Toolbox

Quick tips from Stephen King's Toolbox:

I. Vocabulary

• One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones.
• Try to write plain and direct. Remember that the basic rule of vocabulary is use the first word that comes to your mind if it is appropriate and colorful.

II. Grammar

• Check out "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk and Warriner's English Grammar and Composition.
• Simple sentences (take any noun, put it with any verb and make a short sentence) provide a path you can follow when you fear getting lost in the tangles of rhetoric - all those restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses, those modifying phrases, those appositives and compound-complex sentences.
• Avoid the passive tense. Instead of "The meeting will be held at seven o'clock", write The meeting's at seven".
• Another example: Instead of "My first kiss will always be recalled by me as how my romance with Shayna was begun", write "My romance with Shayna began with our first kiss. I'll never forget it".
• Another one: "The writer threw the rope, not The rope was thrown by the writer".

• The adverb is not your friend. With adverbs, the writer usually tells us he or she is afraid he/she isn't expressing himself/herself clearly, that he or she is not getting the point or the picture across.
• Example: Instead of "«Put it down!» he shouted menacingly.", just write "«Put it down!» he shouted".
• Some writers try to evade the no-adverb rule by shooting the attribution verb full of steroids. By using, for example, 'grated' instead of 'said'. Just don't do this.

III. Elements of style

• Easy books contain lots of short paragraphs - including dialogue paragraphs which may only be a word or two long - and lots of white space. Hard books, ones full of ideas, narration, or description, have a stouter look. A packed look. 
• Paragraphs are almost as important for how they look as for what they say; they are maps of intent.
• In expository prose, paragraphs can (and should) be neat and utilitarian. The ideal expository graf contains a topic sentence follwed by others which explain or amplify the first.
• Topic-sentence-followed-by-support-and-description insist that the writer organize his/her thoughts, and it also provide good insurance against wandering away from the topic.
• The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story... to make him/her forget, whenever possible, that he/she is reading a story at all.
• The Paragraph is a marvellous and flexible instrument that can be a single word long or run on for pages. You must learn to use it well if you are to write well. What this means is lots of practice; you have to lear the beat.