On Writing by Stephen King
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Book Reviews of On Writing
Book Review: Riding Right Brain Chaos; Honed, Heavy Horror
Summary: 5 Stars
Thumbs-In-Vest Earned In Every Effort.
Leave it to Stephen King to write one of the few books I could recommend on writing, without fearing that, in doing so, I would be damning a potentially creative individual. As a bonus, King recommends my standby reference on writing, "Elements of Style," by William Strunk Jr. & E.B. White.
Leave it to King, The Master, to write this semi-autobiographical expose on authorship craft in a more intriguingly unique organizational setup than anyone else could conjure or dare. Leave it to Him to force (or else) a (sort of) "how to" book into mesmerizing entertainment; to step into the job with a horrific grab about a kid suffering ear drum puncture; and to coerce an anomaly of styles and content to coalesce into a gestalt of genius which WORKS, period.
How can a book on writing be riveting?? Read it and see.
King includes only those riveting parts of his personal history which have contributed to his writing career. He includes only the necessary elements to "teach" how to spark and stir creative fires. He includes only the necessary keys to his success (amazingly, he does know what those keys are).
I was impressed with King's exposure of his method of writing from a SITUATION rather than from a precise PLOT outline; I still find myself chewing on that daring technique (though I do still appreciate a strongly plotted story).
I was interested in his examples of bad and good prose, and agree with his praise of other works, though I reserve judgment on a few of his criticisms, and have developed techniques to take breaks whenever I need them without permanently losing a creative flow, which I can renew at almost any point if I can set up the right conditions. (When I break through with as many Number One Best Sellers as Mr. King has, maybe my opinion on writing will be as viable as his.)
King has many times earned the right to have an opinion on writing and to offer it for sale. Yet, he has approached this project with genuine humility, which is, to me, endearing (sorry about the sentimental slip, Oh Master of Horror).
What do I admire most about this author, which is evident in this book? I absolutely enjoy his regenerating honesty, his uncanny originality, and his demand of himself to toss reader boredom into a black hole and perform, within his printed words, 24/7 without fail. Also love the way he sincerely and humbly exposes his respect for his wife.
Given what this man has endured and accomplished in his life, he's earned the best type of REST available to a human being, and I don't mean the big "D." He deserves to be quite proud of himself. He deserves to have his thumbs permanently posed in the sides of a vest, to sit back and smile at his trail of effort and result.
What a gift that he would attempt in earnest to share his secrets of writing success. And his uncanny self-awareness allowed him to share clearly what those secrets are, in this valuable gift for the youngest as well as the most seasoned of writers. This I say as a 2 decades professional writer and previous English and creative writing teacher who has published various articles and finished and polished 8 fiction manuscripts and has another 8 + book-length works in progress. I'm not EVEN near King's level in the marketplace (yet), but I am a highly productive creative spirit who knows how to maintain, ride, and design the flow.
There's always more than one way to approach any creative endeavor, and my approach to writing is similar to King's in some ways, somewhat different in other ways (I can only compare, of course, to the content offered in this book). This insight to King's techniques exposes what works for him and what could work for other, though of course not all creative spirits. Young writers should allow themselves leeway in deciding how to tap and work with their talents. Creativity should be allowed to flourish, even when establishing a personal method on how to use that force, and sometimes it's necessary to forge a unique path diverging from even the greatest masters. When I was teaching creative writing in the public school systems, I asked my students to at least try some of the established methods of writing prior to setting any of them aside to break away from them.
Another great book which exposes a writer's path and techniques (through a novel rather than through a unique how to book) is THE NOVEL by James A. Michener. See my review.
What I believe On Writing has exposed better than many writing "how to" books is tapping into the Right Brain. As I've observed the styles of many authors of novels, they each seem to be almost "designed" by DNA to work in different precise balances of Right/Left Brain. The Left Brain wants steps, plots, outlines, plans and structure to be elaborately perfect prior to that leap into the ozone. The pure Right Brain wants only the chaos of riding a storm of the absolute unknown, describing it as it explodes into the presence of present time, constantly changing, churning.
