How does Stephen King edit his books?
According to Stephen King in his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, when he finishes writing a first draft, he puts the story in a drawer for six weeks before pulling it out to edit. Putting some distance between you and your story allows you to come back with fresh eyes and a clear mind.
In King's beloved novel, On Writing, he says he writes approximately 6 days a week (even on holidays). He says he usually aims to produce at least 6 pages a day.
Stephen King once said, “To write is human, to edit is divine.” Writing and editing go hand-in-hand. You cannot have one without the other. Like a novel or short story, every blog post, page of web content, and even social media post must be edited before it is published.
The time it takes to edit a book varies from book-to-book, but it would be best to allow at least one calendar month for the developmental edit and then additional time for any rewrites and research that might be required.
How Many Times Should You Edit? We recommend that authors do each editing phase one time. If you do them right, one time each is enough. Now, it is important to note: we recommend this because the authors who work directly with us go from these three rounds of edits to then send their manuscript to us.
Not even the much-admired JK Rowling can write alone. She has beta readers and, most importantly, an editor or even several — just like every other major novel in print — to help her deliver books that are engaging and satisfying from start to finish, with a minimum of problems readers will be asked to overlook.
While a slow reader will only get through 30 pages per hour, the average person can read around 40 pages per hour. Statistics show that quick readers can even go through 50 or 60 pages in one hour.
If you're a fast reader, you may read at closer to 400 words per minute. This means reading 300 pages will take you around 6.3 hours.
King told the The Atlantic he listens to, “Metallica, Anthrax… There's a band called the Living Things that I like a lot. Very loud group.” Bestselling author Mark Manson shares King's habit, as he told us in an interview, “I need to write with music. Loud and intense music.
Every video maker includes the 321 rule. This means that you should always keep three copies of every single thing that you make in two different places. You have one goal – to tell your audience a great story with your video. This can be achieved if you simply edit, edit and edit your content until perfection.
What are the 6 rules of editing?
Murch's six rules on editing consist of Emotion, Story, Rhythm, Eye trace, Two- dimensional Plane of Screen, and Three-dimensional Space of Action, which all have different values in order of importance for the cut.
Yes, editing is a skill.
Editing involves skills related to carefully reviewing material before it is published and suggesting or making changes to correct or improve it. This involves skills such as reading comprehension, perspective, effective storytelling, grammar, and attention to detail.
In general, the developmental edit for an average-length book should take about one month. However, there are things that can slow down the process.
But keep in mind that quality editing takes time. A meticulous line editor will be able to edit approximately six pages of your manuscript an hour. For a 300-page book, that is fifty hours of editing. Developmental editing can take longer.
There is no simple answer to this question, but over the years at BubleCow we have come to understand that an experienced editor working with a well-written novel can expect to edit between 5 and 10,000 words per day. This means that for a novel of 60,000 words will take somewhere between one and two weeks to complete.
Why does it take so long? Editing is a thorough process – that is what you pay for and expect. An editor will go through the entire book at least twice, sometimes three or four times, looking at different things each time.
- First, Separate Writing From Revising. ...
- Read Through Your Manuscript. ...
- Start With the Big Picture. ...
- Hone Each Scene. ...
- Root Out Weasel or Crutch Words. ...
- Conduct a Final Run-Through. ...
- Conduct a Final Proofread.
- Quantity trumps quality.
- You may be holding yourself back from your best work.
- It gets easier.
- Don't become emotionally attached to your work.
- Starting anew is a sign of success.
While Miss Rowling has spoken before of her battle with depression, it is the first time she has admitted that she contemplated killing herself.
3. Rewriting is just as essential. You would think after five years, J.K. Rowling would just be able to dive right in and write the whole of the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, without much rewriting. She rewrote the opening chapter of her first book a total of fifteen times, however.
Can you read 10 pages in a day?
Answer: the average reader takes about 16.7 minutes to read 10 pages. You might take more or less time than 16.7 minutes to read 10 pages, depending on your reading speed and the difficulty of your text. The average person's reading speed is around 300 words per minute (WPM).
