Stephen King and the big “What if.”
When I was in high school, I discovered the novels of Stephen King. This is not surprising; I’d venture that Stephen King is mostly discovered by adolescent readers. His bone-chilling, gory and terrifying stories are guaranteed to thrill the adolecent mind far more than the newest rehash of the “Saw” franchise. I have probably read at least 10 of his novels and 15 of his short stories, a few of which have been ably into films (The Shining, The Shawshank Redemption, Misery and Delores Claiborne are probably the best of the films.)
My favourite book by Stephen King, however, is his bestseller On Writing, which is at once an autobiography and a writing guide. If you are interested in writing fiction and want to know more about how to enhance your descriptions or develop your characters, Stephen King is clearly your man. People often pooh-pooh his writing as populist crap, but the whole thing about populist crap is that it is POPULAR – King creates scenarious and characters that speak to an overwhelming number of people, and isn’t that one of the factions of really good writing?
King is often asked about how he comes up with his “plots.” (I put the word “plot” in quotations for reasons that are made apparent below.) Here’s what he has to say about that …
“In my view, stories and novels consist of three parts: narration, which moves the story from point A to point Z; description, which creates a sensory reality for the reader; and dialogue, which brings characters to life through their speech. You may wonder where plot is in all this. The answer — my answer anyway — is nowhere … I distrust plot for two reasons: first, because our ‘lives’ are largely plotless … and second, because I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren’t compatible. It’s best that I be as clear about this as I can — I want you to understand that my basic belief about the making of stories is that they pretty much make themselves. The job of the writer is to give them a place to grow (and to transcribe them, of course.) … I lean more heavily on intuition, and have been able to do that because my books tend to be based on situation rather than story … I want to put a group of characters (perhaps a pair; perhaps even just one) in some sort of predicament and then watch them try to work themselves free.
A strong situation redners the whole question of plot moot, which is fine with me. The most interesting situations can usually be espressed as a “What if” question:
What if vampires invaded a small New England villiage? (‘Salem’s Lot)
What if a policeman in a remote Nevada town went bezerk and started killing everyone in sight? (Desperation)
What if a cleaning woman suspected of a murder she got away with (her husband) fell under suspicion for a murder she did not commit? (Delores Claiborne)
What if a young mother and son became trapped in their stalled car by a rabid dog? (Cujo) (On Writing, 169)
The writing challenge: Give the “What if” exercise a try. If it doesn’t go anywhere, so be it, but at least you spent some time writing, and according to Stephen King, “If you want to be a writer you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” (On Writing, 145)
