Have you read On Writing by King?

>Yeah thanks stevey, because you're the master at that (i say that ironically, because his dialog is usually one of his weak points).

His dialogue is fine when you realize that his only point of reference for humanity are unironic male boomers. All his characters are just variations on boomers, or projections of the boomer psyche.

Every time I bother with King I come back to the realization that he had no friends as a kid, and has romanticized the idea of friendship and friendly banter so much that he thinks it is a stand-in for any amount of plot or substance. Fuck me freddy that gets annoying and does not get me my chucks.

Most of his writing, and especially his humor, comes across as the sort of thing the weird kid in 4th grade who nobody talked to who sat in the back corner of the room eating boogers and chasing flies would say or thinks is funny.

It's okay if you're a total beginner but most of it is advice for writing soulless fast food lit like his own. He spends a ton of time decrying inspiration and tells the reader if they ever want to be a real writer they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Emphasizing that writing is real work is important of course but he just fully embraces an attitude that gives us hundreds of Tom Clancy and John Green bestsellers and very few really worthwhile pieces of literature. Being realistic about the labor involved with writing is not mutually exclusive with being inspired or having goals other than being published.

What exactly is wrong with "purple prose"? I am convinced this is just the despotism of plebeian taste.

It's just a tip given to new writers because they probably don't know how to write descriptive, poetic and complex prose well. It can be unintentionally hilarious.

>The sun becomes "that round orb of day" (as opposed, I expect, to those square orbs you see about so much lately); maple syrup is "Springtide's liquid love gift from the heart of the maple wood"; the forest, by a stroke of inspiration, turns out to be "a cathedral of stately grandeur and never ceasing wonder and awe" (argue, if you will, for "cloying quicksand" as the phrase superb, but me, I'll hold out for "stately grandeur"); the ocean - you'll never guess - is "a broad expanse of sparkling silver" [...] It is difficult to say whether Mrs. McPherson is happier in her crackling exclamations or in her bead-curtain-and-chenille-fringe style. Presumably the lady is happy in both manners. That would make her two up on me.
>— Dorothy Parker reviewing Aimee Semple McPherson's autobiography

It's usually an attempt by a very bad writer to make up for the fact that he has nothing at all to write about by making the the prose overly complex and flourishing, while generally totally failing at even that.

>don’t write purple prose
But what if I like purple prose? This just seems like an excuse to not think about what you’re putting on paper.

It is the cult of efficiency erasing style and aesthetics. Absolutely bizarre the way art is being judged by these standards but shouldn't be surprising considering contemporary culture has nothing but contempt for art and masks unbounded consumerist culture with ironic detachment and vague populism about accessibility.

Nice quads.

I see your point but who else is or has brought new ideas to the genre?

>I see your point but who else is or has brought new ideas to the genre?

After Lovecraft? Ramsay Campbell did a good job introducing modern Nabokov-esque prose into the genre. Robert Aickman's brand of psychological horror is very singular. Thomas Harris might have been the first to introduce classic Gothic elements into the crime genre. Thomas Ligotti took a lot from Lovecraft, but his emphasis on the philosophy of horror has been unmatched since Lovecraft. Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire breathed life in the vampire subgenre, and is more nuanced and introspective than its reputation makes it seem.

You can (and should) debate that I've overrated the originality of these authors, and I probably am, but they're all still more original than Stephen King.

400 pages into IT. Get to the fucking clown already. I don't care how much all the other kids worship your self-insert character.

Reading Cujo recently, and fuck me every single chapter about the boy who owned the dog and his mom on their trip to Connecticut could've been cut out with ease. They add nothing to the story, and their actions contribute nothing accept for at the beginning when they decide to ignore that their dog might be sick. They're literally just their so King can ramble about parenthood as though he wasn't already doing that with the other characters.

All white males.

Eh, i think expansion on prose is what the genre needs nowadays. I love the B-movie, paperbacks-from-hell scene and i collect a lot of that sorta stuff. But the prose is lacking in a lot. Thats where progression is needed IMO.

