Author:Stephen King
I remember reading this excellent book when it first appeared in 2000. Now to mark its 25th anniversary, it’s been reprinted in this very stylish gilt embossed edition, complete with a brief new foreword from the man himself. It’s a combination of biography and tips for aspiring writers, providing a look at the basic tools of the trade for would be authors. Alongside this are some quite poignant memories from the author’s childhood, through the struggles of his early years as an up and coming writer and on to his near fatal accident in 1999. It’s a very readable book despite the rather serious title, sharing King’s own experiences not just in the world of writing but also in life itself, and he manages to achieve this is an entertaining and witty way, while simultaneously providing plenty of level headed hard won practical advice. Part memoir and part masterclass, this is a book that’s well worth seeking out as it provides a rare insight into the creative process, and gives a revealing view of the writer’s craft through the bad days and hard times to the sunny uplands of a completed work, all grounded in vivid memories of his own life, illustrating the inextricable link between writing and living.
Length of Read:Medium
Might appeal to people who enjoyed…
Although it first appeared a quarter of a century ago, the advice it provides is as relevant today as it was back then, so if you’re an aspiring writer or even just a fan of Stephen King’s work then you’ll find this an enjoyable and fascinating read.
One thing you’ve learned
This book is that rare thing, a successful combination of an inspiring life story and an instruction manual that’s couched in layman friendly language.
Not saying I agree with every one of his “Rules” but this is most definitely the best primer for aspiring writers ever.
I was sure I read this when it came out, but the 2000 date seems a little late, coming after my earlier passion and infatuation with the writer had waned. On checking it appears I am confusing it with another non-fiction discussion book he wrote, Danse Macabre. So I may have to invest in this, my first new King book since Insomnia (1994)
Second hand copies of the original easily found at a fiver or less …
It was given to me as a gift back in 2001. I’ve read it a couple of times now and it’s easily the best guide to writing that I’ve come across.
One thing you’ve learned
A lot.
Nice review of a terrific book. King is far and away my favourite author, and I’ve always thought of this as a great insight into his process and his rise from impoverished would-be writer to best-seller.
No, if you read this you won’t necessarily sell gazillions of books, but it’s definitely full of inspirational advice.
Looks interesting.
Looks like a beautiful edition! Thankfully I’m not the kind of book collector who will buy books I already own just to get a special edition that looks good (and then they never read that edition, so it will stay pristine…) But I am the kind of book lover who will buy copies of favourite books if I find them in a charity shop, so I can force them upon friends and family to read. And if that edition is nicer or in better shape than the one I own, I may, possibly, keep the nice one and give away my old one…
Thanks for the tip off. I didn’t know about this, and will definitely buy it, even though I own the original hardback and have the kindle version. I love special editions like this, but apart from that it’s just a brilliant book, which is up there with the best on creative writing.
His frank description of hitting the bottle and then the gak, was pretty grim. But it’s a brilliant, brilliant manual for writing. I’ve twice gifted it to people who dismissed King as a schlock horror merchant devoid of talent – they both loved it.
They sound like the literary snob version of music snobs who say things like “Phil Collins can’t play drums.”
You don’t have to like King to like this, and I quote, “brilliant” book.
For what it’s worth, my opinion is that “King can’t write an ending” is a tired old cliche spouted by people who don’t like his books and style. He’s written so many there’s bound to be some clunkers in there and, yes, some endings do fall away into disappointment but in his prime, King is right up there with any, and I mean any, writer ever.
Can you name one that does have an ending? I’m willing to give it a go. I find his style fairly pedestrian, but if I actively disliked his work I would have read more than two. I’m a primitive soul and like to find out ‘what happened’ and I’m honestly saying that’s why I’ve come away disappointed from the King books I’ve read.
Give The Stand a go. Not only is it one of his best, but it has a real, and quite surprising, ending. It is very long, mind, if you’re a relative King newbie.
As a shorter alternative, what about The Dead Zone? Again, it wraps up nicely.
Want a more horror-based story with a decent ending? Salem’s Lot.
Etc.
As a long-time fan, I understand the criticism about *some* of his endings (the finale of Under The Dome is really, really weak, especially after such an interesting build-up, and a couple of others just sort of dribble away), but I think that on the whole, the vast majority work well.
I’ll look out for the Dead Zone in chazzas. The last one I remember reading was Christine, which I think is one of his more celebrated early books. I enjoyed the central teen relationship but as I recall if finished with a shrug of ‘and then the car crashed into the wall’ with no explanation of how it came to be possessed in the first place.
@Gatz Maybe possessed like this?
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0058830/
My Mother the Car
Also – while yes, his long form novels can sag, in his short story collections from the 1970s and 1980s he”s all about concision and tight plotting. Some memorable stories to be found there. Then there are the novellas – the Running Man, The Long Walk, Shawshank etc
Thanks. Short stories might be the way in for me.
