November 11, 2025 • 9 mins
Stephen King had nothing when he was a kid . . no dad, no money . . but he did have a flashlight so he could read books under the covers. His passion turned into his own books and films like Carrie, The Shining, Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me, It, and The Long Walk. So, what was his secret?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So when you were a little kid, did you ever
get put to bed and then sneak a peek at
your phone or grab a flashlight so you could dig
back into a favorite book. We all did that because
who doesn't love a good story. Now imagine that that
thirst for a great story ignited your ability to tell
his story. I'm Patty Steele under the covers with the
(00:21):
budding King of Horror. That's next on the backstory. The
backstory is back, all right. It's late at night, but
you have a book you're dying to devour, So you
haul out a flashlight, slide it under the covers, and
you dive in. This is the nest where Stephen King,
(00:42):
the King of Horror, was hatched. You see, before there
was the King of Horror, there was a little boy
in Maine who did just that. He slept with a
flashlight under the covers and read until the batteries died,
and then if he could, he'd keep going by moonlight.
The thing is, the monsters on the page felt safer
to him than the ones in the dark corners of
(01:04):
his room. This is about how Stephen King, a working
class kid with a second hand typewriter, became the most
adapted living author in history. It's about how his words
literally crawled off the page and onto our TVs, as
well as into movie theaters and the cultural blood stream. Okay,
let's go back. We're in Portland, Maine. It's nineteen forty
(01:28):
seven and Stephen edwin King is born. When he turns
two years old, his dad walks out to buy a
pack of cigarettes and he never comes back. The emptiness
and financial insecurity he leaves behind starts to shape Stephen
as a storyteller with an achiness that echoes in book
after book. Stephen and his big brother Dave bounced between
(01:51):
relatives in Chicago, as well as small towns in New
York State, Wisconsin, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. When he turns elevel,
the boys and their mom moved Durham, Maine, so she
can take care of her aging parents when they pass on.
She becomes a caregiver at a home for mentally challenged people,
(02:11):
but there's never enough money, clothes, or hand me downs. Entertainment, though,
is cheap. Stephen listens to radio dramas, reads horror comic books,
goes to matinee movies, and devours stacks of library paperbacks.
Just imagine this small boy in a tiny living room
filled with used furniture, sitting next to an old Philco radio,
(02:33):
thrilling to the suspense of those shows where you'd close
your eyes and just create the scene in your head. Plus,
he read the classics like Edgar Allan Poe and Ray Bradbury.
Also the book Lord of the Flies, as well as
Shirley Jackson's spine tingling The Haunting of Hill House, a
book that would haunt him for decades. He said he'd
(02:56):
just loved to be scared. This is where Stephen King's
imagination and blossoms. One day, he shows his mama's story
he'd copied out of a comic book. She reads it
and says to him, write your own story. I bet
you could do better. That thrills him, opening up possibility.
When he's thirteen, Stephen finds an old typewriter in the attic.
(03:18):
He starts writing more copycat type stories and than original ones.
He sells them to friends for a quarter until a
teacher tells him he's got to stop selling his horror
stories during study hall, but he doesn't stop writing. Instead,
he starts submitting to pulp magazines and fanzines. Racking up
nothing but rejections, he tacks them all to a nail
(03:41):
on his bedroom wall, until he has so many he
has to replace the nail with a heavy duty spike.
But that is his secret weapon, tenacity. He just keeps
perfecting his craft. Success takes a long time. He goes
to college and keeps writing, gets married, keeps writing. It
takes a job teaching high school english, and keeps writing.
(04:03):
He greades papers by day and hammers out short stories
by night, selling them to magazines to make a couple
of bucks. One night, exhausted, he sits at his desk,
a tiny table wedged between the bed and the washing machine.
He begins writing a story about a bullied teenage girl
who discovers she can move objects just by using her mind.
(04:27):
After a few pages, he decides he hates it. He
feels like he doesn't really know girls and he can't
do the character justice. He tosses the pages into the trash.
But here's where his wife, Tabitha enters the scene. She
pulls those pages from the bin, smooths them out, reads them,
and says there's something here. She tells him to keep
(04:49):
going to set it in a world he knows in
the hallways and humiliations of high school. Her faith lights
him on fire. The novel is Carrie. In nineteen seventy three,
Doubleday Books buys it. The hardcover has okay sales, but
then the paperback explodes practically overnight. Stephen gets a big advance.
(05:12):
The Kings can pay bills, buy a car, and breathe
a little bit. Then, in nineteen seventy six, director Brian
de Palmer adapts Carry into a film that again explodes.
Still up in Maine, where he has stayed ever since.
By the way, Stephen King has Hollywood knocking on his door.
