The Problem With Writing

I really enjoyed King's afterword to Full Dark No Stars. He was unapologetic about offering such dark stories. The reader might have found them hard to read in places, he informs us that he found them hard to write in places.

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The problem with writing, King suggests, is honesty. Bad writing is dishonest writing. Characters don't do what people would really do. More than that, the characters don't talk the way people really talk. King feels he has pretty realistically shown people for who they are. Even if it caused the stories to be darker, he feels they are honest stories, and thus it is good writing.

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I read a lot of Stephen King, and he is usually pretty faithful to the truth as he would see it. That is, there might be times that I feel his characters mimic the people in his own circles more than people in the real world; but that is rare and the attempt at brutal honesty is always appreciated.

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Do Demons Cuss?

King's honest writing style is all the more appreciated as I dig through a very popular Christian novel. The plot is great; and the characters... well, not so great. Because they don't talk the way people talk. You can't put that in a "Christian" novel. The result is a drop of dishonesty. For those who might argue with me on this point, I would ask if you can really take us into a nest of demons, drop in to their conversation and discover... wha-la! Demons don't cuss! That is like headline news stuff. Demons don't use foul language at all. Of course, in this book, neither do the humans. The result: The characters, while enjoyable, come out seeming a little cardboard.

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This is true of a lot of writing aimed at certain groups. When someone writes to a chosen audience instead of simply letting the story tell itself and then find its audience -- the result is censorship. The author cuts out the stuff that he knows his/her audience won't like! Would demons curse? I think they would. Would Christians buy the book?

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By Richard Laymon -- Not Really

This is a struggle in my own writing. I have a perfectly good novel that my family likes a lot. I've written and rewritten it. But it's not what I want to write. I found great freedom recently when I finally decided to gut out a novel that had been on my mind for years. This thing dogs me. But it's bad! Really bad. I tried to write it clean -- no cussing, no bad stuff. But the result is obvious to me, and thus would be obvious to anyone reading; it is dishonest.

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Know how I found freedom in writing? It's as simple as this: I wrote my story title, and then under it wrote "By Richard Laymon." Ha! Richard Laymon is about the nastiest writer I've encountered. In fact, I don't know if he's really an honest writer so much as a shock-jock! Some of that stuff in a Laymon book is just disgusting. But by putting Laymon's name at the top of my story, I felt free to let story tell itself, without my editorial comments.

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Loyalty:

I suspect the reason so many people are very loyal to Stephen King is not because every book is truly a masterpiece, but because each one is at least honest. And when King lets the story take control, no one -- not even the writer -- knows what will happen.

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King has told us about times stories took a different turn than he expected. Paul Sheldon turned out stronger than King thought he was. If Paul had been a puppet in King's hands, he would have died in the clutches of Annie Wilkes. In his original plan for The Shining, everyone died! King said there was blood everywhere. But that's not really the direction the story dictated, and thus King in the end was honest to the story, not his own vision of it. This might be why he is so offended when others take his story (The Shining) and play with it. Imagine King saying, "Hey, I didn't play with this stuff! I was a simple scribe. Don't you get dishonest with my material." (But I'm putting words in his mouth, so forgive me if that seems dishonest, eh!)

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Bachman

I wonder if the reason King felt such freedom as Richard Bachman is because he had become. . . Stephen King. He was expected to write a certain way, aim at a certain audience, and do certain things. But as Bachman, he didn't have to play nice.