I’ll chuck The Shining and Salem’s Lot into the mix. Both vintage King.
“…in his prime, King is right up there with any, and I mean any, writer ever.”
Bloody hell, that is a big statement.
I’ve read The Stand, IT, Salem’s Lot and Pet Sematary. I really enjoyed all of them, although they all had the well advertised third act problems, to a greater or lesser extent. I have to confess that while they’re all excellent genre fiction (particularly the first third of The Stand), none of them quite had me placing King in the kind of company you’re talking about above.
Which ones should I be going for next if I want to do a mini Summer of King?
The Shining, Christine, From a Buick 8.
Saying that, if you think Salem’s Lot, IT and The Stand don’t really do it for you then I’m barking up that Redwood tree over there …
Cheers! I shall investigate.
The above books all did it for me, I really enjoyed them. But there’s really liking a book and then there’s the best writers ever. On which note, the question of who those writers would actually be is probably well worth a thread of its own.
Start away! I’ll put King alongside….. Austen, Fitzgerald and Anthony Powell
Pretty strong start!
There are a few writers whose prose I’ve read and thought I couldn’t even imagine being able to write so beautifully if I practiced my entire life.
And then there are the ones in the tier above even that, where I’ve put the book down and wondered how a human being could possibly have produced something so inspired. Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Nabokov, Twain, Dickens, Proust. Their brilliance simply does not compute
I’d put King in the top tier because his prose usually grabs me immediately, and keeps me wanting to know what happens next. To me, that really is the art of an expert storyteller.
A case in point is Doctor Sleep, the sequel to The Shining.
After just one or two paragraphs, I thought, “Damn, he’s got me again. How does he do it?” From those sentences alone, I couldn’t put it down.
Are there writers with a deeper or more descriptive/poetic vocabulary, or whatever criteria one uses to describe “good writing”? Maybe. Is there another author that immediately makes me think “I must know how this story ends!”? No.
I’m a Philistine so I can fess up – I think Dickens is a hack. Runs for cover
Can’t stand him either, for the most part.
Dickens is a windbag but far from a hack. King is a fine purveyor of tales. He has a fecund imagination and he writes well enough to convey his stories entertaingly. He too is guilty of bloat but without the excuse for the bloat that causes it in Dickens.
He was a hack in the sense that he wrote for weekly magazines to earn a living – a denizen of Grub Street if you like. But he was also really quite good. That’s my considered opinion.
He had a similar problem to King in a way because he wrote from week to week and then had to finish somehow. He did, however, have an astonish grasp of characters, and wonderfully memorable characters at that. Orwell wrote of Dickens, ‘rotten architecture but wonderful gargoyles’, which I think is on the money.
Serendipitously, Bleak House is one of Stephen King’s top 10 favourite books.
https://www.openculture.com/2025/07/stephen-kings-top-10-favorite-books.html
I’ve read several off his books but my problem is that every one finishes, ‘And then it just stopped. The End’. I can’t be the only one who wants an explanation for whatever the big bad was.
Diverging slightly, anyone who fancies a go at writing short stories this is an excellent book, and a fun read.
https://amzn.eu/d/82WCLoy
You all know he ripped off Saucy, right?
Ever seen Stephen and Saucy in the same room together?
Do you know: I’d almost forgotten about that!
@Captain Darling
Continuing down here as can’t be doing with the narrow chat.
You make a fair point; that credit has to be given for the quality of storytelling, and King is clearly a master storyteller (some of his thirds acts aside).
I guess the discussion probably comes down to the importance of actual prose. To be considered one of the greatest writers of all time, do you have to be able to write beautifully, or is it enough to be great at story and character, with your prose good enough to support those elements, without being stellar (as in King’s case)?
It’s a question I’ve changed my personal view on in recent years. I used to take the view that a novel was only as good as its ideas, its story and the information it was imparting. Now, I’m not so sure; there are a ton of books that aren’t exactly page turners but which are so beautiful in their own right as to really give you pause. You don’t read In Search Of Lost Time frantically turning the page to find out what happened next, but it’s still a pretty wonderful book.
I find the debate on Dickens above interesting, because he’s the established “great” writer to whom King seems most similar; he’s chiefly remembered for his well drawn characters, his ability to bring a scene to life and his social commentary. But he could write a bit too. I agree about the bloat; he’s still a writer I admire more than love.
All of which is to say, I think that wanting to know what happens next is an important aspect of writing, but I’m not convinced it’s the most important. Particularly as it gives a massive head start to authors in certain genres. I do agree that King is exceptional in this area though, from what I’ve read so far anyway.
I guess the other important thing to mention is that ultimately it’s all bollocks, isn’t it? These attempts to work out who was better than who? If you enjoy reading them and they’ve expanded your personal view of the world then that’s more than enough. It is fun to play literary top trumps now and then though.
