creative writing advice and tips from stephen king

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50 Pieces of Stephen King's Greatest Writing Advice

Over his decades-spanning career, Stephen King has written an astounding 54 novels that have sold over 350 million copies. His work has been adapted into films, miniseries, television shows, comic books, video games, and more. It is no wonder Stephen King's writing advice is so frequently sought after.

King has the unique ability to make readers feel every emotion on the spectrum: love, joy, rage, terror, disappointment, and sorrow. When he talks about writing, aspiring authors should sit up and pay attention.

As writers, we want to make people cry, laugh, and wipe their sweaty palms on their shirts so they can better grip their books. Stephen King has mastered this.

Though he’s an incredibly gifted writer, King shed blood, sweat, and tears to get where he is today, and was gracious enough to share his advice in his book,  On Writing —a must-read for aspiring and established authors — as well as multiple interviews and appearances throughout the years.

His advice is the no-bullshit version of all those rejection letters writers receive, probably because King got a truckload himself. As he put it, “By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.”

In his own words, here is Stephen King's greatest writing advice:

On Getting Started  1. The Scariest Moment  2. Starting Out in the Industry  3. Writing Short Stories

On the Writing Process  4. The Best Advice He Ever Got  5. Avoiding Distractions  6. Starting the Day Writing  7. The Process  8. Write Like Yourself  9. Go Where the Story Leads You  10. Make Stories About People  11. Break Up Thoughts  12. Kill Your Darlings  13. Avoid Too Much Backstory  14. The Purpose of Symbolism

On Grammar and Parts of Speech  15. Don’t Sweat the Grammar  16. Passive Sentences  17. Sentence Fragments  18. Avoid Adverbs  19. Grammar is Simple  20. Two Types of Verbs

On Description  21. Don’t Over-Describe  22. Keep It Simple  23. A Learned Skill  24. Again, Don’t Over-Describe

On Reading  25. Read A Lot  26. Duplicating the Effect of Good Writing  27. The Purpose of Book Genres  28. Technology and the ‘Death’ of Books  29. The Importance of Literacy  30. Good People

On Inspiration  31. Amateurs Vs. Professionals  32. On New Ideas  33. Love it  34. Fulfillment  35. Perseverance  36. Take Risks!  37. Getting Happy  38. A Way Back to Life  30. Your Job is to Show Up  40. A Support System  41. Talent Renders Rehearsal Meaningless  42. Don’t Wait for the Muse

On Editing  43. Rewrite  44. Finding Cultural and Thematic Implications  45. Reality in Fiction  46. Doors

On Telling the Truth  47. Rudeness  48. Bad Writing  49. Don’t Let Others Shame You  50. The Most Important Things Are the Hardest to Say

On Getting Started

1. the scariest moment.

"The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better."

2. Starting Out in the Industry

"You don't always have to take the editor's advice. Sometimes the way you see it is the way it should be. I assume that every writer was a lot smarter and a lot craftier than I was. That turned out not to be the truth."

3. Writing Short Stories

"The novel is a quagmire that a lot of younger writers stumble into before they’re ready to go there. I started with short stories when I was 18, sold my first one when I was about 20 and produced nothing much but – well I wrote a couple of novels but they were not accepted and a lot of them were so bad that I didn’t even bother to revise them, but the short stories were making money and I got very comfortable in that format. And I’ve never wanted to leave it completely behind."

On The Writing Process

4. the best advice he ever got.

"It boils down to what Satchel Paige said: 'Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you.' There will be people who like what you do and people who don’t. But if they’re picking over the last thing and you’re working on the next thing, that’s all yours."

5. Avoiding Distractions

"It's pure habit. I write from probably 7:30 till noon most days. I kind of fall into a trance. It's important to remember that it isn't the big thing in life. The big thing in life is being there if you're needed for family or if there's an emergency or something. But you have to cut out the unimportant background chatter. That means no Twitter. That means not going to  Huffington Post  to see what Kim Kardashian is up to. There's a time for that – for me, it's usually before I go to bed. I find myself sitting hypnotized and looking at videos of funny dogs, that kind of thing."

6. Starting the Day Writing

"I wake up. I eat breakfast. I walk about three and a half miles. I come back, I go out to my little office, where I've got a manuscript, and the last page that I was happy with is on top. I read that, and it's like getting on a taxiway. I'm able to go through and revise it and put myself –  click  – back into that world, whatever it is. I don't spend the day writing. I'll maybe write fresh copy for two hours, and then I'll go back and revise some of it and print what I like and then turn it off."

7. The Process

"For me the fun of writing novels isn’t in the finished product, which I don’t care about. There’s a guy over there looking at all the books on my shelf and to me those are like dead skin. They’re things that are done, but I love the process."

8. Write Like Yourself

" I love D.H. Lawrence. And James Dickey's poetry, Émile Zola, Steinbeck... Fitzgerald, not so much. Hemingway, not at all. Hemingway sucks, basically. If people like that, terrific. But if I set out to write that way, what would've come out would've been hollow and lifeless because it wasn't me. "

9. Go Where the Story Leads You

"When I started [ Salem’s Lot ] I thought to myself, 'Well, this will be the opposite of Dracula where the good guys win and in this book the good guys are gonna lose and everybody’s gonna become a vampire at the end of the book.' And that didn’t happen. Because you go where the book leads you."

10. Make Stories About People

"I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven."

11. Break Up Thoughts

"You might also notice how much simpler the thought is to understand when it's broken up into two thoughts. This makes matter easier for the reader, and the reader must always be your main concern; without Constant Reader, you are just a voice quacking in the void."

12. Kill Your Darlings

"Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings."

13. Avoid Too Much Backstory

"The most important things to remember about backstory are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting."

14. The Purpose of Symbolism

"Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity."

On Grammar and Parts of Speech

15. don’t sweat the grammar.

"The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story."

16. Passive Sentences

"Two pages of the passive voice—just about any business document ever written, in other words, not to mention reams of bad fiction—make me want to scream. It’s weak, it’s circuitous, and it’s frequently tortuous, as well. How about this: 'My first kiss will always be recalled by me as how my romance with Shayna was begun.' Oh, man—who farted, right? A simpler way to express this idea--sweeter and more forceful, as well--might be this: 'My romance with Shayna began with our first kiss. I'll never forget it.' I'm not in love with this because it uses with twice in four words, but at least we're out of that awful passive voice."

17. Sentence Fragments

"Must  you write complete sentences each time, every time? Perish the thought. If your work consists only of fragments and floating clauses, the Grammar Police aren’t going to come and take you away. Even William Strunk, that Mussolini of rhetoric, recognized the delicious pliability of language. 'It is an old observation,' he writes, 'that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric.' Yet he goes on to add this thought, which I urge you to consider: 'Unless he is certain of doing well, [the writer] will probably do best to follow the rules.'"

18. Avoid Adverbs

"The other piece of advice I want to give you before moving on to the next level of the toolbox is this:  The adverb is not your friend. Adverbs, like the passive voice, seem to have been created with the timid writer in mind. With the passive voice, the writer usually expresses fear of not being taken seriously; it is the voice of little boys wearing shoe polish mustaches and little girls clumping around in Mommy’s high heels. With adverbs, the writer usually tells us he or she is afraid he/she isn’t expressing himself/herself clearly, that he or she is not getting the point or the picture across."

19. Grammar is Simple

"One who does grasp the rudiments of grammar find a comforting simplicity at its heart, where there need only be nouns, the words that name, and verbs, the words that act."

20. Two Types of Verbs

"Verbs come in two types, active and passive. With an active verb, the subject of the sentence is doing something. With a passive verb, something is being done to the subject of the sentence. The subject is just letting it happen. You should avoid the passive voice."

On Description

21. don’t over-describe.

"In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling."

22. Keep It Simple

"One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones."

23. A Learned Skill

"Good description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It’s not just a question of how-to, you see; it’s also a question of how much to. Reading will help you answer how much, and only reams of writing will help you with the how. You can learn only by doing."

24. Again, Don’t Over-Describe

"I’m not particularly keen on writing which exhaustively describes the physical characteristics of the people in the story and what they’re wearing... I can always get a J. Crew catalogue... so spare me, if you please, the hero’s 'sharply intelligent blue eyes' and 'outthrust, determined chin.'"

25. Read A Lot

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut."

26. Duplicating the Effect of Good Writing

"You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you."

27. The Purpose of Book Genres

"As far as I’m concerned, genre was created by bookstores so that people who were casual readers could say, 'Well, I want to read romances.' 'Well, right over there, that’s where romances are.' The thing about genre is, so many people are like little kids who say, 'I can’t eat this food because it’s touching this other thing.'"

28. Technology and the ‘Death’ of Books

"The book is not the important part. The book is the delivery system. The important part is the story and the talent."

29. The Importance of Literacy

"Reading is more than a door opener to a better job. It’s cool, it’s a kick, it’s a buzz. Plain old fun. Non-readers live just one single life. It may be a good one, it may be a great one, but a reader can live thousands. Sometimes when the right book falls into the right pair of hands, it lights a fire that leads to others."

30. Good People

"You know what I like? When I go into someone’s house and ask to use the bathroom and see a bunch of books beside the commode. When I see that, I know I’m with my peeps, you know what I’m sayin’? People who read on the toilet, as far as I’m concerned, good people."

On Inspiration

31. amateurs vs. professionals.

"Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work."

32. On New Ideas

"Particularly in the Horror genre there are only three or four good ideas and we’ve all done them before. And it’s really – okay, I mean like, how many times in your life have you eaten eggs? But there’s always a new way to fix eggs and, you know, I look at it that way. You can always find a new way to do it. I think there are as many ideas as there are probing talented minds to explore those ideas."

