Stephen King Trivia
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107 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 107 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 107 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 02In Carrie, which power does a bullied teenager turn on her classmates at the prom?
Telekinesis
Telekinesis: Carrie White learns she can move things with her mind, and when a cruel prank humiliates her at the prom she turns it on her tormentors; King based her on two girls he knew at school.
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 04What was King's day job when he wrote Carrie in the laundry room of a rented trailer?
High school English teacher
High school English teacher: King taught at Hampden Academy in Maine and wrote in the evenings and at weekends in the trailer's laundry room, until the paperback sale of Carrie let him quit to write full time.
Q 05Which director filmed Carrie in 1976?
Brian De Palma
Brian De Palma's Carrie earned Oscar nominations for Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie, and its success helped push the novel's paperback sales into the millions.
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
A Washington bookstore clerk noticed that the pen-name novels read like King and found a Library of Congress record naming him; the alias was then declared dead 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 Stanley in Estes Park, Colorado, was closing for the winter, leaving the Kings its only guests; that night King dreamed of a fire hose chasing his small son down the corridors and woke with the makings of the novel.
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, which wipes out most of the world's population within weeks, as they gather behind Mother Abagail in Boulder or Randall Flagg in Las Vegas.
Q 11Which 1979 King novel follows Johnny Smith, who wakes from a long coma able to see people's futures?
The Dead Zone
The Dead Zone (1979): after nearly five years in a coma, Johnny shakes the hand of rising politician Greg Stillson, foresees him causing a nuclear war as president and must decide how far to go to stop him.
Q 12Which 1981 novel does King say he 'barely remembers writing' because he was drinking so heavily?
Cujo
Cujo (1981), about a rabid Saint Bernard that traps a mother and son in a stalled car, is the novel King says in On Writing he barely remembers writing; he adds that he likes it and wishes he could recall enjoying the good parts.
Q 13What make and year of car is Christine?
1958 Plymouth Fury
Q 21What happened to King while out walking in Lovell, Maine, in June 1999?
He was struck by a minivan
He was struck by a minivan whose driver was distracted by his dog; badly injured, King went on to finish On Writing, closing it with a postscript about the crash.
Q 22In On Writing, King insists that 'the road to hell is paved with' which part of speech?
Adverbs
Adverbs: in his 2000 memoir of the craft, King calls them weeds that spread like dandelions and tells writers to cut them, above all after 'he said' and 'she said'.
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 teenage owner, Arnie Cunningham; John Carpenter's film reached cinemas in December 1983, little more than seven months after the novel.
Q 14What real event inspired Pet Sematary?
His daughter's cat was killed on a nearby road
His daughter's cat was killed on a nearby road in Orrington, Maine, and buried in a pet cemetery made by local children; King had also once pulled his small son back from that road, and the two frights fused into the novel.
Q 15Which King novel about a girl hunted by a secret agency became a 1984 film starring Drew Barrymore?
Firestarter
Firestarter (1980) gives young Charlie McGee the power to set things alight, inherited from parents dosed in a government drug trial; the agency behind it, The Shop, wants her as a weapon.
Q 16What is the name of the 'number-one fan' who holds a writer captive in Misery?
Annie Wilkes
Annie Wilkes, a former nurse, pulls novelist Paul Sheldon from a car wreck, then rages on learning he has killed off her favourite heroine and forces him to write a book bringing Misery back to life.
Q 17Which 1982 collection of four novellas produced Stand by Me, The Shawshank Redemption and Apt Pupil?
Different Seasons
Different Seasons (1982) was King's reply to readers who asked 'Is horror all you write?': four novellas tied to the seasons that lean on drama instead, three of which became films.
Q 18How was The Green Mile originally published in 1996?
As a serial novel in six parts
As a serial novel in six parts: the slim paperbacks began appearing in March 1996, an idea borrowed from Dickens's instalments, and one week all six sat 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 20Which Dark Tower book arrived in 2012?
The Wind Through the Keyhole
The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012) slots between the fourth and fifth books: sheltering from a ferocious storm, the gunslinger passes the time telling his companions a story with a second tale nested inside it.
Riding the Bullet, a ghost story sold only as a download by Simon & Schuster, drew so many orders in its first day that the servers jammed; its success pushed King to try publishing The Plant online himself.
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 with King in 1984, sending twelve-year-old Jack Sawyer across America and a parallel world to save his dying mother; they reunited for Black House in 2001.
Q 27What is bestselling novelist Joe Hill's relationship to Stephen King?
His eldest son
His eldest son: Joe Hill, born Joseph Hillström King in 1972, five years before his brother Owen, wrote Heart-Shaped Box, Horns and NOS4A2 under the pen name to succeed on his own merits.
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 was founded in 1987, a year after Reiner's hit Stand by Me, which is set in the town; the company went on to make Misery and The Shawshank Redemption.
Q 30Stand by Me is based on which King novella?
The Body
The Body follows four boys who hike out to find a dead boy's corpse; Rob Reiner's film moved its town from Maine to Oregon, where it was shot, and took its new title from the Ben E. King song over the end credits.