Bottom line, though, telling a fledgling writer how to do it is, for me, a frightening extension of my uniqueness, because I would not ever want to hamper the growth of a maverick creative source needing by its design to walk a path not taught by any master before him. Possibly every "how to" book should carry a warning.
This one enters the effort in fairness, with humility and honesty, and does not say or imply, "This is THE only way to write."
Thank you, Stephen, for sharing your personal and professional views on writing, which expose your adept use of both sides of the brain, highlighting your ability to slip into the quirks of the Right side in intriguingly clear ways. Not all writers can explain how that slip into the ozone happens. Great books have been produced with various balances of Left & Right. I love riding the Right, but every time I get totally off the Left it scares the shzzt out of me.
With Sincere Respect,
Linda G. Shelnutt
Book Review: Inspiring, Informative, Entertaining
Summary: 5 Stars
In April 2006 I attended a workshop, Creating for Creators, run by Robert Fritz (author of Your Life as Art, among other books). To those of us participants aspiring to be (better) writers, Robert recommended that we read Stephen King's On Writing. What a great recommendation!
Stephen King is a class act - down to earth, likable, extremely funny, if On Writing is any measure - and someone to be trusted. King is both a regular guy, with whom you would enjoy having an informal conversation, as well as - no one needs to hear this from me - one of the top novelists of our day.
King demystifies the act and the art of writing fiction, and shares his perspectives on the mindset, discipline and hard work that it has taken him to create his novels over the past several decades. In earlier years he had to overcome tough financial circumstances, over-reliance on alcohol and other unsustainable substances, and his infamous near-fatal injuries sustained when hit by a van while out walking one day in 1999. King is truly an endearing person.
The first part of the book is autobiographical, describing, among other things, the wild adventures of Stephen and his older brother David. Stephen's father left the home early on, leaving Stephen's strong-willed mother to raise the boys - a gritty life in rural Maine, with stints in Wisconsin and elsewhere. In summary, King worked very hard for each of his accomplishments; nobody handed him anything. The nail on his wall - later replaced with a larger spike - onto which he impaled his countless rejection letters from publishers, is testimony to King's tenacity.
Here are some of King's thoughts:
· The least of all [your concerns] should be polite society and what it expects. If you need to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.
· When the reader hears strong echoes of his or her own life and beliefs, he or she is apt to become more invested in the story.
· People love to read about work.
· There is a huge difference between story and plot (page 167)
· The story (not the writer) is the boss.
· Description begins in the writer's imagination, but should finish in the reader's.
· Let each of your characters speak freely; do not second guess the reaction of members of the "Legion of Decency"
· The best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event
King offers a somewhat contrarian view of the elements of a novel. In his approach there are three parts: narration, which moves the story from Point A to Point B; description, which creates a sensory reality for the reader, and makes him or her a participant in the story; and dialogue, which brings characters to life through their speech (page 159, paperback edition). King "distrust[s] plot for two reasons: first, because our lives are largely plotless... and second, because I believe plotting, and the spontaneity of real creation aren't compatible... Plot is... the good writer's last resort and the dullard's first choice. The story which results from it is apt to feel artificial and labored." )Having used a plot-driven approach with a novel I am writing, and not being pleased with the results, I buy into King's thoughts.)
King prefers to start with a situation; the characters come next. He wants to put characters in some predicament, and then watch them try to work themselves free (page 161). King's job, as he sees it, is not to help the characters work themselves free but, rather, to "watch what happens and then write it down." It's all about forming mental pictures and then documenting what you see, as truthfully and authentically as you can.
King candidly describes the challenges of weaving in the back story that every novel has no choice but to possess... include too little, and the main story has insufficient foundation; include too much, and the main story is buried. King also addresses the heart-rending job (for writers, at least) of "killing your little darlings" - removing sometimes really good material from your novel, if it does not contribute to the story.
