His book On Writing
In my opinion, It/a>
My other favorite of his is The Stand
Here’s an anecdote:
When I moved to the apartment I live in now, I was moving from a 5th floor walkup. Ouch. I hired movers. These three guys were unbelievable. Just monsters. Hauling my bed, my dresser, my bookcases – down 5 flights of stairs. And then, of course, there were my boxes of books. I had, probably, 20 boxes. 20 boxes of books. The guys looked at the stack of books with palpable despair on their faces. Nothing heavier than a box of books. So off they went, my friendly He-man action figures, carrying boxes down stairs, climbing back up, another box down, climbing back up … I was openly apologetic about my own obsessiveness. “I am so sorry about how many books I have …” I said at one point, as this big bulky red-headed dude with tattooes, hauled another box of books up onto his shoulder. His reply was, with a little puff of breath beforehand, “There BETTER be some Stephen King books in here.”
hahahahaha Like, if he was hauling poetry around, he would have been pissed. But Stephen King? That would be worth 20 trips up and down 5 flights.
Beautiful.
Other favorites? King fans out there?
I resisted reading King for a long time for no good reason. I find his plots are usually thin (but then I’m an outliner so there’s no surprise there), and he has certain tendancies that annoy me, but no one does characters better than King. There are few authors who can write a page turner like he can.
On Writing is a must read for anyone who considers putting pen to paper for purposes of fiction.
Is that a photo of the infamous Rock Bottom Remainders?
My favorite King anecdote is told in On Writing. His wife retrieved the beginning of a story from the trash and brought it to him saying it was good and wondering why he’d tossed it. He replied that he didn’t know how to write from the POV of a girl and the story wasn’t working. His wife said she’d help him where he needed it. That story was Carrie.
It’s also moving how his wife had to go to their neighbors to call him at work to let him know Carrie had been sold since they couldn’t afford their own phone. To celebrate the sale he went to the drug store to buy the most expensive thing he could find: a hair dryer.
scott – God, yeah. The story of how Carrie got sold, and where he was in his life at that point – just gives me chills!!!
I love Tabitha, too. I love how he writes about her.
Big time King fan.
I’m a fan of his short fiction more than his long stuff, but that stands to reason since I like short fiction as a form so much. The Mist and The Jaunt are my two favorites shorts from Mr. King.
With his longer stuff, The Stand is my favorite. Read it the first time my Freshman year in high school, when I was sick with the flu. I’ve read it a couple of times since, both times when sick with the flu.
I was lent The Shining by a friend in 8th grade, and read it in a night. My friend didn’t believe that I’d read it that quickly.
Gotta love the Dark Tower stuff, even if it did end clunkily.
On Writing is great. I probably need to sit down with it again. I’m needing a kick in the ass as far as my writing is concerned.
tommy –
The Mist is one of the only stories I’ve ever read where I literally could not sleep afterwards. I could. not. sleep.
I love Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, too.
Needful Things is my favorite.
I was working overnights as a grocery manager when I re-read it a couple of years ago.
It was a good story before. It went to a whole new level when I read it alone in the back room of a grocery store in the middle of the night.
The Body and Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption are both really good from Different Seasons.
When I used to work at the B. Dalton Bookseller in the Bangor Mall in ME, about fifteen years ago, he would come in every now and then – he and my manager were friends. I remember ringing up a bunch of books for him right around Christmas time – all hardcover newly published fiction, paid for with a very worn out American Express platinum card. He was wonderfully normal – we made snide remarks about the elevator music christmas carols being piped over the loudspeakers throughout the mall, and that was it. Just a nice little moment.
Oh and I have to say:
The book he did with Stewart O’Nan about the 2004 Red Sox is like CANDY!!!!!!!!!
Jayne – oh, a brush with greatness! I love that!
Candy – that’s the word. Loved that book. On Writing is wonderful too – I need to read it again.
The best thing about that brush with greatness was that it was so uneventful. It was just a normal thing for him to come in there and shop. In his jeans and plaid flannel shirt. Just one of the locals.
I had the Red Sox blues this week, so I re-read Faithful, and I got to thinking how I hadn’t read any King fiction in ages. I remember reading It many moons ago and thought about picking it up again. I think this post has just given me the little shove of encouragement that I needed :-)
On Writing sounds like it’s well worth a read as well.
Thanks one and all!
I think my favourites have been mentioned already..
Novels – The Shining.. the smell of oranges was a magical touch – The Stand Check – Christine too – although I dropped away around the time of Pet Sematary.
Short stories – The Mist.. definitely.
I’d also give an honourable mention to the Richard Bachman short novel The Long Walk.
Good call on The Long Walk, Pete. Forgot that one. I read it on a family vacation car ride. Liked it so much, I read it again on the ride back.
I have to go with The Shining (which both as a book and a movie literally scared the shit out of me) and Shawshank Redemption.
Damn. I haven’t read The Shining in years. Might have to pick it up again, eh??
iain – I think all of us had the Red Sox blues this week.
