their best to play a certain roll, but are found out eventually because they couldn't totally hide who they were and some detail gave them up. Same here, the originality will come out, if it's there to begin with.