I’ve always loved Stephen King, even when I knew better. I read It. Even the whole set of Richard Bachman books. The English teacher-y side of me has always tried to tell the rest of me to cut it out, but it wasn’t very successful. I don’t even dig horror that much, but the parts of King I liked were the characters. They felt real and had inner lives that I bought into. The descriptions felt crisp without being overwritten. It was reading that had an effortless quality to it. I recommend it to my students all the time.
So, how can I use King to teach writing. What can we learn from him. In his book on writing called On Writing (natch), he tells this story.
[Gould] started in on the feature piece with a large
black pen and taught me all I ever needed to know about my craft. I
wish I still had the piece – it deserves to be framed, editorial
corrections and all – but I can remember pretty well how it looked when he had finished with it. Here’s an example:
Last night, in the well-loved gymnasium of Lisbon High School,
partisans and Jay Hills fans alike were stunned by an athletic
performance unequaled in school history: Bob Ransom, known as “Bullet”
Bob for both his size and accuracy, scored thirty-seven points. He did
it with grace and speed … and he did it with an odd courtesy as well,
committing only two personal fouls in his knight-like quest for a
record which has eluded Lisbon thinclads since 1953….
(after edit marks)
Last night, in the Lisbon High School gymnasium, partisans and Jay
Hills fans alike were stunned by an athletic performance unequaled in
school history: Bob Ransom scored thirty-seven points. He did it with
grace and speed … and he did it with an odd courtesy as well,
committing only two personal fouls in his quest for a record which has
eluded Lisbon’s basketball team since 1953….
When Gould finished marking up my copy in the manner I have
indicated above, he looked up and must have seen something on my face.
I think he must have thought it was horror, but it was not: it was
revelation.
“I only took out the bad parts, you know,” he said. “Most of it’s pretty good.”
“I know,” I said, meaning both things: yes, most of it was good, and
yes, he had only taken out the bad parts. “I won’t do it again.”
“If that’s true,” he said, “you’ll never have to work again. You can
do this for a living.” Then he threw back his head and laughed.
And he was right; I am doing this for a living, and as long as I can keep on, I don’t expect ever to have to work again.
I love that. And the best part of it is that it’s not so obvious to a non-writer why the second part is better. Students can learn a lot from combing through the changes and realizing why the 2nd version is better. The Tom Wolfe shot at F. Scott is relevant here. Sometimes we rock because of what we refrained from putting it in rather than from what might have been shoveled onto the page.
Still, with kids it’s really only half the issue. Some kids are constantly overwriting and use way more words than is necessary: the prose is clogged with weasely words and extra doodads that should be shunted off to the recycle bin. But other kids write small. They have very few words, little description, not a whole lot of detail, and suffer from a deep lack of something. These kids are harder to reach for me.
I want to tell them to live harder and put more in. Go crazy. Read Howl. Make mistakes. Write badly…as badly as humanly possible. It seems much more pitiable to me to be neither a putter-inner nor a taker-outer but a not have anything in at all-er…How do we help kids make more?