The big bonus with this book that I never anticipated is that it is laugh-out-loud funny in all sorts of places. King's humour is enduring, clever, insightful, and not at anyone's expense.
I have spent the last three years writing a 315-page novel. I am not happy with it, and prior to reading On Writing I was seriously contemplating abandoning my novel. I now plan to do to a major re-write, and this is due to my having read King's discussion of what he went through when writing The Stand; it reminds me so much of my situation with my novel. King has reassured me that the position I find myself in, or which I have created for myself, is not necessarily awful, unusual or irreconcilable. It may simply be a stop along the way toward creating a better novel. When I read about King's management of editing and drafts, it all looks so familiar, and I am grateful for indications from him that I may be on an OK track after all.
Other related books I can recommend are On Writing Well - an informal guide to writing non-fiction, by William Zinsser, If You Want to Write - A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit, by Brenda Euland, On Becoming a Novelist, by John Gardner, Your Life as Art, by Robert Fritz, and The Elements of Style, by William Strunk and E. B. White.
Book Review: Book Review: Stephen King On Writing
Summary: 5 Stars
Book Review: Stephen King - On WritingI enjoyed the first half of the book for the humorous lighthearted approaches Steve takes to his life. One inspiring moment would not leave my mind. I wish that I had one in my own life as significant. As a young boy Steve copied the works of his favorite comic and showed the result to his mother. "Write one of your own, Stevie," she said. WOW! Obviously the seed of a writer was already planted but what fertilizer was that moment in Stephen King's life. Permission to write came at a very significant age. So many writers struggle to give themselves permission to write. A comment like this reminds me how influential a parent is to their child. Imagine what may have become of Steve had his mother been a different woman.
Other enjoyable moments involved poison ivy, a rather naughty school distribution and Steve's bleak telling of his drug and alcohol abuse. With the latter I sat wondering at Stephen's courage. Not just to relate these facts openly and honestly to his readers, but also to step beyond his dependency and hope, perhaps pray, that his writing did not come from the altered state. Some of his readers would see Steve in a darker light when realizing he is a former addict. I know that my image of Stephen changed. I saw in him honor, courage and a great strength to overcome. I admire him for stepping through the fear I can only imagine he must have felt and coming past it into real living. May we all learn from his experience.
When I reached the middle of Stephen King's "On Writing: A Memoir", I could not help but notice the very distinct change of voice between the first section and the second. I wondered how the light hearted man, who wrote about living life even through some very hard moments, could possibly be the same man who wrote in stilted lament. I read feeling rather resentful of the attitude I felt coming from the pages. I wondered how he dared imply that the way he did things was the only way to do them. I was particularly flummoxed at the parts where Steve speaks of plot and how no writer should ever use plot, story is the key element. I agree, story is key, but my current novel is laid out perfectly on a large board with every little plot nuance decided. Of course since I am suffering a serious writer's block with that novel perhaps Steve has merit when he speaks of plotting and the damage it can do to story.
Beyond that single disagreement I found Steve spoke to the readers of "On Writing" with integral truth. He spoke fact, but somehow in the second half of the book there seemed a lot less joy. It is only when I reached the postscript I realized why the two halves of one book seemed so different. You may notice the significance of change yourself when you read this book and you will find as I did that there is an rather extreme reasoning for it. Right where the voice changed is the eighteen months where Steve had been recuperating after being hit by a Dodge van. This life-changing event very obviously changed his sense of self and ultimately his voice, his writing.
The second half of the book involves a lot of helpful advice, but personally I felt that a writer would find the first half much more inspiring. The second half answers questions you might have, but the answers are only helpful if you write in the same way Steve writes. Every writer does things their own way and while you can take his words and mince them in your own mind and heart into something of your own, if you attempt to copy his routine exactly you will loose your self. He admits this also and I thank him for once again being so honest. The second half of the book offers a great deal to aspiring writers but I feel the first half offered twice that again.
