On Writing by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Stephen King is very good at what he does. And what he does, is write. I’ve read his books for the past thirty or so years and have always loved his style. His novels are imaginative and his prose is tight, understandable given he taught english language. So when he writes a book about writing, you feel, as does every other budding author, that this book will enable us to achieve his level success. Now, the problem, as with all very able people, is that they believe everyone else should be able to grasp what is obvious to them.
The problem I have with all self help books is that once I see a chink in the armour, then the book is weakened. In this case, this is King’s argument that the book should be written quickly, unplotted, permitting the characters to develop and mature on the page, not stagnating as he says in the author’s mind. For me, this is impossible. I tried this approach with a 3k word short story and it was a mess – story threads became lost and the twists were diminished without the forethought. I fully appreciate that as a full time author, and someone at the top of their game, they can plot an entire novel in their grey matter, but for me this doesn’t work, I need to plan.
That said, this book is a great read, parts were unnecessarily bloated (Frank’s story must’ve been written during an alcohol relapse) but the main learning point in all this, is read Stephen King. His writing about writing focuses you on his words, and when that happens, you truly appreciate how good he is…