I recently re-read Stephen King’s “The Stand”. While the novel was not quite as good as I had recalled, I still enjoyed the illustrious Mr. King’s descriptions and characters.  When compared to many of today’s best-selling authors (I’m thinking of James Patterson who cares about the words in novels so little that he doesn’t even write them), Stephen King definitely stands apart from the crowd.  On a whim, I picked up his “On Writing” to see what the horror maestro had to say about his craft.

The first part of “On Writing” is a brief description of Stephen King’s childhood and what formed him as a writer;  according to the writer himself, Stephen King was largely influenced by B-movie classics like the kind you can now see mocked in “Mystery Science Theater 3000”. He also admits that many of the scenes in his books are based on auto-biographical incidents from his childhood.

In the next section of his treatise, Stephen King goes back to the basics- grammar, word choice, and annoyances in sentences and paragraphs and offers up a few of his older works that were cut by editors. Like many writers, he offers a testament to “The Elements of Style” and claims even though that he still misses a few basic rules from the 89-page book, he still tries to avoid phrases such as, “the fact that” (a personal and frequent pitfall of mine) and is deeply offended by authors who over-use the passive voice or who fail to simply attribute their dialog.

An example of poor dialog attribution would be:

“It’s great to see you” he said while sighing deeply.

Instead, Stephen King (and many, many, many other writing instructors)   strongly encourage writers to stick to simple attributions like:

“It’s great to see you,” he said.

“On Writing” also contains advice on finding true voices for dialog- draw from real life, but for liability reasons, don’t base your characters on people from your real life entirely. He claims that his successes with small town characters in his novels are because he grew up in a small town and he writes about what he knows.

Stephen King also offers up quite a few details about his personal life in “On Writing and openly discusses his personal struggle with drugs and alcohol, his recovery after being hit by a van, and information about his writing processes.