StephenKing.com Message Board FAQ

As well as there being some legal problems with this, the choice of an agent or publisher depends upon your style of writing. There are some good reference books - Literary Market Place and Writer's Market - and check to see if your state has a writer's association.

No. If I did that for one person, I would feel like I'd have to do it for a great many people and in a lot of cases you can read a page or two or three and just say to yourself, 'This is terrible.' But nobody wants to write that kind of letter, 'Dear so-and-so, I started to read your manuscript but it was just awful so I tossed it aside.' That makes everybody feel bad, including me, so I don't do it. There's another reason, and that's a legal one. I've been sued for plagiarism 8 or 9 times. Any writer who has deep pockets has been sued for plagiarism from time-to-time-that goes for J.K. Rowling, John Grisham, really everyone. For everyone who publishes best-selling fiction, somebody wants to think, 'Oh, he got that idea from me' and so it's just much easier and much safer to say I never read that book at all.

Stephen King

Sorry, but we are no longer accepting submissions for the writing exercise given in On Writing. We have asked that the offer to make submissions through the web site be deleted from future printings. When he came up with that idea, I don't think Stephen was thinking about the fact that someone would months or years later read his offer and want to participate.

The best advice we can give is, get a copy of Writer's Market for information about publishers.

I get my ideas from everywhere. But what all of my ideas boil down to is seeing maybe one thing, but in a lot of cases it's seeing two things and having them come together in some new and interesting way, and then adding the question 'What if?' 'What if' is always the key question.

Stephen King

Stephen does not teach any writing classes and doesn't have any immediate plans to do so. If you haven't already read it, though, he has written a book with writing tips called On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

Sorry, but Stephen doesn't provide individualized writing tips.