Review of Stephen King’s book On Writing: A memoir of the Craft

Before I start I should say that this is not a sponsored post and nobody has paid me to write this review. I have just finished reading this book and I thought it would be good to write a review for the blog.

I haven’t read anything of Stephen King’s for some time, years in fact. I appear to have left Misery and The Shining, and other great reads, in my teenage years.

Over the years I have heard many great things about his book On Writing but never got round to reading it until one of my students this summer mentioned how good it was.

The first half of the book was autobiographical and I was a bit surprised at this as it wasn’t what I was expecting. But this is not a negative remark. I like finding out about people I admire and find it interesting to discover their background and a bit about their lives. King’s dad walked out on him, his brother and mother when he was two. He talks a bit about his mother’s struggle to bring them up with little money.

The autobiographical takes you through to recent times (well recent to 2000 when the book was written) and gives you an insight into the man itself, but for the writer the most interesting part is the second part of the book which is full of interesting advice on writing, in particular on constructing plots and storylines. He gives good examples, and then compares it to something which doesn’t read quite so well so that you can see for yourself what he means. King is very good at demonstrating what he means and explaining his point well.

For any writing student, certainly for any writer, I think this book is a must have. He doesn’t give writing exercises as such but from reading his advice it would be easy to set yourself exercises based on what he writes.

Stephen King On Writing: A memoir of the Craft is available for £6.99 from Amazon, £5.99 for the Kindle edition.