33. Love it

"I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever."

34. Fulfillment

"I’ve written because it fulfilled me. Maybe it paid off the mortgage on the house and got the kids through college, but those things were on the side – I did it for the buzz...

You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair – the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page. "

35. Perseverance

"Stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure."

36. Take Risks!

"Try any goddamn thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it."

37. Getting Happy

"Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy."

38. A Way Back to Life

"Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life."

39. Your Job is to Show Up

"Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up."

40. A Support System

"It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around."

41. Talent Renders Rehearsal Meaningless

"Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading or watching), every outing is a bravura performance, because you as the creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic."

42. Don’t Wait for the Muse

"Don't wait for the muse. As I've said, he's a hardheaded guy who's not susceptible to a lot of creative fluttering. This isn't the Ouija board or the spirit-world we're talking about here, but just another job like laying pipe or driving long-haul trucks. Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you're going to be every day from nine 'til noon. Or seven 'til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he'll start showing up."

43. Rewrite

"I cannot emphasize the importance of rewriting."

44. Finding Cultural and Thematic Implications

"In terms of work, once I sit down to write and I’m in the story, all that falls away. I’m not thinking about cultural implications, I’m not thinking about genre, I’m not thinking about any of those things that have to do with what critics would talk about when they analyze fiction — all those things go away. But they only go away in the first draft. And then you put stuff away. When you come back to it, you read it and you say, these are the important things, this is where lightning struck for me. Those are almost always things that are cultural and thematic, and I just try and highlight those."

45. Reality in Fiction

"You can never bend reality to serve the fiction. You have to bend the fiction to serve reality when you find those things out."

"Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open."

On Telling the Truth

47. rudeness.

"If you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway."

48. Bad Writing

"Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do―to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street."

49. Don’t Let Others Shame You

"I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all."

50. The Most Important Things Are the Hardest to Say

"The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings – words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out."

More Resources:

"The Last Word: Stephen King on Trump, Writing, Why Selfies Are Evil" - Rolling Stone 

"The Blue-Collar King: An Interview with Stephen King" - LA Review of Books

"Stephen King, The Art of Fiction" - The Paris Review

"Stephen King talks about his writing process" - Bangor Daily News

And most importantly, On Writing by Stephen King.

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22 lessons from Stephen King on how to be a great writer

Timeless advice from the bestselling author, article bookmarked.

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Renowned author Stephen King writes stories that captivate millions of people around the world and earn him an estimated $17 million a year.

In his memoir, On Writing , King shares valuable insights into how to be a better writer. And he doesn't sugarcoat it. He writes, “I can't lie and say there are no bad writers. Sorry, but there are lots of bad writers.”

Don't want to be one of them? Here are 22 great pieces of advice from King's book on how to be an amazing writer:

1. Stop watching television. Instead, read as much as possible.

If you're just starting out as a writer, your television should be the first thing to go. It's “poisonous to creativity,” he says. Writers need to look into themselves and turn toward the life of the imagination.

To do so, they should read as much as they can. King takes a book with him everywhere he goes, and even reads during meals. “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot,” he says. Read widely, and constantly work to refine and redefine your own work as you do so.

2. Prepare for more failure and criticism than you think you can deal with.

King compares writing fiction to crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub, because in both, “there's plenty of opportunity for self-doubt.” Not only will you doubt yourself, but other people will doubt you, too. “If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all,” writes King.

Oftentimes, you have to continue writing even when you don't feel like it. “Stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea,” he writes. And when you fail, King suggests that you remain positive. “Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.”

3. Don't waste time trying to please people.

According to King, rudeness should be the least of your concerns. “If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered anyway,” he writes. King used to be ashamed of what he wrote, especially after receiving angry letters accusing him of being bigoted, homophobic, murderous, and even psychopathic.

By the age of 40, he realised that every decent writer has been accused of being a waste of talent. King has definitely come to terms with it. He writes, “If you disapprove, I can only shrug my shoulders. It's what I have.” You can't please all of your readers all the time, so King advises that you stop worrying.

4. Write primarily for yourself.

You should write because it brings you happiness and fulfilment. As King says, “I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.”

Writer Kurt Vonnegut provides a similar insight: “Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about,” he says. “It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.”

5. Tackle the things that are hardest to write.

“The most important things are the hardest things to say,” writes King. “They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings.” Most great pieces of writing are preceded with hours of thought. In King's mind, “Writing is refined thinking.”

When tackling difficult issues, make sure you dig deeply. King says, “Stories are found things, like fossils in the ground ... Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world.” Writers should be like archaeologists, excavating for as much of the story as they can find.

6. When writing, disconnect from the rest of the world.

Writing should be a fully intimate activity. Put your desk in the corner of the room, and eliminate all possible distractions, from phones to open windows. King advises, “Write with the door closed; rewrite with the door open.”

You should maintain total privacy between you and your work. Writing a first draft is “completely raw, the sort of thing I feel free to do with the door shut — it's the story undressed, standing up in nothing but its socks and undershorts.”

7. Don't be pretentious.

“One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones,” says King. He compares this mistake to dressing up a household pet in evening clothes — both the pet and the owner are embarrassed, because it's completely excessive.

As iconic businessman David Ogilvy writes in a memo to his employees , “Never use jargon words like reconceptualise, demassification, attitudinally, judgementally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.” Furthermore, don't use symbols unless necessary. “Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity,” writes King.

8. Avoid adverbs and long paragraphs.

As King emphasises several times in his memoir, “the adverb is not your friend.” In fact, he believes that “the road to hell is paved with adverbs” and compares them to dandelions that ruin your lawn. Adverbs are worst after “he said” and “she said” — those phrases are best left unadorned.

You should also pay attention to your paragraphs, so that they flow with the turns and rhythms of your story. “Paragraphs are almost always as important for how they look as for what they say,” says King.

9. Don't get overly caught up in grammar.

According to King, writing is primarily about seduction, not precision. “Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes,” writes King. “The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story.” You should strive to make the reader forget that he or she is reading a story at all.

10. Master the art of description.

“Description begins in the writer's imagination, but should finish in the reader's,” writes King. The important part isn't writing enough, but limiting how much you say. Visualise what you want your reader to experience, and then translate what you see in your mind into words on the page. You need to describe things “ in a way that will cause your reader to prickle with recognition,” he says.

The key to good description is clarity, both in observation and in writing. Use fresh images and simple vocabulary to avoid exhausting your reader. “In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling,” notes King.

11. Don't give too much background information.

“What you need to remember is that there's a difference between lecturing about what you know and using it to enrich the story,” writes King. “The latter is good. The former is not.” Make sure you only include details that move your story forward and that persuade your reader to continue reading.

If you need to do research, make sure it doesn't overshadow the story. Research belongs “as far in the background and the back story as you can get it,” says King. You may be entranced by what you're learning, but your readers are going to care a lot more about your characters and your story.

12. Tell stories about what people actually do.

“Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do — to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street,” writes King. The people in your stories are what readers care about the most, so make sure you acknowledge all the dimensions your characters may have.

13. Take risks; don't play it safe.

First and foremost, stop using the passive voice. It's the biggest indicator of fear. “I'm convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing,” King says. Writers should throw back their shoulders, stick out their chins, and put their writing in charge.

“Try any goddamn thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it,” King says.

14. Realise that you don't need drugs to be a good writer.

“The idea that the creative endeavour and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time,” says King. In his eyes, substance-abusing writers are just substance-abusers. “Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit.”

15. Don't try to steal someone else's voice.

As King says, “You can't aim a book like a cruise missile.” When you try to mimic another writer's style for any reason other than practice, you'll produce nothing but “pale imitations.” This is because you can never try to replicate the way someone feels and experiences truth, especially not through a surface-level glance at vocabulary and plot.

16. Understand that writing is a form of telepathy.

“All the arts depend upon telepathy to some degree, but I believe that writing is the purest distillation,” says King. An important element of writing is transference. Your job isn't to write words on the page, but rather to transfer the ideas inside your head into the heads of your readers.

“Words are just the medium through which the transfer happens,” says King. In his advice on writing, Vonnegut also recommends that writers “use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.”

17. Take your writing seriously.

“You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or despair,” says King. “Come to it any way but lightly.” If you don't want to take your writing seriously, he suggests that you close the book and do something else.

As writer Susan Sontag says, “The story must strike a nerve — in me. My heart should start pounding when I hear the first line in my head. I start trembling at the risk.”

18. Write every single day.

“Once I start work on a project, I don't stop, and I don't slow down unless I absolutely have to,” says King. “If I don't write every day, the characters begin to stale off in my mind ... I begin to lose my hold on the story's plot and pace.”

If you fail to write consistently, the excitement for your idea may begin to fade. When the work starts to feel like work, King describes the moment as “the smooch of death.” His best advice is to just take it “one word at a time.”

19. Finish your first draft in three months.

King likes to write 10 pages a day. Over a three-month span, that amounts to around 180,000 words. “The first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months, the length of a season,” he says. If you spend too long on your piece, King believes the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel.

20. When you're finished writing, take a long step back.

King suggests six weeks of “recuperation time” after you're done writing, so you can have a clear mind to spot any glaring holes in the plot or character development. He asserts that a writer's original perception of a character could be just as faulty as the reader's.

King compares the writing and revision process to nature. “When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees,” he writes. “When you're done, you have to step back and look at the forest.” When you do find your mistakes, he says that “you are forbidden to feel depressed about them or to beat up on yourself. Screw-ups happen to the best of us.”