Have you read anyth contemp horror lit? "The Troop" by Nick Cutter was my last and it really gripped me. Very good book.

Irrelevant. Nobody's keeping non white non males from writing. Take your social justice back to your social media circle jerk.

Read the whole post, stupid.

I think purple prose in horror became something that writers reject because of how easily mocked and parodied the old Gothic novels were for it, at least in part. There were other reasons for the mockery too, such as the genre convention and cliches, but the prose I think helped fuel this.

Someone of talent needs to nut up and spew good purple prose all over the contemporary horror scene (unless there already is, I don't read a ton of contemp horror).

The last interesting "purple prose" I read was Slob by Rex Miller but isnt contemporary. Whilst its not a perfect book, I mean its a splatterpunk book about a rapey, murderous, absolute unit, the stream of conscious was handled well.

But I agree. We need someone capable.

>Someone of talent needs to nut up and spew good purple prose all over the contemporary horror scene (unless there already is, I don't read a ton of contemp horror).

There is.

>b-but he's a big meanie antinatalist :((((

Good horror doesn't care if your feelings are hurt, pleb.

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Ligotti already has his place. We're on about continuing that tradition.

>(and geniuses above them)
and pray tell, who does Pleb King classify as a genius? Stan Lee?

Don't you invoke the name of the one above the one above all.

Ligotti's stories are not scary though. They're just arcane and strange.

>taking diet advice from a fatass

if you need to read a manual on writing you were never going to write a classic anyway. You're not a chef, you're a burger flipper and this book is a manual for burger flipping

>and pray tell, who does Pleb King classify as a genius?
He mentions Shakespeare, Dickens and Hemingway, if I remember correctly.

>and I agree with his stark observation that there are bad writers, competent writers, good writers and great writers (and geniuses above them) and the best you can do, with hard work you can get from competent to good but that's about it.
How could he possibly know that? That's seems like such a pessimistic take.

>Hemingway

No King hates Hemingway.

>By writing horror novels, you entered one of the least respected genres of fiction.
>Yeah. It’s one of the genres that live across the tracks in the literary community, but what could I do? That’s where I was drawn. I love D.H. Lawrence. And James Dickey’s poetry, Émile Zola, Steinbeck...Fitzgerald, not so much. Hemingway, not at all. Hemingway sucks, basically. If people like that, terrific. But if I set out to write that way, what would’ve come out would’ve been hollow and lifeless because it wasn’t me. And I have to say this: To a degree, I have elevated the horror genre.

>How could he possibly know that?
I think it speaks to the general view of talent. There is only so much you can accomplish by honing a skill. You reach a peak, a mastery. But talent brings you further. Genius farther still, but talent and genius are genetic - you either have them or you don't.
I do think that with enough practice and concentrated work people can elevate their writing skill (clearer sentences, better phrasing, improved pacing and more flow) but if that initial spark of genius or talent isn't there, you can't attain it.
You can learn to describe something extremely clearly and correctly - but you can't really learn to describe it beautifully, or uniquely.

quads of truth

Great book. The concept that stuck with me the most is that you need talent, practice, and passion to write well. He admits he doesn't have a lot of talent but makes up for it with more practice. I think this applies to the arts in general.

Should have listened to his own advice LOL

This post looks like it was written by a Markov chain

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King didn't do anything in regards to genre elevation that hadn't already been begun by Ira Levin, William Peter Blatty, and Shirley Jackson.

That picture kind of illustrates another problem I have with King and that's his treatment of his characters. There's an inconsistent mix of Dickensian humanitarianism, and cynical mean spirited caricatures (Dickens created caricatures, but you could tell he loved them as humans, and they were written with more exuberance than King's). Vonnegut has the same problem too. They want to be loving and bratty at the same time. It's like being trying to be honest about your fears and making a tasteless mother-in-law joke right after. It just makes everything you write seem phony.

It's usually the same type of caricature that King treat this way too. Crude red necks who turn out to be virulently racist. Domineering Christian women who are probably also racist and/or homophobic. Both mostly exist to be killed off.

>people are inconsistent and don't really know what they want
Wow who'd have thunk