I am a huge fan of Stephen King, but not of his books. That is, I appreciate all he did for the horror genre (and genre writers in general), but I agree with a lot of Scott’s criticisms.
There are very few who can write about writing as well as King does. I love his Bachman stuff. His earlier horror books are readable, but nothing he did ever really grabbed me. His commentaries in Entertainment Weekly are amazingly enjoyable.
He’s the John Byrne of “regular” writing. He found his niche and his audience and has been filling it ever since.
thank GOD you’re not one of those elitist snobs who thinks disliking stephen king makes them look smarter. not that i expected you to be, but i have encountered quite a few of them.
personally, i think he’s a great american storyteller and will be canonized as such.
my favorite of his is actually Cujo. but i like a lot of others, too.
I liked “The Body” (aka Stand By Me) and “Apt Pupil”
I’m not a huge fan of King’s books; the horror genre is not my bag, per se, and I tend to prefer my novels on the short side. I think, however, that King is one of the greatest writers in the English or any other language. I suspect that future generations will regard him with the same sense of awe with which we regard Shakespear today. There are, in fact, may parallels between the two writers–both wrote heavily-plotted, character-rich stories designed to appeal to a mass audience.
While I thought that On Writing was a good book, it was not the best how-to-write book I’ve ever read (See The Playwright’s Guidebook by Stuart Spencer or The Comic Toolbox by John Vorhaus). The biography stuff was first-rate, but the actual writing advice section lacked focus, and King seemed to stop just short of actually imparting any practical advice. But the bit at the end where he recounts his accident and recovery is some of the most compelling and gut-wrenching writing that I’ve ever read. I’m getting a lump in my throat just remembering it now. Anybody who discounts King’s writing ability deserves to be ignored.
yeah, amazing how the accident kind of forced him to practice what he preached. Very very moving, those last chapters – incredible. How difficult it was for him to start up again – I really felt for him.
I especially liked the pages where he showed his editing process. I over-write, in first drafts, to the point of absurdity. It’s all tangents, and description, and hammering the point home. and those pages are so helpful to me in seeing how to cut stuff, and how to not say the same thing twice. I also think it’s okay to over-write in first drafts – just get it out onto the page – and then mess with it later.
Another favorite writing book of mine – maybe my second favorite is “If you want to write” by Brenda Ueland. That one just makes you ITCH to start writing.
Four books are never far from my desk:
The AP Stylebook
Strunk and White’s The Element’s of Sytle
Garner’s A Dictionary of Modern Usage
A current Writer’s Guide (someday I’ll actually write something that is not for my newspaper and these books are such a wealth of information)
Favorite bit of Elements of Style:
“Omit needless words”
I just find that so profound. And almost no one does it – myself included!!!
I also, apparently, do not omit needless exclamation points.
Definitely. I only use brevity in news writing. Any other time I tend to wax poetic.
You posted before I saw your response. But “definitely!!!!” there also.
Huge King fan.
Read “On Writing” three times now.
Loved the DT series, say thankya.
Read several others, and have a half dozen on my “to be read” shelf right now.
I have recently stopped apologizing for my fandom. Because really, he kicks butt. I’d take Stephen King over a dozen Grishams, Graftons, and Browns any day of the week, just on pure storytelling ability alone.
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oh yes, we must not apologize for our fandom! :)
Lisa – argh, I missed your comment – I have not read Needful Things. In fact, there’s a couple in the last 10 years or so that I have missed.
Yes, I like Stephen King. The Stand, The Body (not least for the story-within-a-story “The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan”), Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, and The Dead Zone (which I found terribly sad for a number of reasons) are my favorites.
Duck duck goose mentioned characterization, and that’s spot on. Even minor characters have that sense of “there’s more going on here than a plot point–this guy who just gave the protagonist a ride goes home and has a beer and puts his arm around his wife/girlfriend/ol’lady and watches the Sox or the Bruins on TV. He doesn’t just disappear when I turn the page.”
That, plus memorable turns of phrase. An example: I think this was in Firestarter (it’s been decades and I could be mistaken), when a guy (like the one above) gave the father & daughter a ride while they were on the run, something like that. The father started to break down a little, and the guy said something like “Life is short and pain is long and we’re all put here to help each other.” King managed to make it completely unself-conscious and uttered without an air of Saying Something Clever, but it’s a brilliant, poetic line. Say it aloud–you’ll see.
I’ve read On Writing twice; I loved it, and it’s on my bookshelves now.
I love some of his books, and can’t finish others. I love Carrie, The Stand, and The Shining, but couldn’t finish Cujo, Dead Zone, and Christine.
That said, I typically don’t like horror stories… but I love many of his, because the characters are so real…. which is why my favorite King story is Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption (I also love the movie… )
Dead Zone, The Stand, It, the Dark Tower series, and Different Seasons stand at the top of his fiction for me, though there are a few I haven’t read. This quote by Walter Mosley upon King’s reception of the National Book Foundation’s medal for “Distinguished Contribution to American Letters” sums his importance up pretty well:
Nathan – holy crap. that is amazing. Thank you for that!!
