Stephen King Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
8correct to beat the crowd
108 free Stephen King trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 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 108 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 108 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What do the children who battle Pennywise in It call their group?
The Losers' Club
The Losers' Club is the band of seven Derry children—Bill, Ben, Beverly, Richie, Eddie, Mike and Stan—who fight Pennywise in 1958 and again as adults in 1985.
Q 02What was Stephen King's debut novel, published in 1974?
Carrie
Carrie, about a bullied telekinetic teenager, was published by Doubleday in April 1974; Brian De Palma's film followed in 1976.
Q 03Who rescued the first pages of King's debut novel from the wastebasket?
His wife Tabitha
His wife Tabitha pulled the crumpled pages of Carrie from the wastebasket and urged him to finish it, saying she wanted to know what happened next.
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
King wrote Carrie in a rented trailer in Hermon, Maine, while teaching English at Hampden Academy for about $6,400 a year; 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
Doubleday printed 30,000 hardcovers of Carrie in April 1974 and sold about 13,000; the 1975 Signet paperback sold over a million copies in its first year.
Q 06Under what pen name did King publish Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, The Running Man and Thinner?
Richard Bachman
King published five novels as Richard Bachman from 1977 to 1984 because publishers believed readers would buy only one King book a year; the 1996 novel The Regulators also bore the name.
Q 07Who exposed King's pseudonym in 1985?
A Washington bookstore clerk
Steve Brown, a Washington, D.C. bookstore clerk, noticed the Bachman books read like King and found a Library of Congress record naming King; King then said Bachman 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
King and Tabitha spent a night at the nearly empty Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, in late 1974, and the hotel became the model for the Overlook in The Shining.
Q 09How did King describe Salem's Lot?
Peyton Place meets Dracula
King called 'Salem's Lot 'Peyton Place meets Dracula': the 1975 novel drops a Dracula-style vampire, Kurt Barlow, into the gossiping small town of Jerusalem's Lot, Maine.
Q 10In which King novel does a weaponized superflu nicknamed 'Captain Trips' wipe out most of humanity?
The Stand
The Stand (1978) follows survivors of Captain Trips, a 99.4%-lethal flu leaked from an army lab, as they gather behind Mother Abagail in Boulder or Randall Flagg in Las Vegas.
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
The Dead Zone (1979) follows Johnny Smith, who wakes from a coma after nearly five years with psychic powers and foresees a politician, Greg Stillson, starting a nuclear war.
Q 12Which 1981 novel does King say he 'barely remembers writing' because of his addictions?
Cujo
In On Writing King says he barely remembers writing Cujo (1981), the story of a rabid Saint Bernard that traps a mother and son in a stalled car, because he was drinking heavily and using cocaine.
Q 13What make and year of car is Christine?
1958 Plymouth Fury
Q 21On 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 22What was the 2000 book On Writing?
A memoir mixed with a style manual
The Wall Street Journal called it 'a one-of-a-kind classic'; his other major nonfiction is Danse Macabre (1981).
Q 23Which King story became 'the world's first mass e-book' in 2000, with over 500,000 downloads?
Riding the Bullet
Christine is a red-and-white 1958 Plymouth Fury that possesses its owner, 17-year-old Arnie Cunningham; John Carpenter filmed the novel in 1983, the year it was published.
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
It (1986) follows seven Derry children terrorised by a shape-shifting entity that feeds on their fears; the novel won the 1987 British Fantasy Award.
Q 16What is the name of the 'number-one fan' who holds a writer captive in Misery?
Annie Wilkes
Annie Wilkes, a former nurse who calls herself Paul Sheldon's 'number-one fan', keeps the injured novelist drugged and captive; Kathy Bates won the Best Actress Oscar for the 1990 film.
Q 17Which 1982 collection of four novellas produced Stand by Me, The Shawshank Redemption and Apt Pupil?
Different Seasons
Different Seasons (1982) collects four novellas, one per season; the fourth, The Breathing Method, won the 1983 British Fantasy Award for short fiction.
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 19Who is the gunslinger hero of The Dark Tower series?
Roland
Roland Deschain, last gunslinger of Gilead, pursues the Man in Black across Mid-World toward the Dark Tower; King modelled him on Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name.
Q 20Counting The Wind Through the Keyhole, how many novels make up The Dark Tower series?
Eight
Eight: the seven core novels from The Gunslinger (1982) to The Dark Tower (2004) plus The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012), which King set between the fourth and fifth books.
Riding the Bullet, a 16,000-word ghost story, was sold online only by Simon & Schuster in March 2000 for $2.50 and drew about 400,000 downloads in its first 24 hours.
Q 24Which 2013 novel is a sequel to The Shining?
Doctor Sleep
Doctor Sleep (2013) follows a grown-up Dan Torrance, now a hospice worker, protecting a gifted girl from the True Knot; Mike Flanagan's film version starred Ewan McGregor in 2019.
Q 25Which 2014 King crime novel about a retired policeman won the Edgar Award for Best Novel?
Mr. Mercedes
Mr. Mercedes (2014), in which retired detective Bill Hodges hunts the driver who ploughed a stolen car into a job-fair crowd, won the 2015 Edgar Award for Best Novel.
Q 26Which fellow horror novelist co-wrote The Talisman and Black House with King?
Peter Straub
Peter Straub, author of Ghost Story, wrote The Talisman (1984) with King and its sequel Black House (2001), the two trading sections back and forth so readers could not tell who wrote what.
Q 27What is bestselling novelist Joe Hill's relationship to Stephen King?
His eldest son
Joe Hill, born Joseph Hillström King in 1972, is King's eldest son (Owen followed in 1977); he wrote Heart-Shaped Box, Horns and NOS4A2 under the pen name to make his own way.
Q 28Which film did King direct himself, in 1986?
Maximum Overdrive
Maximum Overdrive (1986) adapts King's story 'Trucks', in which machines turn on humans at a truck stop; King later admitted he was 'coked out of my mind' while directing it.
Q 29Rob Reiner named his production company after which fictional King town?
Castle Rock
Castle Rock Entertainment went on to make Misery and The Shawshank Redemption.
Q 30Stand by Me is based on which King novella?
The Body
Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Jerry O'Connell play four boys hunting for a corpse in 1959.