Josh Alfred claimed to read 1,679 pages in two seconds in a hilarious skit. A skit by Nigerian comedian Josh Alfred (popularly known as Josh2Funny) in which he claims to be the fastest reader in the world is going viral.
A normal rate for learning is 100-200 wpm, and for comprehension it is 200-400 wpm. Speed reading is normally done at a rate of around 400-700 wpm. Anything above 500-600 wpm means sacrificing comprehension, although this varies from person to person.
The average novel ranges between 60,000 and 100,000 words total. If your reading speed is right in the middle of the pack at 300 words per minute, and you're reading a middle-of-the-pack novel at around 80,000 words, you'll be able to knock it out in around five hours or less.”
Most people can finish reading 20 pages within 30 minutes. And if you do it first thing in the morning, then the urgencies of the day don't get in the way. Finally, 20 pages seems small but adds up fast. It's a great average speed.
Answer: the average reader takes about 1.4 hours to read 50 pages. You might take more or less time than 1.4 hours to read 50 pages, depending on your reading speed and the difficulty of your text. The average person's reading speed is around 300 words per minute (WPM).
Out of all the characters in Stephen King's works, the scariest is, without a doubt, Pennywise from It. Because Pennywise isn't given a tragic backstory in the films, all viewers know is that the killer clown is a paranormal entity who resides in drains and lures in children.
Stephen King discusses Cujo in On Writing, referring to it as a novel he "barely remembers writing at all." King wrote the book during the height of his struggle with alcohol addiction. King goes on to say he likes the book and wishes he could remember enjoying the good parts as he put them on the page.
Stephen King, the undisputed master of the horror genre, an award-winning novelist who has enjoyed unprecedented success when transitioning his work into cinema, has named his ten favourite novels which range from the likes of George Orwell, J.R.R. Tolkien, Katherine Anne Porter and more.
Copyediting involves the "five Cs": making the article clear, correct, concise, comprehensible, and consistent.
What are the five basic rules of editing?
- Make a good first impression. ...
- Write to express, not to impress. ...
- Be specific – it won't kill you. ...
- Reign over pesky punctuation and grim grammar. ...
- If in doubt, leave it out.
- DO: Give yourself some time between finishing a draft of your story and picking it back up to edit. ...
- Don't: Be afraid of the process. ...
- Do: Be willing to cut, cut, cut. ...
- Don't: Push yourself to edit too quickly or work through too much in a single editing session. ...
- Do: Celebrate the process.
Plan more and edit less
That's the golden rule of editing. Before you start writing a post, spend a few minutes planning.
Copy editing, line editing, substantive editing, mechanical editing, and developmental editing are all different methods of editing a written document.
Most editors work in offices, whether onsite with their employer or from a remote location. The work can be stressful because editors often have tight deadlines.
Having exceptionally well video editing skills can be considered a talent because basic video editing (cutting, trimming, adding) can be learned in a day or two.
You have to read every single word to edit.
Even if we think we are reading something carefully, there is a tendency to read quickly and read the piece as a whole. An editor has to change that habit. An editor must look at each individual word that comprises a piece as well as consider the piece as a whole.
Second, to do a thorough job of copyediting an academic manuscript, copyeditors edit from 2 to 5 pages an hour. A page is defined as 250 words, which is what a one-inch-margin, double-spaced, twelve-point-font page usually comes out to.
Beyond the editorial review, when it comes to editing, a good rule of thumb—whether it's a round of content editing or copyediting—is two weeks for every 50,000 words.
THE AVERAGE READER can read a book at 200 words per minute (WPM). That's about 4.5 hours to read a 200-page book (55,000 words). By increasing your reading speed to 600 words/ minute, you could read a 200-page book in 90 minutes.
How fast can I finish a 500 page book?
Answer: the average reader takes about 13.9 hours to read 500 pages. You might take more or less time than 13.9 hours to read 500 pages, depending on your reading speed and the difficulty of your text. The average person's reading speed is around 300 words per minute (WPM).