This is pretty much my thoughts. The ability to spin an engaging yarn is undoubtedly a gift but it doesn’t automatically follow that it’s being executed in beautiful prose. I find King’s writing engaging enough to keep me turning the pages but I don’t find myself re-reading sentences or passages of writing purely because they are exquisitely written. It’s a case of different pricks for different kicks. Sometimes I want to eat steak other times I want hamburger. I enjoy both depending upon my mood. The books I love the most tend to tick both boxes. They have enthralling storytelling and are beautifully written. As always in matters of taste it’s subjective.
Love SK, but I would describe him as more of a captivating storyteller (think Dumas, Verne, etc) rather than a fastidious stylist (e.g. Henry James).
Nothing wrong with that, even SK himself famously describes his books as being the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.
As regarding the greatest writer ever suggestions above – Nabokov (Russian) and Joseph Conrad (Polish) would both have to get extra credits for writing their greatest works in a second language
I have to say that never in my wildest dreams would I describe Henry James as a captivating storyteller.
True, but some of his novels have been successfully adapted for TV and film. Beneath all of the wordiness, there are often an interesting story and characters, unfortunately obscured by his style.
He does seem to take pleasure in writing in an oblique way, almost as if he had a target of words to reach for a serial chapter, although I don’t think he ever did.
Off the back of this thread I went away and read On Writing, Misery and The Body, none of which I’d ever encountered previously.
I really enjoyed On Writing, but it was The Body with which I found myself most taken. Obviously, it’s the source material for a favourite movie, and I was surprised by how little Rob Reiner changed and how much of King’s dialogue leaps straight from stage to screen. So much of the magic is right there.
It made me think some more about King’s disputed status as a literary great (per the above). The Body is the first non-horror King I’ve read, and it really does feel like a work that could easily have found its way to the minor end of the canon; studied in secondary schools, a coming of age story to rank alongside Huck Finn and Catcher In The Rye. The Tween Heart of Darkness.
It also contains a handful of really memorable passages; the opening page or so is rather wonderful, and I found myself quite taken with “speech destroys the functions of love”. That’s a statement I’ll be thinking about for a while.
On the other hand, for all that I enjoyed it I couldn’t help thinking that the movie is better. The performances from the four leads are pitch perfect, the various set pieces are brought thoroughly to life and Kiefer Sutherland’s menace transcends anything on the page. Or maybe I just saw the movie at the right age, I dunno.
Anyway, I’ll call it a score draw. Better prose that I’d remembered, less reliance on genre as a crutch. Maybe this is great writing after all, although I’d still struggle to file it alongside Tolstoy. I will read some more though.
The bit in The Body about crossing the railway bridge is outstanding writing too. The whole story evokes perfectly kids’ summer adventures with no adults around.
King’s last book “Never Flinch” is one of his worst, following two of his best (Billy Summers and Holly). So it goes.
That reminds me, I have a copy of Holly that I should get around to reading sometime soon. Thanks for jogging my memory.
Now I love King’s books, and probably own all of them (although I still have a few I haven’t gotten around to reading yet), I think he’s a brilliant writer of a certain style, but I would not claim that he should win the Nobel Prize for Fiction any time soon. I don’t see any need to compare him, favourably or unfavourably , to other writers outside of his chosen style and genre.
In fact, I think his novels would be unreadable if he had written them in the style of Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy or anyone else dealing in the kind of prose that makes you go back and re-read lines you just read, because the words in themselves give you more pleasure than any clever plot could ever do. If you set out to write a horror novel, fantasy, thrillers or crime novels and go at it like you’re writing lit.fic, nobody will enjoy it.
But for the genres he writes in, King is absolutely one of the very best, unless you pick one of them up and expect to read Dostoyevsky.
But I have to protest some of the recommendations above – Christine is possibly his worst written novel, saved only by a good plot (which is why it’s one of few KIng stories where I prefer the film, which is crazy talk in most other cases…)
My list of recommendations would be (in chronological order):
The Shining, The Dead Zone, Cujo, Insomnia, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Duma Key, 11/22/63, Revival, The Outsider.
Most of his short story collections are great, the old ones but also the latest one; You Like It Darker, was IMO as good as any of those first collections.
I like many more of his novels too, but they’re more of deep dives into weirder territories.
Never been a fan of horror movies so I remember vividly reading Salem’s Lot in bed and shouting ” Stop! What are you doing? Don’t go in there! There’s vampires!”
I tried a few King books many years ago. He is a great storyteller, but everything was just so long and over written. It was an ordeal to get to the end of a book.
This ⬆️
Just to add a lovely 50th anniversary edition of his epic vampire tale Salem’s Lot has just been published with a new foreword by Joe Hill.