I could waffle on for thousands of words about 'On Writing' and Stephen King but if you haven't got the time or inclination to wade through to the end of this review, just read this bit: if you want to be a writer, READ THIS BOOK. I’m almost tempted to stop there (almost, but not quite!), as ... Read review
Short and snappy as it is, Stephen King'sOn Writingreally contains two books: a fondly ... more
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 ki...
Postage & Packaging: £2.75 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Short and snappy as it is, Stephen King's On Writing really contains two books: a fondly ... more
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 ...
Postage & Packaging: £2.75 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Short and snappy as it is, Stephen King's On Writing really contains two books: a fondly ... more
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 ...
Postage & Packaging: £2.75 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Short and snappy as it is, Stephen King's On Writing really contains two books: a fondly ... more
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 are right there with the young author as he is tormented by poison ivy, gas-passing baby-sitters, 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 caretaker 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 symbolised 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 HP Lovecraft's arcane vocabulary, Hemingway's leanness, Grisham's authenticity, Richard Dooling's artful obscenity, Jonathan Kellerman's sentence fragments. He explains why Kellerman's 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, Amazon.com
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Advantages: Many - see review Disadvantages: Haven't find any
I could waffle on for thousands of words about 'On Writing' and Stephen King but if you haven't got the time or inclination to wade through to the end of this review, just read this bit: if you want to be a writer, READ THIS BOOK. I’m almost tempted to stop there (almost, but not quite!), as I don’t feel any review can do it justice.
I have never been a Stephen King fan, as I’m not into horror. When I came home from the library carrying ... ...isn't your usual text book on how to write, this is written almost as a mini-autobiography. It sounds such a cliche, but I did find it unputdownable - I read it cover to cover in 2 days.
One of the best snippets I liked (which I have put on a card by my computer) is about writing courses : “It is the dab of grit that seeps into an oyster’s shell that makes the pearl, not pearl-making seminars with other oysters.” Classic.
... more
I could waffle on for thousands of words about 'On Writing' and Stephen King but if you haven't got the time or inclination to wade through to the end of this review, just read this bit: if you want to be a writer, READ THIS BOOK. I’m almost tempted to stop there (almost, but not quite!), as I don’t feel any review can do it justice.
I have never been a Stephen King fan, as I’m not into horror. When I came home from the library carrying this book, my husband saw the name of the author and gasped in dismay, wondering how he was going to cope with my nightmares after reading a Stephen King horror (he’s read a few). He was very relieved to learn it was book about writing.
This is a well-written book, packed with interest, information and advice. It isn't your usual text book on how to write, this is written almost as a mini-autobiography. It sounds such a cliche, but I did find it unputdownable - I read it cover to cover in 2 days.
One of the best snippets I liked (which I have put on a card by my computer) is about writing courses : “It is the dab of grit that seeps into an oyster’s shell that makes the pearl, not pearl-making seminars with other oysters.” Classic.
He doesn’t slate other books on writing (well, not all of them anyway), and recommends ‘The Elements of Style’ by William Strunk Jr & E.B. White
King has a few themes/golden rules that he has stuck by and which have brought him success. These condense down to: 1. Read a lot - obvious really, but he goes into great detail about why in a much more convincing way than I could cover here. 2. Write a lot - if you want to be a runner, you run. Want to be a writer, don’t talk about it, just do it. 3. Edit ruthlessly - take out unnecessary words, especially adverbs and remember this magic formula : 2nd draft = 1st draft - 10% (advice given to him by a publisher)
He gives his C.V. (obviously it was an edited British version of this book I managed to get hold of, us being too thick to understand what Resume means), meaning a bit of his life story and how he got into writing. He has one brother and was brought up by a single-parent mother. She sounded quite a character. It wasn’t a rich childhood in terms of money but he packed in a lot of experience - and a lot of reading and writing, thanks to childhood illnesses (and a horrific run-in with a doctor with a large needle - don’t read it if you are squeamish).
He has more than a tentative grasp of the English language. Firstly because he was well-educated, secondly because he was an English teacher and thirdly (and most importantly) because he has a tangible LOVE of language.
As a young, sick, housebound child, he liked to copy out stories from his comics, changing/improving them as he did so. He showed one to his mother, who initially thought he had written it himself and was disappointed to learn he hadn’t. Her response? “Write one of your own Stevie.” A suggestion that was, years later, to change publishing history. King’s reaction was “an immense feeling of POSSIBILITY at the idea, as if I had been ushered into a vast building filled with closed doors and had been given leave to open any I liked. There were more doors than a person could ever open in a lifetime.” What a great approach to writing - and possibly the reason why he loves his craft so much and is so prolific.