To this day Needful Things is one of my all time favorites. I just loved how King used our basic human desire for material goods and turned into such a disturbing chain reaction of events. It all started so innocently, and gets more and more fucked up as the story goes along. It’s a pretty creepy book. The movie sucked and angered me.
The rest of Mosley’s speech is good too.
The thing about King is that he gets into my head. I know the people he’s writing about. I’ve met them. I’ve seen the locations he describes and I’ve smelled the smells he writes of. I can walk into his stories and look around like I’m in there.
I don’t have to work too hard to fall into a King book.
Ya know?
Nope…no problem here. ;-)
Speaking of how-to-write books (I seem to spend more time reading them than I do actually writing), I recently read one by William Olen Butler. I don’t remember the exact title, but it had something to do with dreams–it was very new-agey sounding. Like so many others who are ever so impressed with themselves for writing (big L) Literary fiction, Butler takes a swipe at Steven King.
Butler contends that King (and other genre writers) is not a true artist because he knows what he wants to do before he starts writing. (Butler is all caught up in writing on a subconscious level). Not only is Butler very limited in his view of what constitutes “art”, but he’s dead wrong about King.
Ironically, King contends that he follows an approach very similar to the one that Butler advocates. First, King does not believe that he creates his stories, but rather believes that the stories are “found art” that reveal themselves to him. Second, he starts by creating blank-slate characters and seeing how those characters develop as they respond to the bizarre situations in which they inevitably become embroiled. Not exactly formula stuff.
What exactly is it about the inclusion of demonic clowns, killer Chevy’s, or Rita Hayworth that inspires people to belittle you as an author?
I think it’s because he’s really popular. Anyone who sells that many books just can’t be a good writer.
grrrrr
One other thing I remember from On Writing – he describes having a raging earache as a child. He is taken to the doctor and laid out on the table. Dammit, I wish I had my copy available – I have no idea where it is – but anyway, the doctor takes out a gigantic needle, and says to Stephen, “This will hurt a little.” And he put the needle in his ear and lanced whatever it was in there. Stephen said that the pain was unbearable. I can’t remember how he described it – but you wince, reading it.
He said, “I screamed. I guess, on some level, I’ve been screaming ever since.”
??? Anyone remember that passage?
Basically, he, as an adult, is able to tap into the terror (and betrayal – “this will hurt a little” a little???) he felt as a child – and transform that pain/terror/feeling out of control into a scary clown in a storm drain, or a rabid dog, or whatever … Now that is imagination.
So many people forget what it was like to be a child. That feeling of having your destiny being totally out of your control … King remembers.
It’s no wonder that Charles Dickens is one of his idols. Dickens remembers childhood too.
I remember that passage. I’m pretty sure it was his eardrums they were working on, fluid buildup behind the eardrum. I think that’s why little kids who get lots of ear infections get tubes in their ears now–so they can drain without having to go through what King described.
There’s an echo (maybe a reverse echo, since it was published before On Writing) of that passage in the passage in The Dead Zone where they’re operating on Johnny’s tendons, after he comes out of the coma. He’s awake for the procedure (local anasthetic) and commenting on it.
it could be argued that all of King’s books are about childhood, and the transitions and relationships between it and adulthood.
i think another of king’s best is The Green Mile. Also The Shawshank Redemption. That one is a true classic. Even if you don’t respect anything else he’s written, you have to respect that story.
maybe i should go write my own post instead of cluttering up your comments section. :0)
beth – i totally agree. Well, I think that might be why IT hits me so hard. That’s what it’s about. That whole portrayal of the intensity of childhood friendships … and then, the awkward segue into being adults … going through the trial of fire with that horrible “s” in the storm drains … The bittersweet nature of knowing that you are no longer a child. sniff, sniff. I think that book is just so powerful.
I guess I’m talking, though, about something more primal. So many adults literally block out the actual sensation of being a child – it’s part of our surviving mechanism as a species, maybe. We grow up. We toughen up. We become adults. Stephen King has obviously become an adult, but on a primal level he remembers the actual sensation of being a child. Its specifics – not just vague memories like most people have. He can put himself back there, and feel terrified of what might be in the closet. Nobody feels fear like a small child. I believe that Stephen King writes from that place – even when his protagonist is an adult.
The Green Mile is another one I missed – there was a time in college and after when I read whatever book he put out – but I guess I have lost touch with him recently. I should do some catch up.
Hands down, my favorites are “It,” “The Stand,” and “The Dead Zone.” What makes them special for me are “little moments:” for instance, in “It,” not the climactic battle scene (either the child or adult versions), but the smaller scenes such as when Ben is composing his haiku to Beverly, and when Mike Hanlon is sitting at home alone in the dark by himself, writing about the history of Derry. It’s in those moments that those characters become real people whom King just happens to be writing about, as opposed to characters in a book. (I may not have articulated that very well.)
i BAWLED at The Green Mile. it was so much better than the movie.
I will definitely check it out, Beth. Thanks!