21. Have the guts to cut.

When revising, writers often have a difficult time letting go of words they spent so much time writing. But, as King advises, “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings.”

Although revision is one of the most difficult parts of writing, you need to leave out the boring parts in order to move the story along. In his advice on writing, Vonnegut suggests, “If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.”

22. Stay married, be healthy, and live a good life.

King attributes his success to two things: his physical health and his marriage. “The combination of a healthy body and a stable relationship with a self-reliant woman who takes zero shit from me or anyone else has made the continuity of my working life possible,” he writes.

It's important to have a strong balance in your life, so writing doesn't consume all of it. In writer and painter Henry Miller's 11 commandments of writing, he advises, “Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.”

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15 Best Writing Tips From Stephen King: Advice From One of the Most Successful Authors of the Modern Era

Discover our guide with the top writing tips from Stephen King to begin your writing journey .

Over the last 50 years, Stephen King has published more than 80 novels. Thirty of them have made the New York Times best-seller list, and dozens became movies. He is the gold standard of American fiction writers and almost single-handedly breathed new life into horror in the 80s and 90s. Before all of that literary success, however, he was an English teacher, beloved by his students and dedicated to inspiring generations of new writers .

King no longer teaches writing classes, but lucky for us, he has published On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft , a funny, intimate look at both his successes and failures as an author, as well as his best advice for those of us looking to improve our writing skills. The writing advice in Stephen King’s book is practical, irreverent, friendly, and sure to encourage anyone interested in learning the craft from a master.

1. Avoid Adverbs

2. steer clear of the passive voice, 3. consider it a conversation, 4. get to the point, 5. read, read, and read some more, 6. edit ruthlessly, 7. keep a clear head, 8. be fearless, 9. be unapologetically you, 10. eliminate distraction, 11. love what you do, 12. take a break, 13. start writing and keep writing, 14. don’t let critics get you down, 15.  listen to feedback.

King famously quipped that “the road to hell is paved with adverbs.” He explains that they are often unnecessary, and if they are left unchecked, they will take over your writing like weeds. The best way to eliminate adverbs is to replace them with a more descriptive metaphor or a simile. Instead of saying that she wrote timidly, for example, say that she wrote as if any one of the keys might be a detonator.

The passive voice occurs when the object of the action becomes the sentence’s subject. “The dog chased the ball” is written in the active voice, while “the ball was chased by the dog” is a passive voice construction.

King argues that many writers “feel the passive voice somehow lends their work authority, perhaps even a quality of majesty.” However, the result often sounds stiff and pretentious. “The book signing was poorly attended” sounds like something your English professor might say, peering over his glasses, but “only a few people went to the book signing” comes across as far more conversational. You might also be interested in our post detailing what’s going on with Stephen King on Twitter .

As a master storyteller, King contends that writing fiction isn’t just about putting words on a page. It’s about inviting your reader into the action and making them feel like they are a part of the story. He suggests remembering that “description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.” To become a good writer, be a good reader. Pause, change roles, and reread what you have written from the audience’s perspective.

Fiction writers can quickly get bogged down when they must include the entire life history of each of their characters. King shares that you should only write what is necessary to the tale, saying, “the most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.” When describing your character’s background and physical characteristics, ask yourself if it is truly necessary. Does it add to the story? Does it help the audience understand why your character thinks, feels, and behaves as they do? If not, take it out.

Professional writers , especially those who are just building their careers, often believe they must stay laser-focused on writing. Still, King insists that making time to read is essential to a writer’s ultimate success.” If you don’t have time to read,” he says, “you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write.”

Read the writers that you love, and study what they do. Notice how they develop their characters, pace the action, and create their settings. When you read, you visit new worlds, meet new people, and gain new insight. You learn new words and discover new truths, which will undoubtedly make you a better writer. Read to learn , but don’t forget to read just for the joy of it too. Reading for reading’s sake is the surest way to remember why you want to write.

King promises that eliminating needless words and extraneous parts of the story, even when attached to them, will make your writing more powerful. “Kill your darlings,” he pleads. “Kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”

Writers often labor over finding the right word, making the setting come to life, or perfecting dialogue. In the process, they sometimes grow invested in passages that don’t serve the story. When it comes to editing, put your feelings aside and take the knife to anything extraneous. It might hurt, but your writing will be better for it.

We’ve all heard the stereotypical stories of famous writers whose creative energies and imaginations were unleashed, even multiplied, by alcohol and drugs. We imagine the likes of Hemingway, Poe, Fitzgerald, and Dylan Thomas clacking away on their typewriters or scribbling in their journals with a cut crystal decanter of something strong at their sides. King, however, says the opposite was true for him.

Early in his career, Stephen King wrote in a haze of everything from beer and Nyquil, to Valium and Xanax, until finally, his family staged an intervention. Reflecting on how his addictions affected his writing, he says that his book The Tommyknockers is “just awful” and about twice as long as it should be. “There’s really a good book in [t]here” he laments, “underneath all the sort of spurious energy that cocaine provides.”

“I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing,” King contends. The best writers can set aside all their worries and doubts and face the blank page with courage. Those who are caught up in thinking about whether or not they are “doing it right” or if they will ever be published often lose their nerve or alter their writing so much that they lose their unique voice. Don’t worry about what you think will sell, or what today’s audiences want; write for yourself, and you will have won half the battle.

You can’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Some readers are going to love your work, and others will dismiss you out of hand. If you develop your style, you must develop a thick skin and trust your instincts. King suggests that you not worry too much about what people think of you because “if you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.”

One of King’s simplest and best pieces of advice is to rid yourself of distractions. “There’s should be no telephone in your writing room,” he says, and “certainly no TV or video games for you to fool around with.” He says he feels lucky to have been one of the last successful writers to have grown up without a steady diet of relentless distractions.

One has to wonder if Thoreau, Dickinson, and Twain would have contributed what they did to American literature if they had been forced to contend with emails and text messages. If you want to succeed, take a page from their books, and weed out all of the things that stand between you and your work so that you can focus on perfecting your craft .

It can be so easy to get caught up in the writing business, to spend long hours learning the ropes of the publishing world, marketing yourself, and looking for an editor and an agent, that you forget why you’re doing it in the first place. As King insists, “writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends.

Writing is magic, as much as the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink.” It’s important, of course, for you to educate yourself on becoming a professional writer, but don’t let that become your focus. Write for fun sometimes, without thinking about it will amount to. 

Writing should add to your life, not become it. You can’t tell a good story, inspire and move, and speak to the heart of humanity if you are locked away in your writing room and calling that a life. Nurture your other hobbies. Spend time with loved ones. Travel. Eat. Read. Remember, “life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.”

The hardest part of the writing process is often just getting started. New writers sometimes believe that to start, they need to have their stories all planned, their characters completely mapped out, and their ideas fully formed, so they make endless notes and charts and never actually create the first draft. King says, “amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” Don’t get stalled out in the planning stage or spend a lot of time stressing about perfection. That’s why second drafts were invented.

Stephen King was only 26 when he published his first novel, Carrie , but he was no stranger to rejection. “By the time I was fourteen” he recalls, “the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.” It’s good to remember that even the most successful writers have had their share of disappointment.

King suggests that novelists “write with the door closed, [but] rewrite with the door open.” He means that fear and rejection can hinder the writing process, but that doesn’t mean that readers’ reactions and the advice of editors and critics should be dismissed. If you want to improve as a writer, put aside your pride and listen to and evaluate what people say about your writing. Not all of it will be helpful, but some can offer insight you might have missed.

Learning how to tell stories isn’t always easy. If you’re looking for a course, check out our review of Neil Gaiman’s Masterclass .

If you still need help, read our storytelling guide .

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Writing Tips From Stephen King

Master the craft of storytelling with guidance from literary legend Stephen King

Stephen King is a true titan of literature. Over his prolific career, King has published over 60 novels and 200 short stories, selling over 350 million copies of his works worldwide. From horror classics like The Shining , The Stand and It to distinctive dramas like The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile that were adapted into acclaimed films, King’s output is as diverse as it is extensive. But beyond his staggering success, what’s even more impressive is the quality of the writing tips and advice Stephen King shares with aspiring authors.

In his popular writing manual, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft , King distills the lessons and wisdom accrued over decades spent mastering the written word. The book offers an illuminating mix of the practical and the philosophical—essential writing tips and techniques interwoven with Stephen King’s hard-earned insights on the creative process and the writing life. It’s a wellspring of knowledge for writers of all levels.

While King admits that even he doesn’t always adhere to his own rules, he believes that attempting to follow them is a vital step to becoming a better writer.

Let’s delve into 20 of King’s most compelling and enduring tips:

Write for Yourself First

When starting out on a story, King advises writing for yourself and not concerning yourself with the audience. Focus on telling yourself the story during the first draft. Revising is when you take the audience into account and refine the tale. “Your stuff starts out being just for you, but then it goes out,” he explains. The story begins as a personal exploration before evolving into a public offering.

Avoid the Passive Voice

The passive voice may feel “safe,” but it saps writing of energy and confidence. King gives this humorous example: “Timid writers like passive verbs for the same reason that timid lovers like passive partners. The passive voice is safe.” He urges writers to be bold and make active choices. “Throw back your shoulders, stick out your chin, and put that meeting in charge! Write ‘The meeting’s at seven.’ There, by God! Don’t you feel better?”

Limit Your Use of Adverbs

Adverbs, according to King, are often redundant and unnecessarily bloat prose. Take the sentence “He closed the door firmly.” Does “firmly” meaningfully add to the description, or is it superfluous? As King argues, “Isn’t it redundant?” Context and characterization should be carefully constructed to render adverbs largely unnecessary. Trust the reader to infer the action.