(05:33):
But here's the question, how did he get so many
stories made into TV shows and movies. Well, Critics say
he's wildly skilled at writing in scenes, he tells stories
and beats close ups and cutaways. He's a novelist with
a filmmaker's eye, tracking shots through creepy hallways, slow zooms
(05:54):
on a door, slightly cracked open, long tense takes on
ordinary objects, and his characters look like people you might
meet at the grocery store, parents, loaners, small town folks
who just happen to stumble into horror producers love relatability,
and we all shiver at the idea of horror living
(06:14):
next door. Stephen says he learned to write that way
because he loved movies so much that he wrote in
the type of scenes that he watched on the screen.
After Carrie, the Sky's the Limit for King, his nineteen
seventy five book Salem's Lot with Vampires on the Loose
in a New England Town becomes a TV mini series.
(06:34):
The Shining is released in nineteen seventy seven and soon
becomes a Stanley Kubrick film starring Jack Nicholson, and that
one is legendary. He churns out book after book, sometimes
under the Stephen King name, sometimes under a pseudonym, and
the success continues, but with it he wrestles with alcohol
and drugs Throughout the nineteen eighties. His output is massive
(06:58):
Kujo Christine Peta Cemetery, It misery, but his family decides
he needs an intervention. Tabitha and the kids lay out
all his drug paraphernalia in front of him. Thankfully, he
chooses them and sobriety. The nineties see the release of
a ton of work, including The Green Mile and The
(07:18):
X Files. As well as The Shawshank Redemption, the movie
version of a story he wrote in the nineteen eighties.
And then there's the accident. June nineteen ninety nine. Stephen
is out walking on a country road when a van
driven by a guy distracted by a hyper dog in
the back seat slams into him. He suffers multiple fractures,
(07:40):
emergency surgeries where they almost decide to amputate his leg,
and then agonizing rehab for a while. It's sort of
unclear if he's ever gonna write again. Because of his
shattered leg and broken hip, he can't sit for more
than forty minutes before the pain becomes completely unbearable. Course,
he has to write. It's what he does, so he
(08:03):
writes about pain and mortality in a book called On Writing.
It's part memoir and part master class. Stephen's story showcases determination,
the love of a partner who believes in you, and
following your passion. He built characters you could swear you'd
met and places you could swear you'd been. With a
(08:25):
little terrifying twist, Stephen King says to become a writer,
he had to read a lot, write a lot, cut
out a lot of adverbs, tell the truth about people
and then let the monsters in. I hope you're enjoying
The Backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave a review and
follow or subscribe for free to get new episodes delivered automatically,
(08:49):
and feel free to dm me if you have a
story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty
Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele.
The back Stories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the
Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is
(09:09):
Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes
every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach out to
me with comments and even story suggestions on Instagram at
real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks
for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces
of history you didn't know you needed to know.
So when you were a little kid, did you ever
get put to bed and then sneak a peek at
your phone or grab a flashlight so you could dig
back into a favorite book. We all did that because
who doesn't love a good story. Now imagine that that
thirst for a great story ignited your ability to tell
his story. I'm Patty Steele under the covers with the
(00:21):
budding King of Horror. That's next on the backstory. The
backstory is back, all right. It's late at night, but
you have a book you're dying to devour, So you
haul out a flashlight, slide it under the covers, and
you dive in. This is the nest where Stephen King,
(00:42):
the King of Horror, was hatched. You see, before there
was the King of Horror, there was a little boy
in Maine who did just that. He slept with a
flashlight under the covers and read until the batteries died,
and then if he could, he'd keep going by moonlight.
The thing is, the monsters on the page felt safer
to him than the ones in the dark corners of
(01:04):
his room. This is about how Stephen King, a working
class kid with a second hand typewriter, became the most
adapted living author in history. It's about how his words
literally crawled off the page and onto our TVs, as
well as into movie theaters and the cultural blood stream. Okay,
let's go back. We're in Portland, Maine. It's nineteen forty
(01:28):
seven and Stephen edwin King is born. When he turns
two years old, his dad walks out to buy a
pack of cigarettes and he never comes back. The emptiness
and financial insecurity he leaves behind starts to shape Stephen
as a storyteller with an achiness that echoes in book
after book. Stephen and his big brother Dave bounced between
(01:51):
relatives in Chicago, as well as small towns in New
York State, Wisconsin, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. When he turns elevel,
the boys and their mom moved Durham, Maine, so she
can take care of her aging parents when they pass on.
She becomes a caregiver at a home for mentally challenged people,
(02:11):
but there's never enough money, clothes, or hand me downs. Entertainment, though,
is cheap. Stephen listens to radio dramas, reads horror comic books,
goes to matinee movies, and devours stacks of library paperbacks.
Just imagine this small boy in a tiny living room
filled with used furniture, sitting next to an old Philco radio,
(02:33):
thrilling to the suspense of those shows where you'd close
your eyes and just create the scene in your head. Plus,
he read the classics like Edgar Allan Poe and Ray Bradbury.
