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            Follow the story, and tell the truth as you go. That’s the gist of Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.  It’s as simple a premise as you might expect to find in a middle school creative writing class, and yet elusive enough to inspire a 288-page book attempting to explain how to do it.

            This part-memoir, part-“how to” book traces the career of one of today’s best-selling novelists, from the initial stirrings of creativity on King’s childhood sickbed to the writer’s painful return to the keyboard after a near-fatal accident.  King believes the best way to share the secrets to successful writing is to open the door to a writer’s private life.  That way the reader can see for himself how one struggling author found his way – through insults, rejections, and trial and error, following the path of persistence down the road to publication.

            With this goal in mind, King puts his arm around the would-be author, opens the door to his study and ushers him in. I have to admit that it’s a little unsettling to be inside the mind of Stephen King.  I have never been a fan of his, which I say with some reservation, since this is the first book of his I’ve actually read.  I am not a fan of the horror genre in general, and I am familiar enough with what types of books he writes that I steer clear of them.  This book on writing, however, gave me a new perspective on the writing life – from the eyes of someone I often disagreed with.  However, this someone’s fan base alone entitles him to consider himself somewhat of an expert.  Had he no idea what he was doing, King never would have been able to hold captive the imaginations of millions (and amass a pretty sizable fortune while he was at it).

            There is one thing for which the author can’t be faulted:  It can never be said that Stephen King’s writing is stuffy or pretentious.  This book is an informal, one-on-one chat, a quick and mostly entertaining read.  The format is most helpful, because it doesn’t attempt to explain how to write well, but rather to show the reader how it’s done.  This is the old writer’s maxim in action – show, don’t tell.  In this case, it works.

            In the memoir portion of the book, the reader watches as young Stevie King stumbles upon his first jewel of a story idea.  As the years and pages pass, King experiments with writing, with alcohol and with drugs.  In fact, some of his now-famous books (The Shining, Cujo, Misery, The Tommyknockers) were written while he was under the influence of mind-altering substances.  The reader follows King’s life up until the confrontation at which he had to make a choice – sober up or lose his family.  He took the high road, which saved his marriage, his health and his career.

            The memoir segment is interesting, but it has little functional value inside a classroom.  Certainly not any purpose that couldn’t be better served by a different, more age-appropriate book.  I would not be able, in good conscience, to put On Writing on a high school reading list because of the unnecessary and prolific use of profanity.  King attributes this to “being true” to the character (in this case, himself).  However, I see it as nothing more than a crutch he’s become too dependent on.  It’s easy, and it’s good for a cheap laugh.  It doesn’t enhance the text, and it’s not edifying for the students.  Yet despite my personal aversion to this style of writing, I probably wouldn’t forbid my students from reading the book.  A few worthwhile nuggets can be drawn from its pages.

            The meat of the book, as far as classroom relevance, comes in this second section.  King begins the “on writing” portion with two assumptions, one of which I believe is fundamentally flawed.  The first is that good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals, such as vocabulary, grammar and the elements of style.  No argument there.

The second, however, is that “while it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.” (142)

            If it were true that the only writers who have a chance at improvement are the merely competent ones, teachers may as well drop-kick all the bad writers and good writers on the first day of class.  According to King, there’s no point wasting our time.  The bad ones will always be bad, and the good ones will never be great.  I find that to be a sweeping generalization that will not hold true.  On top of that, it’s potentially damaging for a child.  To tell a student that he’ll never be better than what he is at that moment is enough to make a child stop trying entirely.  What purpose would that serve?

            In order for a writer to be competent, the writing must be understandable, well supported and have logical progression.  These are all qualities that can be taught, for they are the skills of organization and grammar.  That’s all it takes to be a competent writer.

            The creative spark, the musical quality of language, the literary eye – those are the things that can’t be taught.  Unlike King, however, I don’t believe that teachers should let the good writers stagnate under the false assumption that they will never improve. Progression is marked by practice.  While teachers cannot inject creative juices into students, they can do such things as brainstorming activities, showing the students how to come up with story ideas.  Teachers can also question a student’s vague idea, helping him flesh out the story by way of thought-provoking, open-ended questions.  Also, the more teachers carve out time for reading and foster the enjoyment of reading, the more students will absorb the fundamentals of good writing and recognize the qualities of bad writing.  Even King admits that.  Apparently he believes that only holds true for the merely competent writers.

            King builds upon his shaky premise with some solid blocks essential to good writing.  He begins by describing the writer’s toolbox – the tools that are vital to a writer’s success as a storyteller.  He then explains such fundamentals as narration, description and dialogue, giving concrete examples of both the good and the bad.  As writers work their way through these basics, questions will inevitably arise – How much narration/description is too much?  Does the dialogue I’m writing make sense?  Does the reader really need to know the color of the shoes the murderer was wearing?  The answer, King says, lies in this one statement:  The story is the boss.  Your job as a writer, he says, is to tell the truth.

            Those are the common threads that run the length of the book, and the ones that dictate the direction of King’s own writing.  If the color of shoes the murderer wore is essential to the plot line, then by all means include it.  Otherwise, he says, “If I want to read descriptions of clothes, I can always get a J. Crew catalog.”  King is adamant about letting the story guide the description, the narration, the dialogue – everything.  The important thing is to be honest to the characters and the stories, and don’t try to plot out their every little move.