Especially Avoid Adverbs After “He Said” and “She Said”

Dialogue attribution is where writers are most tempted to inject adverbs. But a well-written exchange shouldn’t need excess description – the lines themselves should convey the emotion and tone. King puts it pithily: “While to write adverbs is human, to write ‘he said’ or ‘she said’ is divine.”

Don’t Obsess Over Perfect Grammar

The object of fiction, asserts King, “isn’t grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story.” He encourages writers to learn the rules but to be willing to break them judiciously in service of the story and reader engagement. “Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes,” he affirms. Communication trumps formality.

Believe In Your Own Magic

King pinpoints fear as the root of most bad writing. He compares it to Dumbo and the magic feather—a crutch the elephant only thought he needed to fly. Writers may cling to passive verbs and adverbs out of insecurity, but they must ultimately trust in their own innate ability. “Just remember before you do that Dumbo didn’t need the feather; the magic was in him.”

Read Voraciously

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write,” King states unequivocally. Reading widely and analytically is essential to developing your skills and sensibilities as a writer. It’s a process of “constantly refining (and redefining) your own work” in relation to what you read. Immerse yourself in language.

Don’t Try to Please Everyone

Polite society and people-pleasing should be low priorities for serious writers, King asserts. He minces no words: “ If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.” Expect to ruffle some feathers. The writer’s allegiance is to candor, not popularity.

Limit Distractions

King has little patience for the array of distractions that can waylay writers, especially television in all its forms. “If you feel you must have the news analyst blowhard on CNN while you exercise, or the stock market blowhards on MSNBC, or the sports blowhards on ESPN, it’s time for you to question how serious you really are about becoming a writer.” A devotion to the craft necessitates “turning inward toward the life of the imagination,” not being plugged in to mass media 24/7.

Set a Deadline

Discipline and consistency are key to achieving writing goals. When working on a novel, King advises aiming to finish the first draft within three months. Establishing a firm deadline helps to keep the project on track. “The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season,” he says.

Stay Healthy and Grounded In Reality

When asked for the secret to his prolific success, King sometimes offers this two-fold reply: “I stayed physically healthy, and I stayed married.” Keeping your body sound and your personal life stable creates a solid foundation for the rigors of writing as a vocation. A self-reliant spouse who gives you space to work also helps. King views his writing as both enriching his life and drawing nourishment from its stability.

Take It Word by Word

When an interviewer asked how King writes, he replied simply: “One word at a time.” No matter how epic the scope of the project, the actual work consists of putting down one word after another. It’s an incremental process that requires patience and tenacity. Gargantuan novels are crafted in the same fundamental way as short stories – one focused word at a time.

Eliminate Distractions

To write productively, King stresses the need to cultivate solitude and limit interruptions. His advice: “There should be no telephone in your writing room, certainly no TV or videogames for you to fool around with. If there’s a window, draw the curtains or pull down the shades unless it looks out at a blank wall.” Defend your concentration and working time.

Find Your Own Authentic Voice

It’s futile to try to imitate another writer’s voice or genre, no matter how much you admire their work. As King puts it, “You can’t aim a book like a cruise missile.” Authenticity will always trump impersonation. “People who decide to make a fortune writing like John Grisham or Tom Clancy produce nothing but pale imitations, by and large, because vocabulary is not the same thing as feeling and plot is light years from the truth as it is understood by the mind and the heart.” Discover your own truthful style.

Writing Is Excavation

King compares stories to found objects, like fossils in the ground. “Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world,” he explains. “The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible.” Whether a short story or sprawling novel, the “techniques of excavation remain basically the same.” Writing reveals what’s already there, waiting to be unearthed.

Allow Your First Draft to Rest

After completing your manuscript , set it aside for at least six weeks before attempting revisions, King advises. “If you’ve never done it before, you’ll find reading your book over after a six-week layoff to be a strange, often exhilarating experience.” You’ll see it with fresh eyes and renewed objectivity. “It’s always easier to kill someone else’s darlings that it is to kill your own.” Detachment yields clarity.

Ruthlessly Revise

Speaking of “killing your darlings,” King stresses the need to cut any prose that doesn’t propel the story forward, no matter how fond you are of the lines. He cites Elmore Leonard’s axiom of simply leaving out the “boring parts” to improve pacing. “This suggests cutting to speed the pace, and that’s what most of us end up having to do (kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.)” Revision requires tough love.

Don’t Let Research Overwhelm the Story

While research is often necessary, especially for stories exploring unfamiliar topics, King cautions against letting that research dominate the foreground of the story. It belongs in the background, serving the narrative, not competing with it. “You may be entranced with what you’re learning about flesh-eating bacteria, the New York sewer system, or the I.Q. potential of Collie pups, but your readers are probably going to care a lot more about your characters and your story.” Don’t lose sight of what matters most – the human drama at the heart of the tale.

You Learn By Doing

While King offers a wealth of useful advice, he ultimately argues that “You become a writer simply by reading and writing.” No classes, books, or seminars can substitute for the growth that comes through persistently engaging in the work itself. “You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.” Time spent absorbing and practicing language is what counts most in the end.

Write to Enrich Life – Your Own And Others

In a passage that beautifully encapsulates his view of the deeper purpose of writing, King declares: “Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink.”

In Conclusion

Stephen King has earned his place in the pantheon of great 20th-century authors not only through the brilliance of classics like The Shining and Carrie, but also through generously sharing his hard-won insights and tips on writing. While Stephen King’s primary tool is terror rather than inspiration, the writing tips explored above—from dedicating regular time to writing, unleashing creativity through organic drafting, using vivid sensory detail, perfecting dialogue, and persevering through rejection—convey universal advice for writers of all genres and skill levels. Though much of King’s advice seems basic rather than revolutionary, his tens of millions of books sold prove these simple methods work when applied diligently over time. For writers who may never attain King’s stratospheric success and notoriety, his tips offer a flexible framework for developing sustainable writing habits and skills.

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Stephen King’s 20 Rules for Writers

in Writing | January 19th, 2023 7 Comments

Image by the USO, via Flickr Com­mons

In one of my favorite Stephen King inter­views, for The Atlantic , he talks at length about the vital impor­tance of a good open­ing line. “There are all sorts of the­o­ries,” he says, “it’s a tricky thing.” “But there’s one thing” he’s sure about: “An open­ing line should invite the read­er to begin the sto­ry. It should say: Lis­ten. Come in here. You want to know about this.” King’s dis­cus­sion of open­ing lines is com­pelling because of his dual focus as an avid read­er and a prodi­gious writer of fiction—he doesn’t lose sight of either per­spec­tive:

We’ve talked so much about the read­er, but you can’t for­get that the open­ing line is impor­tant to the writer, too. To the per­son who’s actu­al­ly boots-on-the-ground. Because it’s not just the reader’s way in, it’s the writer’s way in also, and you’ve got to find a door­way that fits us both.

This is excel­lent advice. As you ori­ent your read­er, so you ori­ent your­self, point­ing your work in the direc­tion it needs to go. Now King admits that he doesn’t think much about the open­ing line as he writes, in a first draft, at least. That per­fect­ly craft­ed and invit­ing open­ing sen­tence is some­thing that emerges in revi­sion, which can be where the bulk of a writer’s work hap­pens.

Revi­sion in the sec­ond draft, “one of them, any­way,” may “neces­si­tate some big changes” says King in his 2000 mem­oir slash writ­ing guide On Writ­ing . And yet, it is an essen­tial process, and one that “hard­ly ever fails.” Below, we bring you King’s top twen­ty rules from On Writ­ing . About half of these relate direct­ly to revi­sion. The oth­er half cov­er the intangibles—attitude, dis­ci­pline, work habits. A num­ber of these sug­ges­tions reli­ably pop up in every writer’s guide. But quite a few of them were born of Stephen King’s many decades of tri­al and error and—writes the Barnes & Noble book blog —“over 350 mil­lion copies” sold, “like them or loathe them.”

1. First write for your­self, and then wor­ry about the audi­ence. “When you write a sto­ry, you’re telling your­self the sto­ry. When you rewrite, your main job is tak­ing out all the things that are not the sto­ry.”

2. Don’t use pas­sive voice. “Timid writ­ers like pas­sive verbs for the same rea­son that timid lovers like pas­sive part­ners. The pas­sive voice is safe.”

3. Avoid adverbs. “The adverb is not your friend.”

4. Avoid adverbs, espe­cial­ly after “he said” and “she said.”

5. But don’t obsess over per­fect gram­mar. “The object of fic­tion isn’t gram­mat­i­cal cor­rect­ness but to make the read­er wel­come and then tell a sto­ry.”

6. The mag­ic is in you. “I’m con­vinced that fear is at the root of most bad writ­ing.”

7. Read, read, read. ”If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write.”

8. Don’t wor­ry about mak­ing oth­er peo­ple hap­py. “If you intend to write as truth­ful­ly as you can, your days as a mem­ber of polite soci­ety are num­bered, any­way.”

9. Turn off the TV. “TV—while work­ing out or any­where else—really is about the last thing an aspir­ing writer needs.”

10. You have three months. “The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a sea­son.”

11. There are two secrets to suc­cess. “I stayed phys­i­cal­ly healthy, and I stayed mar­ried.”

12. Write one word at a time. “Whether it’s a vignette of a sin­gle page or an epic tril­o­gy like ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ the work is always accom­plished one word at a time.”

13. Elim­i­nate dis­trac­tion. “There should be no tele­phone in your writ­ing room, cer­tain­ly no TV or videogames for you to fool around with.”

