Review: Stephen King – On Writing

As you might expect from Stephen King, this book is very readable. It’s part memoir, part thoughts on writing, part chip on shoulder about snippy critics who think he’s too popular (very small chip. A chipette. And he acknowledges it too, so fair play to him).

He gives background on his writing career and puts it into context. For example The Shining centres around an alcoholic writer who ends up destroying himself and losing the love of his family.

It was written at the height of his alcoholism and cocaine addiction – no, I had no idea either – as was Misery. Though he didn’t realise it at the time, now he sees it as no coincidence that the self-absorbed writer in that book is crippled by his uber-fan.

I don’t think this counts as a spoiler. Does it?

When it comes to writing Mr King has some strong feelings about adverbs, adjectives and the passive tense, which can be summarised as Don’t do them.

He likes a linear story.

His ideas all start with ‘what if’ and go from there, but move from situational to character led in the drafting. He thinks the books he has actively plotted are less good than the ones in which he let situations develop.

He drafts once without looking backwards, puts it in a drawer for 6 weeks and then thoroughly redrafts.

When it comes to description he puts in enough to create a connection with the reader but not so much the reader has nothing left to do. He uses the example of a room with a table. On the table is a rabbit in a cage. The rabbit has the number 8 painted on its back. He isn’t to going to describe the table or the cage, he’ll leave that to the reader.

I tend to skim read descriptions so this suits me as a reader and a writer.

The other thing that resonated was YOU HAVE TO PUT THE WORK IN.

He says it more emphatically than that.

He does 6 hours a day. He says it’s what he likes doing, so that’s fine with him. He says if you need permission to indulge yourself, there it is. Go for it. This chimes well with every other published writer I’ve ever read, though they all have their own ways of doing the actual work.

Full disclosure: I like him as a writer. The Shining and it’s follow up Dr Sleep are excellent. I hated Tommyknockers and could leave that one about the snow globe around the town. Ah, you know. That one.

His short stories are really well crafted, by the way. I read them last year to get a sense of what to do on my MA and some of them are still with me.

In summary – worth a read if you are a writer to remind you why you do what you do and to keep on doing it and for anyone else to find out a bit more about the mind that created so many modern classics.