BOOK REVIEW: On Writing, by Stephen King

I AM not a huge fan of the horror genre - in fact, if truth be known, I positively fear it. So, it was entirely by accident that I came to discover what a superb wordsmith Stephen King is. I read a recommendation of his book On Writing on an online journalists forum which mildly aroused my curiosity about this author. Until that time I had read non of his novels although I did see the films Carrie and The Shawshank Redemption when they first hit the cinemas. I found On Writing in the library one day, a couple of months ago when I was looking for a different book entirely. I quickly came to admire and respect Stephen King as a writer and as a person. His turn of phrase appeals to me and he clearly loves words. The ability to use them well as though they were second nature to him is impressive and I admit to experiencing a slight pang of guilt that for too long I had presumed Stephen King to be a writer of multi-million airport trash - read once and then discarded.

The first part of On Writing is autobiographical (or his writing memoirs, as he refers to it). The second part is some astonishingly sound advice on writing fiction. My only criticism is that the book could have done with better editing, but that aspect aside it is, in my view, a work well worth recommending to any new or even established novelist.

I am reading at the moment my first Stephen King novel which, in my opinion, is more a thriller than a horror story. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is the tale of Tricia McFarland who becomes lost in the woods off the Appalachian Trail in Maine.

Possibly I don’t have the stomach to read some of King’s other books, those with rather more chilling themes, but I am keen to explore the way he writes his short stories. I will simply have to grit my teeth to get through the scariest ones. By definition the writing here has to be tighter and more controlled than in a novel. The shock impact, therefore, may be greater, since there is less space to create atmosphere, anticipation and build-up to any particularly vile imagery or event in the story. I expect some real revelations how, through the clever use of words, description, dialogue and sentence structure King manages to establish blood-curling tension, anticipation and surprise in a short time.

The introduction to his volume of collected short stories Night Shift (also the title of one of the tales therein) is written by John D. MacDonald, best known for a series of American detectives stories. He believed that even against his superior age and writing experience his writing at forty was never as good as King’s at thirty and King’s writing at forty was better than MacDonald’s own would ever be. That is an admission of some magnitude, I would suggest. MacDonald died nine years after Night Shift was first published.

23/07/06