14. Stick to your own style. “One can­not imi­tate a writer’s approach to a par­tic­u­lar genre, no mat­ter how sim­ple what that writer is doing may seem.”

15. Dig. “Sto­ries are relics, part of an undis­cov­ered pre-exist­ing world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her tool­box to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as pos­si­ble.”

16. Take a break. “You’ll find read­ing your book over after a six-week lay­off to be a strange, often exhil­a­rat­ing expe­ri­ence.”

17. Leave out the bor­ing parts and kill your dar­lings. “(kill your dar­lings, kill your dar­lings, even when it breaks your ego­cen­tric lit­tle scribbler’s heart, kill your dar­lings.)”

18. The research shouldn’t over­shad­ow the sto­ry. “Remem­ber that word back . That’s where the research belongs: as far in the back­ground and the back sto­ry as you can get it.”

19. You become a writer sim­ply by read­ing and writ­ing. “You learn best by read­ing a lot and writ­ing a lot, and the most valu­able lessons of all are the ones you teach your­self.”

20. Writ­ing is about get­ting hap­py. “Writ­ing isn’t about mak­ing mon­ey, get­ting famous, get­ting dates, get­ting laid or mak­ing friends. Writ­ing is mag­ic, as much as the water of life as any oth­er cre­ative art. The water is free. So drink.”

See a fuller expo­si­tion of King’s writ­ing wis­dom at Barnes & Noble’s blog .

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 69 Pages of Writ­ing Advice Denis John­son Col­lect­ed from Flan­nery O’Connor, Jack Ker­ouac, Stephen King, Hunter Thomp­son, Wern­er Her­zog & Many Oth­ers

7 Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Stephen King’s Top 10 All-Time Favorite Books

Josh Jones  is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at  @jdmagness

by OC | Permalink | Comments (7) |

Related posts:

Comments (7), 7 comments so far.

That is a great view to start from.

What does pla­gia­rist mean.

Great tips to write by. Thank you Bar­ry Boyd

It was worth the read. Thanks for this knowl­edge.

Thank u this helped a lot I won’t to write a book so bad but iam a bad speller and iam iam to dis­tract­ed but earth­ey things like phone and what going on in the world so what I took out of this is but that creap a why and get writ­ing

Leave out the bor­ing parts? Physi­cian, heal thy­self. Fol­low­ing that rule would halve every dark tow­er book after IV. Leave out bor­ing parts, indeed.

I first read the advice about avoid­ing any dis­trac­tions like the phone or TV in one of Study­bay’s blog posts about how to write an essay. And I see sim­i­lar advice here, too. I can only agree 100% with this point.

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20 Pieces of Writing Advice from Stephen King

If you're going to get writing advice, stephen king is the right person to heed. .

Stephen King is one of the most prolific novelists and screenwriters ever. His books have sold more than 350 million copies, and many have been adapted into films, television series, miniseries, comic books, and mixed media. They span titles like The Shawshank Redemption , The Green Mile, It , The Stand, The Shining , Carrie, Misery, Stand by Me, Pet Sematary, Castle Rock,  and Under the Dome. 

How do you achieve the kind of success he's had?

It's not just about avoiding the passive voice and choosing to kill your darlings. There's a lot more hard work too! You have to write as truthfully as possible. 

As King says, stories are relics part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. It's your job to find them. And to write.  A lot. and keep writing until someone takes notice. Keep writing until it's not bad writing. Maybe read a lot too. 

His personal formula is: "Read and write four to six hours a day. If you cannot find the time for that, you can't expect to become a good writer."

He even sets out each day with a quota of 2,000 words and will not stop writing until it is met.

Check out these other helpful tips from  Outstanding Screenplays  and let's talk after the jump. 

1. Write something that’s forbidden. Say things that others won’t say.

What's your unique perspective ? How are you daring to push the envelope and talk about the truths you believe? You might be a member of polite society, but that doesn't mean you can;t dig deep. Don't just intend to write. Write! 

2. Writing is like building a campfire; one by one, your characters must come out of the woods to help add onto the fire, onto the story.

Character introductions all matter. You can say a lot about a person when you meet them, and you can tell a lot about them as they interact with others. 

3. Keep your imagination young.

Burnout is real. Get outside, go on adventures, try new genres, and mentor if you can. Stay young by caring a lot about the world and challenging yourself. Try to find happiness . You've spent days as a member of a world where people lose their imagination. Don't be one of them. 

4. Recognize the difference between horror and suspense.

Know the genre you're working in and the tropes we expect to see. If you can define horror and suspense, you can mix and match them. 

5. To find your story, always keep your radar up for finding ideas, and let them come to you.

Carry a notebook everywhere. Put a pad beside the bed. Sometimes the best ideas just come to you out of the blue. Be ready to capture them. 

6. Begin with an idea from your life, then ask yourself, "What if?"

You're the best main character you have. Think about different situations and what you would do in them. then build backward. 

7. Write simple, visual stories with high conflict if you want your work to be adapted into a film.

Seeing is believing. The more you can communicate the visuals of your story, the more the audience can connect and see the world. 

8. After you’ve finished your book or screenplay, let it marinate for some time, then come back to it.

I have a two-week rule. Finish a draft, then wait two weeks to touch the screenplay. This will give you ample time to think of plot holes, new dialogue, and come back with fresh eyes. 

9. If you keep getting rejected, get a bigger nail for your rejection slips.

Rejection is the name of the game. Even the best writers hear 10 "no's" for every one "yes." Soldier on. 

10. Follow characters and situations and see where they go, instead of resorting to plot.

The plot is secondary to characters that we're interested in and sometimes care about. If the emotions and actions feel real, we'll believe them. And we'll believe their actions. 

11. Start with forcing yourself to write sentence by sentence, until you get into a flow state.

Push yourself. You need to find that rhythm, even on the days where it's not coming easily. Therefore, don't let yourself off the hook. Write, even if it's bad. You can always rewrite later. 

12. Stop putting off reading and writing.

To get better as a writer, read scripts . Learn how other screenwriters handle situations, set pieces, and character development. 

13. Good ideas will stay with you, so write down all your ideas to get rid of the bad ones.

The good ones are the ones you can't shake off. They're the ones that follow you around and beg for you to express them. 

14. Writing can be learned, but it can’t be taught. You learn it yourself.

Much of this journey requires you to sit down and do it. Just write. You learn by challenging yourself. 

15. Writing is self-hypnosis.

Finding the zone means writing enough to get there. When the pages come, you can feel it. Lull yourself into the act and eventually, it will come. 

16. Sometimes writing short ideas will lead to creating longer stories.

Start with a scene . Create a character and a goal. See what evolves from there. Where could this story be going? Think of an ending and build backward. Start small. 

17. Get your rest to come back with a refreshed mind.

Sleep is not overrated. Sometimes you need to just step away from things. Take a break. Relax. Let things happen as they do. 

18. Learn to write for different mediums.

Writing is a muscle, but you can work out different points by practicing screenwriting, short stories, novels, poetry, and anything else. Diversity will bring new ideas to light and strengthen your overall writing. 

19. Choose to write stories that you would like to live with for a while.

I always say don't start a feature you're not willing to work on for five years, because it might take that long and that many rewrites to get noticed. 

20. Get immersed in your writing process until the outside world is gone.

Steep yourself in the story. Let it overwhelm your mind and tune out all else. Dig deep and stew with the story until you know it back and front. 

Source: Outstanding Screenplays

• Kill Your Darlings ›

Is the World Ready for a Fully AI-based Complete Editing Suite?

A look at ltx studio and the myriad of ai-based editing tools and features..

While we continue to report on how AI models like OpenAI’s Sora, Luma’s Dream Machine, and Runway’s Gen-3 Alpha are promising (or threatening) a complete generative AI video revolution, we do want to take the time to highlight some new AI products which are using AI as a base and for features to explore how this technology might continue to shape the industry as well.

Today let’s take a quick look at LTX Studio, which does make use of generative AI video, but is a more holistic AI-based editing suite that uses AI to help with storyboarding, editing, and pretty much all types of video production.

LTX Studio AI-Based Editing Suite

As you can see in the video above (plus in others below), LTX Studio promises to allow editors to control every aspect of your videos using AI. From ideation to final edits, LTX Studio presents itself as one holistic platform for all things video. It’s only available right now for Beta access, but reviews are starting to come in and the whole system does appear to be quite powerful and promising.

It’s also a clear sign of where the industry is heading. We’ve seen AI creep into Adobe products and NLEs like Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve already have text-based editing features with plenty more AI tools to undoubtedly come soon.

This LTX Studio does look to be one of the more advanced, holistic options so far though that does offer plenty of tools and features for pre-production in general, making it appealing to those looking to utilize AI tools and features early—and often—throughout their filmmaking process.

Check out these further demos below. And we’ll keep you in the loop as more details about this powerful new platform come out.

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10 Bits Of Writing Advice From Stephen King

Writers Write is a writing resource. In this post we share 10 bits of writing advice from the American author, Stephen King.

Stephen King is one of the world’s most prolific writers. He was born 21 September 1947.

With millions of books and ebooks sold to his Constant Readers, he’s also one of the most successful authors of our time.

The good news is that the ability to write – and write well – is within every writer’s grasp. The better news is that Stephen King loves to give writing advice that can help writers get there. Here are some of the best, practical writing tips from one of the Masters of Writing.

If you happen to be a fan of Stephen King and/or his writing, good places to start would be his nonfiction books On Writing and Danse Macabre . Some of the single best advice on writing, grammar, and the writing industry as a whole can be found within these pages.  