Also the book Lord of the Flies, as well as
Shirley Jackson's spine tingling The Haunting of Hill House, a
book that would haunt him for decades. He said he'd
(02:56):
just loved to be scared. This is where Stephen King's
imagination and blossoms. One day, he shows his mama's story
he'd copied out of a comic book. She reads it
and says to him, write your own story. I bet
you could do better. That thrills him, opening up possibility.
When he's thirteen, Stephen finds an old typewriter in the attic.
(03:18):
He starts writing more copycat type stories and than original ones.
He sells them to friends for a quarter until a
teacher tells him he's got to stop selling his horror
stories during study hall, but he doesn't stop writing. Instead,
he starts submitting to pulp magazines and fanzines. Racking up
nothing but rejections, he tacks them all to a nail
(03:41):
on his bedroom wall, until he has so many he
has to replace the nail with a heavy duty spike.
But that is his secret weapon, tenacity. He just keeps
perfecting his craft. Success takes a long time. He goes
to college and keeps writing, gets married, keeps writing. It
takes a job teaching high school english, and keeps writing.
(04:03):
He greades papers by day and hammers out short stories
by night, selling them to magazines to make a couple
of bucks. One night, exhausted, he sits at his desk,
a tiny table wedged between the bed and the washing machine.
He begins writing a story about a bullied teenage girl
who discovers she can move objects just by using her mind.
(04:27):
After a few pages, he decides he hates it. He
feels like he doesn't really know girls and he can't
do the character justice. He tosses the pages into the trash.
But here's where his wife, Tabitha enters the scene. She
pulls those pages from the bin, smooths them out, reads them,
and says there's something here. She tells him to keep
(04:49):
going to set it in a world he knows in
the hallways and humiliations of high school. Her faith lights
him on fire. The novel is Carrie. In nineteen seventy three,
Doubleday Books buys it. The hardcover has okay sales, but
then the paperback explodes practically overnight. Stephen gets a big advance.
(05:12):
The Kings can pay bills, buy a car, and breathe
a little bit. Then, in nineteen seventy six, director Brian
de Palmer adapts Carry into a film that again explodes.
Still up in Maine, where he has stayed ever since.
By the way, Stephen King has Hollywood knocking on his door.
(05:33):
But here's the question, how did he get so many
stories made into TV shows and movies. Well, Critics say
he's wildly skilled at writing in scenes, he tells stories
and beats close ups and cutaways. He's a novelist with
a filmmaker's eye, tracking shots through creepy hallways, slow zooms
(05:54):
on a door, slightly cracked open, long tense takes on
ordinary objects, and his characters look like people you might
meet at the grocery store, parents, loaners, small town folks
who just happen to stumble into horror producers love relatability,
and we all shiver at the idea of horror living
(06:14):
next door. Stephen says he learned to write that way
because he loved movies so much that he wrote in
the type of scenes that he watched on the screen.
After Carrie, the Sky's the Limit for King, his nineteen
seventy five book Salem's Lot with Vampires on the Loose
in a New England Town becomes a TV mini series.
(06:34):
The Shining is released in nineteen seventy seven and soon
becomes a Stanley Kubrick film starring Jack Nicholson, and that
one is legendary. He churns out book after book, sometimes
under the Stephen King name, sometimes under a pseudonym, and
the success continues, but with it he wrestles with alcohol
and drugs Throughout the nineteen eighties. His output is massive
(06:58):
Kujo Christine Peta Cemetery, It misery, but his family decides
he needs an intervention. Tabitha and the kids lay out
all his drug paraphernalia in front of him. Thankfully, he
chooses them and sobriety. The nineties see the release of
a ton of work, including The Green Mile and The
(07:18):
X Files. As well as The Shawshank Redemption, the movie
version of a story he wrote in the nineteen eighties.
And then there's the accident. June nineteen ninety nine. Stephen
is out walking on a country road when a van
driven by a guy distracted by a hyper dog in
the back seat slams into him. He suffers multiple fractures,
(07:40):
emergency surgeries where they almost decide to amputate his leg,
and then agonizing rehab for a while. It's sort of
unclear if he's ever gonna write again. Because of his
shattered leg and broken hip, he can't sit for more
than forty minutes before the pain becomes completely unbearable. Course,
he has to write. It's what he does, so he
(08:03):
writes about pain and mortality in a book called On Writing.
It's part memoir and part master class. Stephen's story showcases determination,
the love of a partner who believes in you, and
following your passion. He built characters you could swear you'd
met and places you could swear you'd been. With a
(08:25):
little terrifying twist, Stephen King says to become a writer,
he had to read a lot, write a lot, cut
out a lot of adverbs, tell the truth about people
and then let the monsters in. I hope you're enjoying
The Backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave a review and
follow or subscribe for free to get new episodes delivered automatically,
(08:49):
and feel free to dm me if you have a
story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty
Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele.
The back Stories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the
Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is
(09:09):
Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes
every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach out to
me with comments and even story suggestions on Instagram at
real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks
for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces
of history you didn't know you needed to know.
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