How To Be Like Stephen King With Your Writing

Become a prolific writer, and see your work recognized

Stephen King has sold over 350 million copies of his books all over the world. He’s a literary genius, and every book you read will have you biting your nails and worrying about what the next page will bring.

He has shared an abundant amount of writing advice throughout his life, which, if applied, can indeed lead to incredible results within your writing career.

The best advice you can take is to study the Greats if you genuinely want to be a successful writer. Study the successful writers, study the average writers, and even study the crappy writers. Learn how to be good, learn how to be GREAT, and learn how to avoid the mistakes the crappy writers are making.

I’ll share his tips and tricks that he’s shared throughout the years that I’ve learned from his book, On Writing. If you’re a writer and you haven’t yet read it, I highly recommend you do so or read on to find the essential parts of it throughout this article.

1. Read, read, and read some more.

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”— Stephen King

Reading is the #1 thing that Stephen King emphasizes. How can you write if you don’t read?

That’s like saying you want to be a chef, but you hate eating.

Reading is what gives you a strong understanding of the fundamentals in a story structure. It’s what helps you learn plot development and character development.

Through books, you can find inspiration and expand your ideas. Most importantly, reading allows you to understand what readers like and what you can do to deliver the perfect piece for your audience.

I grew up on books. Reading was my way of escaping the real world and living a thousand different lives. And, when I would get grounded, unlike other kids my age, it was my book that would get taken away, not the TV remote.

Stephen King has strong views on TV, and he actually says that if you’re just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than getting rid of it.

Personally, I’m a big fan of watching old movies, so I would never actually get rid of my TV, however, cutting out TV time and substituting a great book is the first step in your journey to writing like Stephen King.

Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life, and you’ll do yourself a great deal of good if you remember that.

2. 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.” — Stephen King

You can’t make everyone happy. It’s important to understand that as much as you want to touch everybody with your writing, not everybody will like your words and point of view.

Some people prefer black tea; others prefer chamomile.

Just write, and your writing will find the right category of people it fits best with. If you write with one particular person in mind, the chances are that one person will turn into 100.

King says you should always have one particular person in mind that you most want to impress with your writing. For him, it’s his wife.

Every time I write an article or story, I like to cater to whomever’s heartstrings, I am trying to pull.

3. Write every day.

At the end of the day, if you want to be a writer, you have to do just that. You have to write.

You can’t just be in it for the freedom; if you assume that every great writer spends a few hours a week writing and they produce a great novel, and you can do the same, you will never become successful.

The goal is to create daily writing habits that will push you towards success.

They should push you towards finishing your first novel, and then your second after that.

The chances of your first novel being a raging success and you never having to write another book again are slim, so it’s better to be safe and develop writing habits that will allow you to develop more books.

Remember that writing is like a muscle; when you use it, you become stronger. If you fail at utilizing it every day, it’ll lose its strength.

King writes every day and puts out a phenomenal word count when doing so.

He’s mentioned he typically writes six pages a day. So, just write. Whether you want to or not, whether you have the time for it or not, if writing is your career choice, you need to treat it like one and put the time and effort into it to get your desired results.

4. Simplicity is key.

King says that there is a core simplicity to the English language.

You don’t need to turn every word and sentence into something extravagant, in fact, King says: “The object of fiction isn’t grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story.”

Write in a way that is sexy. Write so that your readers feel like you are directly talking to them rather than talking at them. No one wants to feel like they are being lectured, they’ll put your book down if you make them feel that way.

5. Don’t wait for inspiration.

“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.” — Stephen King

Like motivation, inspiration will come and go. It’ll hit you like a train at 3 in the morning, and hide when you sit in front of a blank sheet of paper all day.

Every great writer who has produced a masterpiece, woke up, drank their coffee, and put in the work.

J.K Rowling said she would write up to 10 hours a day. Inspiration or no inspiration.

Action is what creates inspiration, in the action of writing, your inspiration will be born.

Stop waiting for inspiration to start writing your novel.

If you started writing 6 pages a day, in 1 month you would have 180 pages of your novel written.

If you did this for 3 months, you would have a 540-page book on your lap.

Inspiration without action will never get you your desired results.

6. Kill your darlings.

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.” — Stephen King

The word “darling” has to do with endearment and affection; it’s applied to something that you love.

Our writing has ‘darlings,’ too, and when we love them, we lose all sense of objectivity because we love them to the point that we don’t care if those parts are clear to readers or not. We simply love them, and we want to keep them.

The problem is they can get in the readers’ point of view, and the clarity becomes blurry.

The purpose of writing isn’t just for the writer; it’s for the reader too, and so when we disregard the reader’s needs, we do the reader a disservice.

7. 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.” — Stephen King

In other words, while an incredible idea might come out of nowhere; a best-selling novel is not going to fall out of the sky and onto your lap. You need to put in the work every single day, you need to work on improving your writing, work on developing better habits that will increase the amount that you write every day.

Don’t look for short cuts and an easy way out. The way to write like Stephen King is to put his practices into use in your everyday life.