I've always liked Stephen King. One piece of advice, first said by William Strunk and reflected here, has stayed with me: omit needless words. Now I take out all unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, which are most of them. I like to think my writing has improved. A quote cited in his book, On Writing, was also a revelation:
"I made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it short."
-- Blaise Pascal
My friend and I used to laugh at this quote because we thought it wasn't true. Now we laugh because we know it is.
Read his early stuff. His early stuff is better. You'll see why he became so popular. You don't even have to buy his stuff, just borrow from someone. His short stories are fantastic if you want easily digestible morsels. They are unforgettable, at least for me. Try Skeleton Crew or Night Shift, both great collections. I haven't read his later stuff so maybe he's gone off the boil.
Yeah, the only works of his that I've read are The Dark Tower series and the Shawshank Redemption; but I definitely found that his shorter works were much better. It seems that as he's gotten older, he's gotten simply too successful for any editor to trim the fat of his weightier novels (I've heard the same said about J K Rowling).
I think The Stand is one of his best novels. It is also one of his longest novels (almost 1,000 pages). It is also one of his earlier novels, so maybe it's missing "the fat."
The original edited version is great. You can't buy it new, just the bloated monstrosity of the "Director's Cut" or whatever it's called. Writers do not outgrow the need for editing but a very few of them get high enough sales that they can turn editing into proof-reading, like Tom Clancy.
"I made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it short." -- Blaise Pascal
My friend and I used to laugh at this quote because we thought it wasn't true. Now we laugh because we know it is.