1. Write Sober               

Ernest Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson might make writers think that getting high or drunk is an essential to the writer’s toolkit – but here’s the thing: it isn’t. Addiction does damage, and as King points out in a Rolling Stone interview, it can really mess you up.

“ The Tommyknockers is an awful book. That was the last one I wrote before I cleaned up my act. And I’ve thought about it a lot lately and said to myself, “There’s really a good book in here, underneath all the sort of spurious energy that cocaine provides, and I ought to go back.” The book is about 700 pages long, and I’m thinking, “There’s probably a good 350-page novel in there.” ~ Rolling Stone (2014)  

2. Avoid Distraction When Writing

Don’t get lost in the related link loop for hours when you could (or should) be writing. Distractions are best avoided when you’re in writing mode. Even Stephen King has to admit that YouTube can be a burden sometimes.  

“YouTube is very addictive. I refused to put it on my favourite places because it’s too easy to go there.” ~ Stephen King Visits YouTube

3. Listen To Critics

Don’t shut out the critics. Critics have pretty useful advice that can better your writing and guide your next pitch or paragraph. When asked about the worst writing advice he’s ever received, King brought up being told not to listen to critics.  

“The worst advice? “Don’t listen to the critics.” I think that you really ought to listen to the critics, because sometimes they’re telling you something is broken that you can fix. I think the advice “Don’t listen to the critics” is a sort of defensive thing that says if you stick your head in the sand, you won’t have to hear any bad news and you won’t have to see any bad news and you won’t have to change what you’re doing. But if you listen, sometimes you can get rid of a bad habit.” ~ Writers Digest, 1991

4. Write A First Draft (In Three Months)

How long have you been working on the first draft of your novel or short story? King says it should take no more than three months to wrap up what you’ve got for the basics.  

“The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season.” ~ On Writing

5. Avoid Using Adverbs

Fans who know Stephen King should already know that he doesn’t love the use of adverbs . There are several quotes pertaining to them, but in this one he says exactly why they aren’t appropriate.  

“The adverb is not your friend. Consider the sentence “He closed the door firmly.” It’s by no means a terrible sentence, but ask yourself if ‘firmly’ really has to be there.” ~ On Writing

6. Remember Why You Write

Why do you write? Doing it for the right reasons can make the entire process an easier one. Stephen King has his reasons – and so should you. Again from the great On Writing , here’s what King had to say about it.  

“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.” ~ On Writing

7. Write Great Opening Lines

Opening lines hook readers, or puzzle writers and editors. Stephen King has mastered the art of writing a great opening line for chapters and paragraphs – and in an interview for The Atlantic, King bares all.

For readers :  “An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.” For writers : “We’ve talked so much about the reader, but you can’t forget that the opening line is important to the writer, too. To the person who’s actually boots-on-the-ground. Because it’s not just the reader’s way in, it’s the writer’s way in also, and you’ve got to find a doorway that fits us both.” ~ The Atlantic

8. See Stories As Unfound Relics  

Where ideas come from is one of the largest great mysteries of the creative world. King says in On Writing that stories are relics – and that all writers really have to do is learn how to find them .  

“Stories aren’t souvenir tee-shirts or Game Boys. Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible. Sometimes the fossil you uncover is small; a seashell. Sometimes it’s enormous, a Tyrannosaurus Rex with all the gigantic ribs and grinning teeth. Either way, short story or thousand page whopper of a novel, the techniques of excavation remain basically the same.” ~ On Writing

9. Don’t Obsess About Genres  

A lot of writers get stuck at which genre they’re writing. Don’t. Sometimes genre writing can be restrictive. During an NPR interview, King clarifies how he has managed to transcend genres when he sits down to do his thing.

“People can call me a horror writer if they want to, and that’s fine — as long as the checks don’t bounce, I’m happy with that. But I think that I do a lot more, and I’m interested in the mystery of what we are and what we’re capable of doing.” ~ NPR

 10.  Avoid Phases Like…

Writers should keep an eye on King’s official Twitter account, where he occasionally voices thoughts and drops nuggets of writing advice – like this one on an overused phrase.  

“Writing a story or a novel? Great! Want a tip? NEVER use the phrase ‘for a long moment.’” ~ @StephenKing

If you want to read more about Stephen King, read:

• Stephen King on Writing Short Stories
• 13 Writing Lessons from Stephen King’s On Writing
• A Basement Kind of a Guy

Source for image: stephenking.com

If you enjoyed this, you will love:

• George R. R. Martin’s Writing Advice
• Marian Keyes’ 3 Tips For New Writers
• Jennifer Egan’s Advice For Young Writers
• Peter James’ 7 Top Writing Tips
• James Rollins’ 3 Tips For Writers
• Chris Bohjalian’s 10 Tips To Help Aspiring Writers
• David Baldacci’s 5 Top Writing Tips
• Isabel Allende’s Writing Process
• Nicholas Evans On Why Writing Is Like Going On A Hike
• Writing Advice From The World’s Most Famous Authors

TIP: If you want help writing a book, buy The Novel Writing Exercises Workbook .

• Alex J. Coyne , Featured Post , stephen king , Writing Trivia

2 thoughts on “10 Bits Of Writing Advice From Stephen King”

Thanks for the inspiration.

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© Writers Write 2022

Writing Resources: Stephen King On Writing

by Melissa Donovan | May 26, 2022 | Writing Resources | 34 comments

Stephen King: On Writing

Today I’m bringing back a post that’s been sitting in the archives for a while. Stephen King’s On Writing is one of the most important books ever written on the craft of writing, one of the few texts that all writers should experience, regardless of your preferred form or genre. This post has been updated to reflect the latest facts. Enjoy!

Elvis was the king of rock and roll. Michael Jackson was the king of pop. And Stephen King is the king of horror.

He’s one of the most successful authors in the world, the recipient of numerous honorable awards, and certainly one of the wealthiest and most recognizable writers alive.

As someone who loves good storytelling, regardless of genre, I can appreciate a good horror story. When it comes to Stephen King, I especially appreciate the creativity and artistic merit that goes into writing good horror fiction.

I’ve read a few of King’s books and enjoyed them, mostly those that fall just outside of horror: The Stand , Hearts in Atlantis , and The Gunslinger . I loved the film Stand by Me , which was based on his short story “The Body” as well the film adaptations of The Green Mile and Misery .

According to Wikipedia as of 2022: “King has published 64 novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, and five nonfiction books. He has written approximately two hundred short stories,” and “his books have sold more than 350 million copies.” That’s a lot!

The Buzz On Writing

Years ago, I saw Mr. King’s book, On Writing , on a shelf in my local bookstore. I thought it was good that horror writers now had their own bible, and moseyed downstairs to the used-books basement, where I liked to hunt for old McCaffrey and Bradbury books.

The buzz about King’s book wasn’t immediate, but it was insistent. First one writer, then another, would rave about “Stephen King’s book on writing.” This is a convenient sentence because the book has a convenient (and brilliant) title; It’s called On Writing .

Eventually the buzz became a persistent hum, almost a chant: “You haven’t read it yet?” “Oh, you’ll LOVE it.” “It’s the BEST writing book EVER.”

Here’s the thing about writers: They don’t throw around book recommendations haphazardly, especially books about writing. So when every writer you know is telling you that this is a wonderful book that you simply must experience, you really ought to read it.

A King’s Life

On Writing is part memoir, part instruction on the craft of writing. This is a smart structure, and one that’s rarely seen in books that aim to educate and inform. Doesn’t it make sense that people who aspire to become successful authors would benefit not only from learning writing skills, but also from studying the lives of other authors who have already achieved success?

The first half of the book takes the reader through Mr. King’s writing life from childhood, through young adulthood, and to his ultimate success as an author. Ever wonder what a wildly successful author read as a kid? Which movies he watched? When he started writing? What challenges he faced in getting his work published?

It’s all there, including the nail on little Stevie King’s bedroom wall upon which he impaled his rejection slips — a long nail, which eventually filled up and led to a second nail. But little Stevie King did something most young writers fail to do: he refused to give up. So the rejections piled up, but so did his writing skills. And then one day, his work was published. And then another day, he got a movie deal ( Carrie). Book deals, awards, and legions of fans followed. But buried in all the acclaim and attention is a man who simply loves to write, a man who lives to write.

And Stephen King is a man who has mastered writing.

In the second half of On Writing , Stephen King gets down to the nitty gritty. This is the part of the book that’s just for writers. The first half, being somewhat of a memoir, will delight readers and fans of his books, films, and stories. It will delight writers as well, but we want to know what advice the king has for his loyal subjects, and whether or not you like horror, (indeed, whether or not you like Stephen King’s writing at all), any writer who yearns to carve a career out of the passion that is writing is one of Mr. King’s subjects.

It all starts with the one thing every writer must have: a toolbox. In your toolbox, you’ll put your vocabulary, grammar, and a host of other tools you’ll use to create effective works that resonate and compel. Mr. King talks about plot, characters, where to get ideas, and why The Elements of Style is his favorite writing book.

When I opened this book and started reading, I didn’t know what to expect. I was in the middle of at least four other books (a poetry collection, two novels, and another writing book). I quickly forgot about them all. I could not put this book down, so I devoured it in less than two days. That’s a testament to Stephen King’s writing, because I’m not easily impressed, and it takes damn good writing to keep me turning pages and singing praises.

The value of On Writing  is immeasurable. I find that writing advice is valuable, but when you add personal story and experience to the mix, it becomes priceless. Every year, I buy and read books that promise to help writers. Most of them end up in the discard pile and get hauled off to the used bookstore. Very few make it to the shelves of my library, let alone to the recommendations I make here at Writing Forward, but now, On Writing has become one of my favorite selections.