Overall this book is a wonderful read for all writers and entertaining for non-writers. I freely admit that I have never read another of Stephen King's books but having read this one I am itching to read some of his fiction. He has a fluid hand that is a delight to read. I did find the profanity scattered across the book grating, but he has a section where he speaks of that also. It says a lot about who Stephen is and how he was raised. The entire book opens him up for readers to really know him, and that is a true connection of minds that shouts the truth he shares of writer's telepathy.
Despite all he has suffered in life Stephen comes out a stronger man. In "On Writing" he offers aspiring writers a wealth of advice the most significant being, "Read a lot, Write a lot." You can only learn your subject by immersing yourself in it and as with all artistic desire to reach perfection the Carnegie hall anecdote comes to mine, "Practice, practice, practice". Thank you, Stephen King, for sharing yourself with me. I am a better person and hopefully a better writer because of your candor.
Rebecca Laffar-Smith
Book Review: It's not about liking or disliking him, it's about reading the popular kid's diary and comparing it to your own.
Summary: 5 Stars
I picked this up with reservation, but not necessarily hesitation. Sure, Stephen King is the world's most popular (I'd guess richest, too) novelist, but it's all crap, right? I mean, I read Cujo when I was a freshman and it (not to be confused with It, as I haven't read that one yet) sucked like 30 different kinds of a**. And he's just too popular to know s*** about s***. It'd be like The Eagles writing a book about music or Spielberg writing a book about movies. Wait, you like some Eagles songs? Joe Walsh rules? And Spielberg kicked all sorts of a** with Jaws and Indian Jones? Oh, that's right, I forgot.
Perhaps I took the long way to get to my point, but the fact of the matter is that even though Stephen King wrote Maximum Overdrive and Dreamcatcher (and Cujo), he also wrote The Shining, Misery, Thinner, Carrie, and The Stand. Of course, if you're a competent writer -and King is, regardless of taste- and you write two books a year(ish) for 30 years, you're bound to have some good ones and maybe even a few great ones. And of a bunch of s***, too. But hey, he wrote "The body", and that's what Stand By Me is based off of. If you don't like Stand By Me, you're a dumba** and Rob Reiner is going to anally penetrate you in Hell for the rest of time.
So is it luck that King is popular? Is it just a matter of prolificness surging past brilliance? Well, yes and no. King says that before his accident in the late 90s, he would write 2000 words a day. Every. Single. Day. That's four 180,000 word novels every year (King does short fiction, too, so it's not like he's just pumping out s***** alien books nonstop. He takes the time to pump out s***** alien short stories, too). That's a lot of writing, and anyone who does that for a few years with the intent of getting better is going to get better. Narrative craft is a craft. It can be learned. King was already inclined towards writing anyways, as some people are. He just happened to be sufficient and willing to learn. He got better.
This may seem like a big rant on King's career, but when a writer does a book on writing, what are they doing if they're not saying "This worked for me. Here's the deal."? That pretty much exactly what King does, in a really killer informal tone that makes it seem like you're sitting down with him, drinking a Pepsi (he's been clean from everything since some point in the 80s, as we learn in the memoir section of the book) and shooting the s*** about writing.
Obviously I don't agree with him on everything. He's not keen on writing workshops, but I see his point. There are a lot of morons that attend workshops with the intent of using it as a shortcut as opposed to part of the revision process. He underplays the importance of theme and symbolism and everything else that enriches fiction beyond being "just a story". King writes stories, and he says repeatedly that the story is the most important thing. Of course, he's correct. However, he puts everything else at such a distant second, third, and fourth that it doesn't sit well with me.
Does this book stand on its own as a handbook on writing? Maybe, as it champions the use of freewriting and a strict, loving dedication to writing (and reading!), which are two of the most important things a writer should know: just f***ing do it, man (and read it!).
