“When you write you tell yourself a story. When you rewrite you take out everything that is NOT the story.”

— Stephen King

Variant: When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.
Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "When you write you tell yourself a story. When you rewrite you take out everything that is NOT the story." by Stephen King?

Stephen King 733

American author 1947

Related quotes

“Tell, rather than write, because I have nothing to write with and writing is in any case forbidden. But if it’s a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don’t tell a story only to yourself. There’s always someone else.
Even when there is no one.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Chapter 7 (pp. 39-40)
Source: The Handmaid's Tale

“When you hide another story in a story, that’s the story I am telling the children.”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

Quoted in an interview, "Sendak on Sendak," Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia (2007/2008)

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Variant: You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better.
Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“When you write a short story … you had better know the ending first.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

The Casebook of the Black Widowers (1980), p. 177
General sources
Context: When you write a short story... you had better know the ending first. The end of a story is only the end to the reader. To the writer, it's the beginning. If you don't know exactly where you're going every minute you're writing, you'll never get there — or anywhere.

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

“Tell them stories. They need the truth. You must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories.”

Philip Pullman book The Amber Spyglass

Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 32 : Morning
Context: One of the ghosts — an old woman — beckoned, urging her to come close.
Then she spoke, and Mary heard her say:
"Tell them stories. They need the truth. You must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories."
That was all, and then she was gone. It was one of those moments when we suddenly recall a dream that we’ve unaccountably forgotten, and back in a flood comes all the emotion we felt in our sleep. It was the dream she’d tried to describe to Atal, the night picture; but as Mary tried to find it again, it dissolved and drifted apart, just as these presences did in the open air. The dream was gone.
All that was left was the sweetness of that feeling, and the injunction to tell them stories.