By: Stephen King Publisher: Pocket Average Rating: Binding: Mass Market Paperback Label: Pocket Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 320 Publication Date: July 01, 2002
"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.
Amazon.com Review: 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
It's Stephen King. Very autobiographical introduction to the art of writing. Written by a contemporary master, this is very worthwhile for anyone interested in writing, or in how King does what he does. Like him, it's a bit quirky but worth every bit of effort reading it may demand.
Are you Serious? Published in 2000, the first part of On Writing is autobiographical, although the whole book is sprinkled liberally with facts from King's own life, pertaining to his childhood, long marriage to novelist Tabitha, struggles with drugs and alcohol, near-fatal accident, and career as a writer. The second half of the book is entitled On Writing and centers on how to write fiction (although much of it applies to other kinds of writing as well). With over 300 million copies of his novels sold, and many stories adapted for film and television, I think King is well qualified to write about writing.
Although King says that there's no magic formula for becoming a good writer, he offers solid, down-to-earth advice in an entertaining way. His friendly style and honesty drew me in as I discovered that On Writing is filled with practical advice. One thing King says, which shouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone who aspires to write, is to "read a lot and write a lot". By this King means four to six hours daily. That's a large portion of the day (or night, if you're more nocturnal). But a serious writer needs to have discipline and work at the craft.
King's book reinforced what I learned in school by emphasizing the basics. From the book, here are some ideas about what good writing is:
* Active and purposeful * Adverse to adverbs * Free of clichés and hackneyed phrases * Clear and concise (cut out extraneous words) * Courageous (take some risks) * Follows grammatical rules, but breaks a few rules once in a while * Honest, plain, and direct * Offers the right amount of description
(Mr. King, if I've left anything crucial off this list, please let me know.)
Read this book if you're serious about your writing. It may even count towards the daily requirement of four to six hours of reading and writing!
(From my book blog, Suko's Notebook.)
Spectacular The advice and insight provided in this book is invaluable. EVERY aspiring writer should read it. I've even bookmarked certain pages to refer back to while I finish up my manuscript. Glad I bought it!
P.S. This would make a great gift for someone interested in becoming an author.
Part Memoir, Part Writing Guide This off-the-cuff memoir and writing guide gives a history lesson about one of the world's most popular authors. If you are a fan, dive in and enjoy. For someone curious about the writing life, proceed with caution. King infuses this book with provocative language that would make a more conservative reader blush.
I was not a Stephen King fan until I read this book. It is a must-read for those who want to know the colorful story behind the man.
On Writing This is a cut to the chase, keep it simple book that is a valuable read for any aspiring writer. Author Stephen King shares a streamlined approach to writing that stems not only from his experience in the business, but from those gut instincts of storytelling that have made him so successful.
While King offers some tool box basics for being a successful writer, he emphasizes that first & foremost you must LOVE reading & you must love reading A LOT. King maintains that the knowledge gained through reading is the best tool in understanding what works in the writing world & in developing your own writing style. In addition, King is very adept at conveying writing concepts that might otherwise elude the writer. One such concept is the writer's ability to get the reader to see what they see. King describes a scene in which there is a rabbit in a cage that is sitting on a table. Several visual details are given regarding this scene, but there is one detail in particular that draws the reader's attention the most. It is therefore through this detail that a sense of telepathy is created between the writer and reader, and with this tool of "telepathy" the writer can continue to maneuver the minds of readers.
King also offers touching, unpretentious snapshots of his life starting from childhood all the way through the accident that put him at death's door in 1999. Through these snapshots we are able to witness firsthand the journey of a person who is "one of us" to a person who is a famous writer, a journey that doesn't come off as so impossible due to King's humble and honest relating of the events.
This book is a sort of writer's GPS system that provides a strong sense of direction via the most efficient route.
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