It can take me anywhere from 20 to 80 hours to edit an 80,000-word manuscript (depending on whether the manuscript requires line editing or copyediting). How long it takes me will depend on how good the writing was to begin with, and how much time, effort, and knowledge the author has spent revising and self-editing.
How fast is a good proofreader? It depends on the copy. Factors include the style and size of font, the presence of tables, charts, or graphs, and the complexity of subject matter. Expert estimates of proofreading speeds range from 2,000 to 4,000 words per hour, or 8 to 16 pages per hour.
So, a 100,000-word manuscript would likely take 90-100 hours for the first two phases of the edit and an additional 10-20 hours for the final phase, after your review.
How much an editor costs, as with any self-publishing service, depends on a lot of factors. That said, for copyediting/proofreading, you're generally looking at $1,000-$3,000 per book. For developmental editing — the higher level stuff — you'll be looking at $5,000-$10,000 per book.
Answer: the average reader takes about 11.1 hours to read 400 pages. You might take more or less time than 11.1 hours to read 400 pages, depending on your reading speed and the difficulty of your text. The average person's reading speed is around 300 words per minute (WPM).
- Tell the truth. ...
- Don't use big words when small ones work. ...
- Use single-sentence paragraphs. ...
- Write for your Ideal Reader. ...
- Read a lot. ...
- Write one word at a time. ...
- Write every day. ...
- Write for the joy of it.
Interesting fact: Stephen King uses MS Word writing software to draft his book manuscripts. He uses Final Draft to write screenplays. How much does MS Word cost?
King says he doesn't plot or prepare his books at all. He simply starts with a situation, eg: “two children lost in the woods find something sticking out of the ground”. He then writes on, letting the story develop. The lack of advance preparation means he can write quickly, producing a novel in around three months.
King prefers to write on paper with a fountain pen.
Out of the many interesting facts about Stephen King, we really like that he prefers to use pen and paper instead of a computer when he writes.
How does Stephen King write so quickly?
King replied: “Here's the thing: There are books and there are books.” He explained that he writes for three or four hours each day and tries to produce a half dozen “fairly clean” pages in that time. “So if the manuscript is, say, 360 pages long, that's basically two months' work — but that's assuming it goes well.
Identify your ideal reader.
King's ideal reader (whom he also refers to as his “first reader”) is his wife Tabitha. He writes with her in mind and seeks her early feedback on books. Picturing our ideal reader makes our writing more accessible and practical. I've used this strategy with past stories to great effect.
Pros: Made specifically for writing books. While Microsoft Word gets more and more difficult to use the bigger your document gets, Scrivener gets more and more useful as your document grows. That's mainly because of its “binder feature,” which is a simple but game-changing advance for word processors.
While acting legends such as Jack Nicholson have delivered unforgettable performances in Stephen King adaptation, Stephen King has a different presence. The author selected Michael Clarke Duncan's work in The Green Mile as his all-time favourite and claimed that Duncan towered over the rest with that performance.
He didn't feel like working, but a voice in his head -- yes, Stephen King, like his characters, hears voices -- told him to. If there is an opposite of writer's block, King has it.
Stephen King: 2000 Words
In his memoir, King says it's best to write a minimum of 2000 words a day to avoid “the smooch of death.” “Read and write four to six hours a day. If you cannot find the time for that, you can't expect to become a good writer.”
JK Rowling (Net worth: $1 billion)
The controversial British author and movie producer is well-known for the Harry Potter series, making her one of the wealthiest private British citizens.
While using a personal computer or tablet is the preferred method of writing for most professional writers, many novelists choose to handwrite at different creative stages of the creative writing process.
Writing by hand gives you a better understanding of what you are writing. It is according to a study carried out two American researchers, Daniel Oppenheimer and Paul Mueller. The study showed that students who take notes by writing them using pen and paper had a better understanding of the subject than those who type.
In this frame from the film, it is clear she is using Microsoft Word. (Take note of the chapter document icon in the row at the bottom of the screen.) While most accounts tell of Rowling hand-writing the earlier books and using a typewriter for others, by November 2006 she had graduated to a Windows laptop and Word.