"Long live the King" hailed Entertainment Weekly upon the publication of Stephen King's On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer's craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King's advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported near-fatal accident in 1999 -- and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery. Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower and entertain everyone who reads it -- fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told.
Short and snappy as it is, Stephen King's On Writing really contains two books: a fondly sardonic autobiography and a tough-love lesson for aspiring novelists. The memoir is terrific stuff, a vivid description of how a writer grew out of a misbehaving kid. You're right there with the young author as he's tormented by poison ivy, gas-passing babysitters, uptight schoolmarms, and a laundry job nastier than Jack London's. It's a ripping yarn that casts a sharp light on his fiction. This was a child who dug Yvette Vickers from Attack of the Giant Leeches, not Sandra Dee. "I wanted monsters that ate whole cities, radioactive corpses that came out of the ocean and ate surfers, and girls in black bras who looked like trailer trash." But massive reading on all literary levels was a craving just as crucial, and soon King was the published author of "I Was a Teen-Age Graverobber." As a young adult raising a family in a trailer, King started a story inspired by his stint as a janitor cleaning a high-school girls locker room. He crumpled it up, but his writer wife retrieved it from the trash, and using her advice about the girl milieu and his own memories of two reviled teenage classmates who died young, he came up with Carrie. King gives us lots of revelations about his life and work. The kidnapper character in Misery, the mind-possessing monsters in The Tommyknockers, and the haunting of the blocked writer in The Shining symbolized his cocaine and booze addiction (overcome thanks to his wife's intervention, which he describes). "There's one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing."
King also evokes his college days and his recovery from the van crash that nearly killed him, but the focus is always on what it all means to the craft. He gives you a whole writer's "tool kit": a reading list, writing assignments, a corrected story, and nuts-and-bolts advice on dollars and cents, plot and character, the basic building block of the paragraph, and literary models. He shows what you can learn from H.P. Lovecraft's arcane vocabulary, Hemingway's leanness, Grisham's authenticity, Richard Dooling's artful obscenity, Jonathan Kellerman's sentence fragments. He explains why Hart's War is a great story marred by a tin ear for dialogue, and how Elmore Leonard's Be Cool could be the antidote.
King isn't just a writer, he's a true teacher. --Tim Appelo
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Amazing:
A well written autobiography and interests and entertains AND a helpful guide to writing. A must read for ALL writers.
A dangerous book for aspiring writers...:
I have to admit, it has been no less than 5 years since I read this book, BUT I remember the effect it had on me at the time. I was struggling greatly and found myself unable to sit down and write. Steven King told me that I should quit. He told me that if I couldn't write a thousand words every day, I couldn't be a writer. It has been in the back of my mind ever since. I had never thought of King as a great writer, but I respected both his output and his success (I still do.) He, however, has no business... more info
A Good Book For New Writers:
I read this book just for fun. I am not a writer, but I have considered giving it a shot. King gives plenty of advice to the aspiring writer, pulling examples from his life and his experiences in the literary world. The author gives general advice and guidelines as well as specific point by point instruction. I have not put in the time that King recommends, but I imagine anyone who followed the advice in this book would be able to write something at least marginally decent. It was a good read,... more info
Most fun writers aide out there:
Getting advice and hearing the life story of such a good writer. How could that not be the best way to learn?
I got the audio book where he reads the book himself.
Oh, and other than fun, the advice is excellent.
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