60 free Stephen King trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
47 free Stephen King trivia questions with answers. Stephen King has published around 65 novels and 200 short stories, and the man is as good a story as the books: the debut he threw away, the pen name a bookshop clerk unmasked, the decade he barely remembers writing, and the afternoon a minivan nearly turned him into one of his own characters. This quiz runs 60 questions across his life in Maine, the big novels (Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, The Stand, Cujo, Christine, Pet Sematary, It, Misery, The Green Mile, 11/22/63, The Dark Tower), Richard Bachman, his collaborations and awards, and the films: Kubrick's Shining and why King hated it, Stand by Me, Shawshank, and the record-breaking It. Nothing gory in the questions themselves; it starts easy and works up to Constant Reader territory. Every answer has been checked against reference sources, shown under each question once you answer, so it works for a Halloween party, a book club or a literature round at pub trivia.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which US state was Stephen King born and where are most of his stories set?
Maine
He was born in Portland in 1947, grew up in Durham and lives in Bangor; Castle Rock and Derry are his invented Maine towns.
Q 02What was Stephen King's debut novel, published in 1974?
Carrie
He threw the first three pages in the bin; his wife Tabitha fished them out and told him to keep going.
Q 03Who rescued the first pages of King's debut novel from the wastebasket?
His wife Tabitha
She wanted to know what happened next; the story had been meant for the men's magazine Cavalier.
Q 04Where was King living, and what was his day job, when he wrote his debut novel?
A trailer in Hermon, teaching English at Hampden Academy
He sold short stories to men's magazines on the side; Doubleday's Bill Thompson bought the manuscript in 1973.
Q 05What was the hardcover print run of King's debut in April 1974?
30,000
The 1975 paperback went on to sell four million copies after Brian De Palma's film.
Q 06Under what pen name did King publish Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, The Running Man and Thinner?
Richard Bachman
Publishers thought the public would only accept one King book a year; the surname came from Bachman-Turner Overdrive.
Q 07Who exposed King's pseudonym in 1985?
A Washington bookstore clerk
Brown noticed the stylistic similarities and found publisher records at the Library of Congress; King announced Bachman had died of 'cancer of the pseudonym'.
Q 08Where did King stay before writing The Shining, which became the model for the Overlook?
The Stanley in Estes Park, Colorado
The novel is about an alcoholic writer caretaking a hotel for the winter; King later admitted he suspected he was an alcoholic himself at the time.
Q 09How did King describe Salem's Lot?
Peyton Place meets Dracula
His mother died of cancer around the time it was published.
Q 10Which apocalyptic pandemic novel did King say took him longest to write and is his readers' favourite?
The Stand
He finished it after returning to Auburn in 1975.
Q 11Which 1979 King novel about a man with second sight was the first set in his fictional town of Castle Rock?
The Dead Zone
King said that with it, 'I really hit my stride'; Rob Reiner later named his production company after the town.
Q 12Which 1981 novel does King say he 'barely remembers writing' because of his addictions?
Cujo
His wife staged an intervention after The Tommyknockers, and Needful Things was his first sober novel.
Q 13What make and year of car is Christine?
1958 Plymouth Fury
The haunted car comes between 17-year-old misfit Arnie Cunningham and his new girlfriend.
Q 21How many volumes make up The Dark Tower, published between 1978 and 2012?
Eight
The first, The Gunslinger, appeared in five instalments in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction; King wrote himself into three of the later books.
Q 22On June 19, 1999, what happened to Stephen King while walking on Route 5 in Lovell, Maine?
He was struck by a minivan
Driver Bryan Smith was distracted by an unrestrained dog; King suffered a collapsed lung and multiple leg fractures, and warned his nurses against Misery jokes.
Q 23What was the 2000 book On Writing?
A memoir mixed with a style manual
Q 14What real event inspired Pet Sematary?
His daughter's cat was killed on a nearby road
Local children had built a pet cemetery; King found the resulting book too disturbing and only published it to fulfil his Doubleday contract.
Q 15King described which novel as a 'final exam on horror', putting in all the monsters kids fear?
It
Seven children in Derry, Maine, are terrorised by an entity that takes the shape of their fears; it won the 1987 August Derleth Award.
Q 16What is the name of the 'number-one fan' who holds a writer captive in Misery?
Annie Wilkes
The novel shared the first Bram Stoker Award; King had planned to publish it as Bachman before the pseudonym was blown.
Q 17Which 1982 collection of four novellas produced Stand by Me, The Shawshank Redemption and Apt Pupil?
Different Seasons
The fourth novella, The Breathing Method, won the British Fantasy Award.
Q 18How was The Green Mile originally published in 1996?
As a serial novel in six parts
It held six positions on the New York Times paperback bestseller list at once.
Q 19What is the premise of King's 2011 novel 11/22/63?
A teacher goes back in time to try to stop the Kennedy assassination
Errol Morris called it one of the best time-travel stories since H. G. Wells; it won the LA Times Book Prize for mystery/thriller.
Q 20Who is the gunslinger hero of The Dark Tower series?
Roland
He pursues the Man in Black across an alternate universe; the eight-volume epic ran from 1978 to 2012.
The Wall Street Journal called it 'a one-of-a-kind classic'; his other major nonfiction is Danse Macabre (1981).
Q 24Which King story became 'the world's first mass e-book' in 2000, with over 500,000 downloads?
Riding the Bullet
He followed it with The Plant, released in pay-what-you-want instalments and never finished.
Q 25Which 2013 novel is a sequel to The Shining?
Doctor Sleep
It follows a grown-up Danny Torrance and was filmed in 2019.
Q 26Which 2014 King crime novel about a retired policeman won the Edgar Award for Best Novel?
Mr. Mercedes
It introduced Holly Gibney, who has since carried novels including The Outsider, Holly and Never Flinch.
Q 27Which fellow horror novelist co-wrote The Talisman and Black House with King?
Peter Straub
Straub said only Neil Gaiman could correctly tell which of them wrote which passages.
Q 28Which of King's sons is a bestselling horror novelist under the name Joe Hill?
His eldest son
King co-wrote Throttle with Joe Hill and Sleeping Beauties with Owen King.
Q 29Which film did King direct himself, in 1986?
Maximum Overdrive
It was based on his story 'Trucks'; he has never directed another.
Q 30Rob Reiner named his production company after which fictional King town?
Castle Rock
Castle Rock Entertainment went on to make Misery and The Shawshank Redemption.