34 Comments

I agree with just about every thing you said, here. I don’t like horror, either. Not even a little, so that this book on writing is the only Stephen King I’ve ever read … and that it was entirely worth it.

It’s a gem! I feel like it filled in a gap in my writing resources collection, mostly because of the memoir that is included. I love reading, watching, and listening to biographies!

The book is an essential part of my writing library. Whenever rejection gets me down or motivation is lacking I immediately read the key parts.

I especially like his reference as to why one should write – “not to get paid or laid”, but for the joy of it.

If you are serious or want to be buy the book.

It has become an essential book in my library as well. I was especially fascinated with the part describing the nail in the wall upon which he put all the rejection slips. Another part that stood out was when he revised a story and sent it to a publication that had previously rejected the very same story, but this time they accepted it (presumably because he had established a name for himself). There’s a treat on every page!

Not a fan of horror. Isn’t everyday life harsh enough? But I like mysteries and I suppose without all the horror elements King could be considered a kind of mystery writer. I’ll have to think about this book, but at the moment my plate is full.

This book was on my wish list for well over a year before I finally bought it. I feel like I read it when the time was right for me to read it, so if you’re meant to read it, then you will (when the time is right). This book has nothing to do with horror; it’s just about writing and being a writer. Also, Mr. King has written novels and short stories that aren’t in the horror genre at all, such as Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (adapted into the film The Shawshank Redemption ) and The Green Mile .

Melissa, I am SO glad you shared this review. I can relate to every word! I am not a big horror fan at all . And although I have watched a couple of his movies (out of curiosity), I have also walked past his book many times. I even saw it the other day sitting on a shelf– used . It was around $1 or $2. I’m SO kicking myself right now because I almost bought it. *sigh*

I think I will treat myself to a copy sometime soon. And I’ll definitely read it quickly. I’ll let you know my thoughts. 😀

Thanks, Melissa! I value your opinion, so I know I want this book!

After reading this book, I’ve already decided to read more of Stephen King’s work, though I will probably stay away from the hardcore horror. However, first I have a big pile of books to get through, so maybe in a year or two…heheee. By the way, I received my copy of Grammar Girl’s book last week (on your recommendation), and I’m greatly looking forward to reading it and then reviewing it here. Also, I’m loving the Larabars!

If you’re not a horror fan, but want to read more of King’s work, you might try Bag of Bones . He describes it as “a haunted love story.” I liked it, and while it has a little gruesomeness in a couple of places, it has some sweet parts and is much less icky/traumatizing than some of his work.

I’d like to read Bag of Bones as well as The Stand and The Dark Tower series. I’ll be busy for a while…

Hi Melissa – It’s a few years since I read this book and I loved it too. I’m going to have to get myself another copy and re-read.

When you mentioned the nail in the wall, you reminded me of how persistent a writer has to be and I definitely needed reminding again.

The older I get, the more I believe that persistence is the true key to success, and that’s probably why the nail in the wall struck me so much.

I love horror and even if there’s a genre I don’t like, I don’t turn the book away because it’s in that genre. Every book is different and unique no matter what the “genre” is. And if the story is written well enough it doesn’t matter where it’s shelved.

I have not yet read “On Writing” but look forward to it.

I’m the same way, Hannah. I have read some horror novels, and I’m definitely open to reading more in the future. My main problem with horror is that I have a difficult time suspending my disbelief. I don’t know why, because suspending my disbelief is not a problem at all with fantasy and science fiction. It’s strange. In any case, On Writing is excellent, and I do hope you’ll read and enjoy it.

Thank you for this review. My daughter loves Stephen King and has a lot of his books. I do not like horror either, but have heard of this book. I have it but have not read it yet. But I definitely will now.

It’s definitely a great read whether you’re a fan of horror or not. Come back and share your thoughts after you’ve read it!

I used to love King’s books, but never thought of myself as a horror reader. Now I don’t really read any horror at all, but am still a big fan of On Writing . The man has a gift.

Yes, although I’ve read just a little bit of his work, it’s clear that he has mastered many angles: story, plot, characters, craft, mechanics, and more.

Beautiful write up. I know someday I will read it. It sounds too compelling.

Have you tried the Talisman? It’s less horror. I remember reading it one Summer and it was a crazy adventure. Actually, it was more like an experience.

I haven’t tried The Talisman ; in fact, I don’t think I’ve heard of that one. My Stephen King reading list sure is growing! Thanks for your kind words, J.D.

I love this book and just about every King book I have ever read. Horror is one of my all time favorite genre’s and King is definitely a master at it. When ‘On Writing’ came out I ran right out and purchased it and have read it a few times since. Wonderful post on this book and this writer by the way.

Since your not a big fan of horror, one of Kings books you may enjoy is Dolores Claiborne. More mystery than horror and of course a wonderfully written page turner.

Ah yes, I saw the movie, but I don’t remember it very well. I do love everything I’ve read by Mr. King so far, and the only movie I wasn’t crazy about was Pet Sematary. I’ll add Dolores Claiborne to the list (after I finish the Dark Tower series). Thanks for the recommendation, Tiffiny!

You know I love this post! I gotta get this book!

You’ve definitely gotta get it! I inhaled it. Such a good one.

The chant still persistant. I had the book in my list of books to get, but after this great post I think I am going to get it sooner.

Yes, I think any writer should have this one at the top of the to-read list (if it’s not on the already-read list). I highly recommend it, especially for fiction writers.

other then the Dark Tower series, give me stephen king’s top five books…

Since I have not read all of his books, I wouldn’t attempt to list the top five. However, I’m sure you can find reader recommendations online with a simple Google or Amazon search.

I read Stephen King’s “On Writing” in one go too. It was fascinating and highly enjoyable and instructive. But above all it was inspirational. It made me want to write even more. If I ever get stuck I’ll pick it up and have a read and then I just have to go and write. Highly recommended for any writer. Chris

A well crafted book on writing should always inspire! Stephen King hits the spot.

I love Stephen King and his book On Writing! It’s the type of book that stays inspirational no matter how many times you’ve read it. I actually put it at number 1 on my list of top 10 writing books of all time.

On Writing is what it says on the tin. For King’s writer-readers that want to know what his tips are for writing horror specifically, that book is called Danse Macabre.

I wholeheartedly agree. I bought this book shortly after starting writing. It was one of the best buys I’ve ever made. Having said that, another book that should be on every writer’s bookshelf is Mary Deal’s Write it Right. Mary is an excellent writer. I have read several of her books.

Thanks for the recommendation! I’ll have to check that out.

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4 September 2023

Breaking Down the Key Lessons of Stephen King’s On Writing

In On Writing , his seminal work on the craft of creative writing, Stephen King said, “Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well.”

As King put it, writers are uniquely positioned to leave a lasting impact on people’s lives. Writers combine experience with empathy and imagination to build worlds people can get lost in.

As a craft, writing is simultaneously generous and self-centered. At first, writing might be about scratching an internal itch — to clarify an idea in your mind or find catharsis for a pent-up emotion. But for your inner world to mean something to someone else, you need to learn how to communicate ideas well. In short, you need to learn how to write.

No resource can better teach you the art of the craft than Stephen King’s  On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft . The famous horror author’s memoir is part autobiography, part how-to guide.

King draws from his experiences in the writing industry to provide aspiring writers with practical tips on storytelling, editing, publishing, and life. For fans of his work, he breaks down certain chapters and scenes from his books and explains why he wrote as he did. For instance, he explains his reasoning behind an early chapter of  The Dead Zone , and why he put protagonist Johnny Smith into a carnival backdrop.

There are plenty more pearls of wisdom to find from the king of the genre, and to give you a taste of what the book has to offer, here are some of its key learning points.

Only those with the time to read have the time and tools to write. That’s how King puts it.

It makes sense: Reading expands your knowledge of grammar, sentence structure, storytelling, character development, and more. Additionally, through reading, you’ll discover what you like and don’t like, which can influence how you write.

Refine your writer’s toolbox

To improve your writing, turn to these three main tools: vocabulary, grammar, and style.

Vocabulary refers to your word choices. According to King, it is always best to use the first word that comes to mind. If you force yourself to use words outside of your normal vocabulary, you risk diluting your authentic voice.

Don’t be ashamed of having a simple vocabulary. As King puts it, how you use your words matters more than how big your words are.

Grammar refers to the rules of language. Brush up on things like punctuation, tense, and subject-verb agreement to ensure that your readers understand what you’re trying to say.

Style refers to how you structure your sentences. According to King, the best style resource for writers is Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style . It contains many tips for improving the clarity and power of your sentence structure. King, in particular, has two style pet peeves: adverbs and the passive voice. As we mentioned in our article  ‘The Road To Hell Is Paved With Adverbs’ , adverbs can make your writing sound lazy. Instead of showing a reader how an action plays out, adverbs tell the reader how they should perceive the action. Passive voice, on the other hand, can make your sentences sound weak and hard to follow. If you want your readers to have a clearer idea of what’s going on, start with the noun, then the action.

Write with the door closed…

When King said, “Write with the door closed,” he meant, don’t take input from others before completing your first draft.

Why seek criticism for something that isn’t finished? Feedback at this stage of the writing process might interrupt that initial surge of inspiration. Worse, you might end up compromising your authentic voice to earn approval from others.

To keep your work focused, don’t think about anybody else’s opinions when writing your first draft.

…and rewrite with the door open

Only when your first draft has been completed can you seek feedback from others. Because the draft has been completed, the people reviewing your work will have a clearer idea of what you’re trying to accomplish.

