13 Things You Didn't Know About Stephen King

Drawing from King's experiences working as a teacher at Hampden Academy in Maine, he penned the first-draft short story of Carrie, with the intention of publishing it with Cavalier (think Playboy by any other name).

Dissatisfied with his initial draft and feeling that both the story and character were going nowhere - owing much to the fact that he was uncomfortable with writing from a young female perspective - King scrapped the type-written story.

As this was the good old days of hard copy, his wife Tabitha King found the draft in their waste bin and persuaded Stephen to keep writing and expand it into a full-length novel.

The rest is history, as Carrie became King's first published novel and an all-time horror classic, spawning a number of films and adaptations, and inspiring several generations of writers and directors when creating their own gothic worlds.