I'm a sucker. I bought this book not because I need another book on craft -I always need another book on craft, which isn't the point- but because Stephen King wrote it and I wanted to see if he was full of s***. He's not always right, but he's certainly not full of s***. I suggest this for fans of King who are interested in his life and the source of his approach to writing. I also suggest it for writers, because even if you think King sucks, he's more popular than you. I know that I'm retrograded to the point of youthful idealism, but I think everyone kind of wants to read the popular kid's diary. This one just happens to be well written, funny, and by the guy who gave us the opportunity to see Sissy Spacek wax a bunch of motherf***ers in the high school gym.
(And to those who warn against the book being more memoir than craft, it's closer to being half and half. The memoir section gives a nice perspective, and certainly puts his opinion about craft into the type of context that reveals just how much of writing is opinion: all of it. Writers shouldn't be made to read this in the same way that writers should read Carver and Kerouac and Hemingway, but writers should still read it.)
Book Review: Taking the Scare Out of Writing
Summary: 5 Stars
"Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life."
This quote, from Stephen King's second and best work of nonfiction, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (Scribner, 288 pages, $25.00), sums up the "it's-not-brain-surgery" philosophy that permeates this highly-readable primer on the craft of fiction. King's first nonfiction book was Danse Macabre, a look at the horror genre in all its forms. On Writing careens away from the horror corner that King has painted himself into with novels such as Carrie and The Shining. This book is not about how to scare your readers, but how to take them by the hand and lead them down the path of the well-crafted story.
King has every right to write about life and how writing can take one back to it: In 1999 -- in the middle of writing this book -- he was nearly killed when a careless motorist slammed into him as he walked along the side of a road near his rural Maine home. After suffering multiple injuries, King had to learn how to walk again, and credits his wife and his surgeon with saving his life.
Perhaps more important than merely surviving, King found his way back to the joys of life. He credits this successful homeward journey to his writing. King confesses that his primary joy is writing fiction, while nonfiction comes more slowly: he nearly abandoned this memoir-slash-instruction manual in the middle of the project. It is a fortunate thing - both for King's fans and writers everywhere - that he finally finished On Writing.
King once characterized his brand of everyman-confronts-the-supernatural fiction as "the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries," but he was selling himself short. The reason why King's readers keep coming back to his thousand-page-plus novels is twofold: King has an innate sense of story, and he writes from the heart. Character-driven novels such as Misery and Rose Madder (although he confesses that he didn't care much for the latter) reveal as many secrets about the human experience as anything you will find on a university-level English professor's required reading list.
In On Writing, King reveals two things: the details of his life (King's "Curriculum Vitae," which he says have shaped the writer he has become) and the methods of his craft. King developed a love of the horror genre early in his life, thanks to monster movies starring such luminaries as Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. King is unapologetic about his attraction to things that go bump in the night: "I was built with a love of the night and the unquiet coffin, that's all. If you disapprove, I can only shrug my shoulders. It's what I have."
King likens a writer's skills - essentials like grammar and vocabulary - to the contents of a toolbox. By way of an analogy, he recalls as a boy accompanying his uncle to fix a broken screen. King's uncle brought a giant of a toolbox with him to do the job. King asked why his uncle would lug such a heavy toolbox to complete a simple screen-mending: "It's best to have your tools with you," King's uncle replied. "If you don't, you're apt to find something you didn't expect and get discouraged."
Two tools that King does not carry in his box are detailed outlines or carefully crafted plots. King argues that his best fiction has been driven by character and situation, his worst by plot: "Plot is, I think, the good writer's last resort and the dullard's first choice. The story which results from it is apt to feel artificial and labored." King challenges his skeptics with an exercise involving two characters and an appropriately Kingian situation. To tell what this situation is would give away too much of the fun of this book.
On Writing is a breath of fresh air in a sea of pretentious writing manuals that have flooded bookstores lately. This book proves what King's readers have known for years: the man is about much more than horror. On Writing not only helped me hone my craft, but caused me to reflect upon my own Curriculum Vitae: the life experiences that made me the writer I am, and the reasons why I wouldn't have it any other way.