Instead of intercepting your message (as they would have if you let them criticize an unfinished draft), they can instead help you find the most effective way to say what you want to say. Outside perspectives can help you identify what is unclear, what is missing, and what is unnecessary. When Stephen King wrote On Writing , he already had about 30 years of experience in the publishing industry. And because he shared his story, readers can learn from three decades’ worth of writing knowledge in a 320-page book!

Note: All purchase links in this post are affiliate links through BookShop.org, and Novlr may earn a small commission – every purchase supports independent bookstores.

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9 months ago

• #20 Writing Tips from Stephen King
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20 Writing Tips from Stephen King

Here are 20 Writing Tips from Stephen King:

• Write something that's forbidden. Say things that others won't say.
• Writing is like building a campfire; one by one, your characters must come out of the woods to help add onto the fire, onto the story.
• Keep your imagination young.
• Recognize the difference between horror and suspense.
• To find your story always keep your radar for finding ideas on and let them come to you.
• Begin with an idea from your life, then ask yourself "what if".
• Write simple, visual stories with high conflict if you want your work to be adapted into a film.
• After you've finished your book or screenplay, let it marinate for some time, then come back to it.
• If you keep getting rejected, get a bigger nail for your rejection slips.
• Follow characters and situations and see where they go, instead of resorting to plot.
• Start with forcing yourself to write sentence by sentence until you get into a flow state.
• Stop putting off reading and writing.
• Good ideas will stay with you, so write down all your ideas to get rid of the bad ones.
• Writing can be learned but it can't be taught. You learn it yourself.
• Writing is self-hypnosis.
• Sometimes writing short ideas will lead into creating longer stories.
• Get your rest to come back with a refreshed mind.
• Learn to write for different mediums.
• Choose to write stories that you would like to live with for a while.
• Get immersed in your writing process until the outside world is gone.

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• 26 May 2019

Stephen King on writing: plan your book in advance, or not?

“Stephen King: On Writing” explains how he never plans his books, but just gets started.  Should you plan a novel in advance, or not?  A few tips on writing a book.   Listen to a podcast of this post here .

Let’s explore two common methods of writing a novel.  I have tried both, and can show you some examples in my work (see links below).  Each can work brilliantly: which is best for you will depend on how you write and what you are writing. I also look at how long it takes to write a book.

Start today!

Before we look at that, let me cite the US fantasy author Stephen R Donaldson, who was once asked by an admirer how to achieve success in writing.  “ Start today ,” Donaldson said.

Donaldson’s advice is great.  If you want to start writing fiction, don’t wait until the conditions are perfect and all the stars are aligned (“I’m waiting until the kids grow up”; “I have to get some new writing software”; “I’m too busy right now”).  Set aside some time tonight, this afternoon or even this morning; get out a pen and paper ;  and start writing. If you don’t get started, it will take forever to write a book.

How do you begin?

There are different ways of writing a novel – I often use this lovely fountain pen , which I inherited from my father, writing in green ink.

The standard method of writing a novel

Top writing schools and universities across the world teach the first method .  You should plan your story around a standard structure.  This structure is set out in a thousand primers – try googling “narrative structure” or “three act structure”.

This plan goes back to the ancient Greeks.  That’s no bad thing: it has stood the test of time.  In brief:

• the first part (or “act”) of your story introduces your main characters and describes their situation, usually including a problem or conflict;
• the second part involves an “inciting act” (eg: a letter in the post; discovery of a body; a glance across a crowded room) leading to, or highlighting, a conflict or problem.  This then escalates, perhaps via a series of mini-crises, to become a crisis;
• the third part sees the main character or characters developing and changing (“digging deeper than ever before”) to a climax where he or she overcomes the crisis, often preceded by a section where it seems that “all is lost”.  This leads on to the end of the story, with the main character in a new equilibrium.

Standard method: characters

To supplement this planning process, writing schools teach you that you should develop your characters .  You should know everything about them.  Each should have desires, goals, a past, maybe some secrets and surprises.  Again, if you google “how to craft compelling characters” you will find lots of good stuff.  You should know everything about your characters, as if they were your sister, your brother, or your best friend.  That way, they will come across in your fiction as realistic and fascinating.

Standard method: research

You should also, according to conventional wisdom, do plenty of  research  to make sure your novel sits well in the period or setting in which you write it.

This method works brilliantly for many writers.  I recommend it.  A great example of fiction I have written with a plan in advance is my Berlin thriller Blood Summit .    Blood Summit has a couple of shocking twists – I can’t see how I could have built so much tension without planning in advance.

Written by the standard method: Blood Summit

Standard method: it takes a year plus

But it is not the only way to write a novel.  Indeed, the writer Martin Amis said: “The common conception of how novels get written seems to me to be an exact description of writer’s block.”  (Amis also recommends writing in longhand .)

For some writers, all that planning, structure and preparation is like swimming through peanut butter: possible, but incredibly hard work.  Some writers may not have the time, the inclination or the patience to plan out their novels, do their research, and imagine their characters before they even start writing.  Or they may simply feel that all that structure  doesn’t feel very creative.  

How long does it take to write a book this way? It can take any amount of time, but if you are not writing full time, you should plan on at least a year.

Stephen King on writing: how the master does it

For people who don’t feel that planning will work for them, we have  the second method of writing a novel : the Stephen King writing process.

The most famous account of this method is the book by the fantastically successful novelist Stephen King: “On Writing” (see picture).  Many professional writers and reviewers hate “On Writing”, but I like both parts. First a short autobiography about how King became a writer – he didn’t find it easy. Then part : how does Stephen King write his books – which I found revolutionary.

How to write? King says he doesn’t plot or prepare his books at all.  He simply starts with a situation, eg: “two children lost in the woods find something sticking out of the ground”.  He then writes on, letting the story develop.  The lack of advance preparation means he can write quickly, producing a novel in around three months.  He then sets the novel aside (“in the drawer”) and does something else for another three months, before returning to review, rewrite and improve the novel, which may take months more.

For an example of fiction I wrote without planning in advance , see my black comic Seven Hotel Stories.

Written without an advance plan:  Seven Hotel Stories . Can you tell the difference?

Written without an advance plan: Eternal Life

How long does it take to write a book this way? In theory, less time than the traditional method. But see below!

My experience of writing novels using both methods

In addition to Seven Hotel Stories and Eternal Life, I also used the “Stephen King: On Writing” method for my comedy “Sex and the Summit” and my sequels to “Sex and the Summit” , “The Brexit Ambassador” and “The Spear of Destiny” . All are in the drawer.

My experience was that using the “Stephen King: On Writing” method, or the Stephen King writing process, I wrote the novels relatively quickly.  But when I came to revise them, they needed a lot of polishing and revision.  Taking these two stages together, this second method probably took me about the same amount of time to produce a decent first draft as the first method.  But there are big differences:

• The standard method is more predictable.  You know where you are going.  This may be important if, for example, you are planning a big twist or “reveal” in your plot.  Each time you sit down to write, you have some idea where you are in the story.
• The “Stephen King: On Writing” method is, for me, a bit scarier.  You have no idea where the plot is going.  You may sit down to revise what you wrote last time (see my blog How to write a novel: edit as you go along, or not? ) and discover your characters have decided to do something quite unexpected and alarming.  You may sometimes puzzle over what to write today, or things may move forward at a cracking pace;
• The “Stephen King: On Writing” method is more spontaneous.  Some people may find it more fun.

Which method is right for you?  My advice is to try the standard method as the default, because that is what most writing courses teach.  But bear in mind that Stephen King’s Method is an alternative; and consider using it if the standard method  isn’t working for you.

PD James and William Boyd

Two parting thoughts, both from famous writers I have had the privilege to hear speaking. I once heard PD James, a consummate professional, say that when she was writing her whodunnits, she did not know herself who had done it until she finished the novel.  This depressed me, as I enjoy guessing who the murderer is, and her revelation seemed to make any attempt to guess utterly pointless.  But I mention it because it shows that even a top suspense writer may not always plan his or her novels carefully in advance.

Finally, William Boyd, another favourite author of mine.  He once said at a reading that he’d written a story set in South East Asia which was praised for its verisimilitude.   But he had never visited the country concerned.  So research may not be all it is cracked up to be, either.

What to do next

If you have found this interesting, you might like to look at the post Writing tips: 7 ways to improve your manuscript and edit your novel on this site.  Similarly, you might like to explore the “ scenes and sequels ” structure designed to ensure that your story makes your reader want to read more!

You can find all my “writing tips” posts at this link . They include how long it takes to write a book.

Best of all, take a look at how I apply all this stuff myself. New readers of all my most recent books are welcome .

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Tuesday, May 28th 19.30 , Musikverein , Musikvereinsplatz 1 :

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When I first get an idea I do a rough outline. I use the standard plot form of Exposition, Rising Action, etc. It’s not that I feel the need to plan out every detail before I write, but I am scatterbrained so having a method to sort through and organize my thoughts is a big help.

Thanks – useful feedback. I agree that some kind of organisation or framework is pretty essential for any writer. Also, I am at present revising a novel and finding that I have to be utterly rigorous in making sure I am going through all the right stages in the right order!

I believe there is actually a third method, which is a hybrid of the two methods. You begin with a basic event or action, build on it and let it unfold organically until the entire story reveals itself to you. From that point forward, you are able to put the remainder of the story into an outline with the structure needed to get to the end goal. This is the method that I am currently using with my first book.

Thanks Carol. That makes excellent sense to me – no need to stick slavishly to either method. Do let me know how it turns out!

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