Incidentally, King’s mother lived to see his first novel, Carrie, published - just. A copy (which had been read to her, she was too ill by that time to read herself) was on the night-stand when she died.
He isn’t wild about television. The family didn’t get one until he was 11, so he didn’t grow up goggle-eyed. He says, about that, “I am a member of a fairly select group: the final handful of American novelists who learned to read and write before they learned to eat a daily helping of video bullshit.” Never afraid to call a spade a f**king spade, is our Stephen. He has a good explanation for that, too, which I don’t have space to go into here or I’ll end up just quoting most of the book.
He started writing short stories and submitting them to sci-fi and mystery magazines. He kept a spike full of pink rejection slips. One slip had a particularly curt comment scribbled on it: “Don’t staple manuscripts. Loose pages plus paperclip = correct way to submit copy.” He called that advice cold but useful. He did get a more helpful one, though, which he said brightened his winter: “This is good. Not for us, but good. You have talent. Submit again.” He says that after he was published as a novelist, and getting some publicity, he submitted the same stories to some of those magazines again. Curiously, they accepted them then!
He takes the mystique out of the writing business, without dumbing it down. Actually, I was surprised at his intellect, and his ability to convey complex things in a highly understandable way.
It wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to say that reading this book has changed my life. I have been suffering from an extended period of writer’s block, due to illness. Since reading this, I have begun writing again. Yay! This is partly because the book is encouraging, understandable and easy to read (and it made me feel NORMAL for probably the first time - I’m not mad, I’m a writer!), but also because he goes into some detail of the bad accident he had in 1999 and his recovery. It was hard for him to start writing again, it didn’t come easily. “The first 500 words were uniquely terrifying - I stepped from one word to the next like a very old man finding his way across a stream on a zigzag line of wet stones. There was no inspiration only a kind of stubborn determination and the hope that things would get better if I kept at it.”
He was in pain as well. His injuries were horrific (as someone who has had a horrific road accident, I have some idea what he means) and it was hard just to sit up. Yet he finished this book to encourage others to write! What a guy. I have new respect for him and not a little gratitude. This book isn’t just for wannabe writers, it is a good read for anyone.
PS - not all his books are scary horror-fests. Worth checking out in the library - there are 35 of them so far.
Advantages: Absorbing and inspiring Disadvantages: Disorganised structure
...from! And he actually worked on the kind of machine that takes on an evil personality in one of his stories!' Best of all is the tale of how 'Carrie' came about, his first published novel, the one that launched him into bestsellerdom. A few minor experiences - such as going to school with an oddly-dressed, unpopular girl, and seeing a tampon dispenser in a girl's school toilet ) fused in his mind. He wrote a story draft about a girl experiencing ... ...expanded into a novel, focusing on the telekinetic powers of the abused girl who finally takes terrible revenge on all those who taunted her - the famous 'Carrie'. I loved reading about how Stephen King's mind absorbed details and turned them into 'Carrie' and other stories. Another aspect of his life shocked me. For a long time, he was drug-addicted and alcoholic, and didn't even know. He wrote one novel in which the main character was an alcoholic, ...
queen_rain 27.10.2005
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of On Writing - Stephen King
Advantages: Lots of useful advice and encouragement Disadvantages: Too short! For once, a King book I wished was longer!
...does exactly what it says on the tin. King has decided to share some of his thoughts on writing, discussing the things which he feels have helped him be successful. Considering the number of books the man has sold, he may be worth listening to! Even if he is dealing with fiction, which I’m sure will still appeal to many writers on Ciao, much of what he says applies to all types of writing, including these here opinions of ours (he typed cheekily! ... ...autobiography, but it covered much on those subjects. It was almost an essay, or perhaps a thesis, considering its length, on writing and fiction in general, and it was fascinating.
A few years ago, King thought it was time to put down on paper what he knows about the craft, so he started writing this book, as he says, "about the language". He starts off by mentioning that his early memories are vague in comparison to some, but then manages to dredge ...
Crazy-Christian 04.04.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of On Writing - Stephen King
Advantages: A fine analysis of the craft of writing, clearly put, without pretention. Even if you think you know all this, let King re-enthuse you about it. Disadvantages: If you're not a writer, and have no intention of trying your hand at it, you'll want to wait for the cheaper paperback rather than splash out on the hardback.
...book, King delivers his thoughts on the craft of writing - the hows and whys. It's for this section that many writers worldwide picked the book up. After all, there was a point in the eighties where it was estimated that every one in six paperbacks being bought worldwide had King's name on the cover. If anyone should know the magic formula for success, it's him.
