On Writing
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- ISBN13: 9780743455961
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
“Long live the King” hailed Entertainment Weekly upon the publication of Stephen King’s On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer’s craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King’s advice is grounded in his plain memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported near-fatal manufacturing accident in 1999 — and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery. Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower and entertain everyone who reads it — fans, writers, and anyone who likes a fantastic tale well told.Amazon.com Review
Fleeting and snappy as it is, Stephen King’s On Writing really contains two books: a caringly sardonic autobiography and a tough-like lesson for aspiring novelists. The memoir is terrific stuff, a plain description of how a writer grew out of a misbehaving kid. You’re right there with the young leader as he’s tormented by poison ivy, gas-passing babysitters, 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 leader of “I Was a Teen-Age Graverobber.” As a young adult raising a family tree in a trailer, King ongoing a tale inspired by his stint as a janitor cleaning a high-school girls locker room. He wrinkled 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 Bright symbolized 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 permanently on what it all means to the craft. He gives you a whole writer’s “tool kit”: a reading list, writing assignments, a corrected tale, 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 H.P. Lovecraft’s arcane vocabulary, Hemingway’s leanness, Grisham’s authenticity, Richard Dooling’s cunning obscenity, Jonathan Kellerman’s sentence fragments. He clarifies why Hart’s War is a fantastic tale 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 right teacher. –Tim Appelo
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The postal service lost the product and so we never received it, but amazon quickly refunded the money.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I honestly can’t say if “On Writing” has any valuable advice on writing (beyond the rule not more than), I have stopped reading it as of page 62 (On Writing paperback), the language and some content is just too offensive. If you have any problems with movies or games that receive “R” or “M” ratings for language then you do not want to pick up this book, the language is that terrible. Any valuable advise it might have is lost because Mr. King doesn’t follow the very first writing rule he points out: “[take] out the terrible parts” (chapter 20), i.e. place out the unnecessary and distracting. If any additional useful advice is present or in the offing, it has been so buried in the puerile language as to be lost.
Before you buy, check out the hardback version’s “Look Inside” option (On Writing hardback) for sample content and language. Read the “Second Forwards” (p 11), if that is offensive, proceed no further, it just gets worse. If not, read p31 (the description in the last paragraph ch 9 and the language 1st paragraph ch 10) and then choose.
One further note, I did not read this book voluntarily, it is on my child’s 9th grade English Honors class’ required reading list. It is certainly not appropriate for high school students. If you care about your kids, read what they are suppose to read before they do.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
This was certainly the least informative book on writing I have ever read. I selected up a grand total of one tip, and that was so ordinary that I didn’t bother writing it down when I gave the book away to a charity shop.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Just goes on and on about his childhood.
The guy’s got a lot of nerve selling us a book designed to make us better writers, and then writing on and on about his childhood.
The tales are “marvel years”‘ish except not as exciting.
Just blah blah blah
I’ve only finished half of it but so far it’s been utter torture.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
It’s Mr. King’s turn to give everyone instructions on how to write. Seems that he has become the ‘real’ practiced now, considering he’s made about 30 or so cheap pulp novels that are degrading to basic intelligence and writer’s craftsmanship and yet best sellers. This boringly chatty book about literary craftsmanship should produce sleep in all persons who find something oxymoronic in its conception. He may not be the most noble of stylists, and neither does he know how to make a tale glide.
In the arena of storytelling he argues for appealing situations rather than grouped plotting. ”Plot is, I reflect, the excellent writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice.” Is he for real? He doesn’t even attempt to be understood.
‘On Writing” started as a compendium of tips and whines in a tone suitable for a address circuit or Internet discussion, nothing more. It also included a sharp, spicy account of Mr. King’s growing up (being stout and getting beat up), finding a soul mate named Tabitha (whom he secretly thinks a witch), going through a rocky phase that involved taking drugs and drinking mouthwash (suicide attempts), and eventually learning his professional destiny (to produce minor works). This makes for the most bizarre read ever, its so surreal that you won’t judge you are reading a King biography. Then, through an outrageous twist of fate, it became something more, an attempt to be a best seller. Of course people will pick this up expecting a candid tale of his life, what they will get is a Monstrous manufacturing accident described here in the most ironclad plotting.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5