            This non-plot strategy stems from his vision of stories as pre-existing in some other dimension.  Writers are to uncover the fossils – sometimes fragments, sometimes whole skeletons complete with big grinning jaws full of jagged teeth.  Point is, yet again, that the story is the boss.  Not the writer.  Recognizing this, the writer must follow along and record it honestly.

            For example, if a writer chooses for a devout Christian to slit someone’s throat in cold blood, that’s not being true to the character.  Yet if that same devout Christian kills someone in self-defense and is tormented by guilt, that is being true to the character.  In the same way, if the cold-blooded killer professes to be a Christian but is nothing more than a Sunday pew-warmer, that too is writing honestly.

            All in all, I find King’s perspective on writing to be just that, his perspective.  It works for him, but I wouldn’t teach it as the only method or even the right one.  He is on track when it comes to such things as writer’s tools, editing procedures and the like.  Where he misses the mark is in assuming that all writers work as he does, or that they would be better off if they did.  Plotting is not an evil tool, and neither are writers’ workshops or creative writing classes, as he implies.  If I believed they were, I would not be entering the teaching field. 

            The problem, as he rightly notes, is when the critiques aren’t well informed.  That serves no purpose for the writer.  The solution, I believe, is for teachers to spend time talking about how to critique writing, how to strengthen prose through editing, and how to point out weak areas without crushing the writer in the process.  Teach the students to critique one another’s writing, and you have effectively taught them how to edit their own.

            I do embrace King’s idea of keeping such feedback – positive or negative – out of the first draft.  He calls this writing with the door closed.  He recommends plowing through the draft, with no eyes looking over the writer’s shoulder, and then setting the manuscript aside for six weeks.  Then, he says, the writer can edit it with a clearer eye and open the door for feedback from close friends and colleagues.  I find this to be an empowering idea for the writer; it combats the problem of negative feedback at the initial stage, which often spurs writer’s block.  However, it’s not completely practical for the classroom.  Teachers do not have unlimited time to let students write an extended manuscript with no constructive criticism.  This can be alleviated, I think, without destroying the heart of what is really a sound idea.  Teachers can assign projects of limited length, have the student turn in the paper, wait a week or two and give it back for personal or peer editing.  It’s the same process in a shorter time frame.

            Just as the theory of first and second drafts can be adapted for the classroom, I have pulled other small nuggets from the book and adapted them into workable classroom assignments.  For example, on page 105 King talks about the “meeting of the minds” that books allow across both time and distance.  To demonstrate the transfer of ideas from writer to reader, a teacher can have students close their eyes while she describes a scene, such as a couple walking through a park.  The students will draw the pictures they saw in their minds and compare it with their classmates’ drawings.  What they will find is the same essential picture, but with different details:  an oak tree vs. a mesquite tree, or a woman in shorts vs. a woman in a skirt.  Not only does this serve as an object lesson about the writer-reader relationship, but it also enforces the idea that writers shouldn’t be so detail-oriented that they take all the fun away from the reader.

            Another creativity exercise that could be drawn from the book would be what I call “The Fossil Dig,” correlating to King’s idea that stories are pre-existing.  The teacher lays out a bare-bones story for the students (just the edge of a fossil protruding from the ground).  The teacher instructs the students to change a major element of the story, such as the sexes of the protagonist and antagonist, and then to uncover the rest of the fossil.  Since I don’t heartily agree with King’s fossil theory, I see this mostly as an opportunity for teachers to demonstrate the breadth of the human imagination, and how a basic plot line can be spun into a dozen or more original stories.

            The other two assignments I culled from King’s theories are more technical than creative.  The first pulls from King’s vision of the writer’s toolbox.  The students will build their own “toolbox,” consisting of three folders.  In one they will keep classroom vocabulary lists and grammar grappler sheets (minilessons on grammar problems the class is struggling with).  The other two will be for style handouts and finished copies of their writing.  This will teach the students to build their own resources, or stock their toolbox, if you will.  It will also give them a portfolio of accomplishments to display when they finish the school year.

            The second of the technical assignments is an editing task.  King includes a helpful example of self-editing at the end of the book.  This assignment would illustrate the process of self-editing and how it can improve writing.  The teacher would distribute a clean copy of the original excerpt, and the students would make their own editing choices.  Then a copy of King’s edited version would be provided, and the class would discuss why King made the choices he did in his revision.  This would be a time for agreement and disagreement, because editing isn’t always a black-and-white task.  Not when it comes to style.  Students may come up with other, more beneficial changes to the text that even King hadn’t thought of.  It’s an opportunity to make them part of the process.  There is no better way to learn editing than to do it firsthand.  Giving the students an example of a professional editing his own work will only strengthen that process.

            These four lessons prove that the book isn’t a total loss for the classroom.  However, its usefulness is limited, as I have shown, and that’s for a reason.  King didn’t intend for this to be a textbook, but a memoir of how one writer made his way into print.  Teachers can pick up some good tips here and there and discard the rest, if they like.  They can like the book or dislike it, use it or not use it.  King doesn’t care.  What matters to him is that, like it or not, he told the truth.  As he sees it.

Reviewed by Julie Freeman