“Never
use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used
to seeing in print.”
—George Orwell
I've
considered that advice this past week as I've been reformatting some
curriculum for the writer's group I work for part time.
In
a lesson on writing style, the course advises:
“Good
writers try to get out of the way of their own messages. They don't
try to impress with beautiful words, nice turns of phrase, or fancy
sentences that draw attention to their writing ability. … If a
sentence draws attention to itself or to the writer, it has to go.”
“Kill
your darlings,” Stephen King says, “kill your darlings, even when
it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your
darlings.”
It's
a fine balance—avoiding cliched expressions and finding fresh
metaphors that communicate powerfully, but also subtly. This past
week I've been re-reading
Stephen King's massive novel 11/22/63—taking
the time to appreciate some of the nuances of his craft.
Here
are some of his well-turned phrases I discovered on my second
reading:
● In
small towns certain names seem to sprout like dandelions on a lawn in
June. (p 126)
● .
. . ordered a shore dinner, which came with clams and a lobster
roughly the size of an outboard motor. (pp 126-127)
● .
. . the color of water beneath a sky from which snow will soon fall.
(p 152)
● .
. . flooded the room with enough fluorescent light to take out an
appendix by. (p241)
● .
. . the fall colors began to bloom—first timid yellow, then orange,
then blazing strumpet red as autumn burned away another Maine summer.
(p 270)
● .
. . long autumn afternoons, most hazy and warm. Dusty gilded light
slanting down through the trees. At light, a quiet so vast it seemed
almost to reverberate. (p 270)
● .
. . staring . . . with his mouth slightly hung open. It was the
expression of a farmer who sees dinosaurs cropping grass in his north
forty. (p 325)
● It
was more than a smile; his face was transformed with the happiness
that's reserved for those who are finally allowed to reach all the
way up. (p 328)
These phrases must not have been his darlings, for which
I'm grateful. They're certainly not ones I'm used to seeing in
print—or especially in anyone's first draft.
6 comments:
I haven't read any Stephen King (thought he was strictly horror), so I'm impressed by his poetic language. I like the dinosaur sentence. And the dandelion one. You're so right, though--you don't want a phrase that will jar the reader from the flow of the book.
Other than his great book on the craft of writing, this is the first of his titles for me also.
This is a fun post. I’m hereby vowing to avoid all clichéd expressions like the plague.
Once those phrases were fresh as a daisy, but now they're old hat.
Wow! Those are great. I've never read anything of his but On Writing, either. I saw Carrie when I was teen and I swore I'd never read one of his books. I hate horror.
But everyone tells me to read The Stand. one of these days I will, I suppose. Those lines of his are very nice.
King's "On Writing" contains one of my favorite comparisons (though it may violate the principle of not calling undue attention to itself): "as perky as a rat in liverwurst."
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