Of course, there is no secret formula. Rather we have here a splendid overview on the ... ...if you need a refresher on these points), King engagingly discusses a wide range of issues, from narrative construction, to characterisation, to editing. It's insightful stuff, and so enthusiastically, clearly told that you might well find yourself reading through it even of you have no ambitions at all to put pen to paper. When King gave up teaching, that profession lost an inspired educator, who communicates practical ideas with every bit the passion ...
RichardW 20.02.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of On Writing - Stephen King
Advantages: Humorous, insightful, full of great advice Disadvantages: none
...after finding out about it on Ciao, a review by RichardW (see his excellent opinion on this book) and was thoroughly engrossed with it. I moaned about having to work as I had to put the book down and stop reading, but I managed to sneak a break and have a wee read whilst doing a quick one (bit more info than you needed there). I bought this purely because it gave information on the writing process, and not because I am a fan of Stephen King. I was ... ...the second part giving advice on the writing process, mostly novel writing. The two parts are engrossing and intriguing at the same time and manage to capture the man himself, and not just the tuxedo parts but the parts with his trousers down as well.
The first half gives a fragmented account of some of the childhood experiences that led him, possibly, to start writing and they are humorous, moving, and well written. It gives us an insight into ...
aitchison21 23.02.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of On Writing - Stephen King
Advantages: All Of It, If You're A King Fan Disadvantages: Not Much Otherwise
...have to consider your thoughts on the author, Stephen King, very carefully. Remember, if you can, your school days. Unless you were a full time rebel or a full time student, there will be lessons in which you remember working hard, and those in which you remember throwing paper aeroplanes and giggling with your friends, yes? For me at least (and I suspect you’re the same), the difference in those two types of lessons always boiled down to how ... ...please or disappoint you, depending on what your reading for. If I could divide you into three types of readers here for a moment, it will be the people wishing to hear about Stephen King that will enjoy this part, and those of you only wanting tips on writing that may find it boring. If like me you’re a bit of both, your particularly lucky. The second third, or the start of the final half of this book, is very different. After around 80 pages ...
Peakly 16.05.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of On Writing - Stephen King
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Advantages: Birliant story, realistic book Disadvantages: None
We all know StephenKing for his briliant horror books. Some people even call him "The master of horror fiction". I would like to agree with these people, because I don't know any other author, which would write briliant books, like StephenKing does.
I always enjoyed horror books. And I always enjoyed reading them at night. The Shining isn't an exception. I was reading it after midnight for about 1 month. It was really exciting expierence. I was really scared while and after reading this book, because everything was written in book, seemed to be pretty realistic.
Would I recommend you to read this book ? Yes! Why ? Because it's the best book I ever read in my life. Be sure that I like reading books and I had read many of them. ...
Advantages: Well crafted with a point Disadvantages: none
StephenKing tends to write two kinds of books. One is where something , usually an inaminate object, is evil and evil things happen because of it. and the other is where a person expresses, usually latent, psychic powers, such as telekinessis, pyrokinessis, telepathy etc. the story then flows around how they cope with their powers then led them into bizarre situations within a normal world.
The Dead Zone falls into this category and this book is a blinder.
A well crafted story of a guy who has psychic visions and how his life is turned upside down by both the visions and an unrelated car crash.
Despite wanting an ordinary life how does he cope with this extraordinary gift? and the extraordinary responsibilities that come with it?
This is not a horror in the true sense of the word. It's not a blood and guts book, or one that ...
Advantages: Fantastic read, involving storyline and characters, long Disadvantages: Some formatting errors, not horrifying at all, inconclusive ending
After deciding that I really needed to read more sometime near the end of last year, I picked up a copy of MISERY, also by StephenKing. I fell in love with the man's style of writing and ability to have you clutch the book so strong your knuckles turn white. So when it came time to pick out some stuff I wanted for Christmas, and having read about the premise behind CELL, I decided that this was one of his books to try.
The Story
CELL opens in a very quick and to-the-point way: the main action in the book has started within the first 15 pages, so there's no dawdling. The book follows Clayton Riddell, an artist whose life, along with the many others, is ruined when an event known as the Pulse happens.
The Pulse is effectively a virus that affects everyone taking mobile phone calls. It wipes their minds and turns everyone ...
Stephen King's claim to fame ; Superb atmosphere ; Sublime plot ; A vivid imagination that stretches all supernatural boundaries ; Probably responsible for some of the best horror films of the 70's and 80's
Some unessesary background in the first half ; Kubrik mucked up the story too much ; Could have been much more (*)
