With over fifty novels to his name, almost two hundred short stories, and scores of adaptations into movies, TV shows, comic books, and even musicals, Stephen King is arguably the most prolific and successful American author. Period. His most recent work, Mr. Mercedes, published June of this year, is the first of a prospective trilogy, and the sequel, Finders Keepers, is slated for release next year. As if that weren’t enough, King has announced yet another novel, Revival, scheduled for publication this November. With all of that fiction-writing and industry experience, it’s safe to say that the man has learned a thing or two about writing. Luckily for us aspiring writers, King imparts this gritty, practical wisdom in his memoir, On Writing.
One running theme throughout the book is truth. “The job of fiction,” King says, “is to find the truth inside the story’s web of lies.” Sure, it sounds profound, but what exactly is he talking about? Let’s break it down in terms of character, story, and dialog.
When it comes to creating rich, realistic characters, King advises us to observe those around us and translate what we see into fiction. One of these observations is that “in real life, we each of us regard ourselves as the main character, the protagonist, the big cheese.” This means that our characters, even supporting ones, must have needs, wants, desires, and intrinsic motivations—all of which compel them to act, thus shaping the story. If you do this, King says, “your characters will come to life and start doing stuff on their own. . . . And it will solve a lot of your problems, believe me.”
When it comes to story, telling the truth means kicking the notion of plot to the curb. Plot implies forcing characters into premeditated, painstakingly outlined events, which robs our characters of their agency and limits where we can take the story. King describes plot as a jackhammer, an onerous hunk of machinery a writer uses to force the story to go a certain way. “The story which results from it,” he says, “is apt to feel artificial and labored.” He says he’s “never demanded a set of characters to do things [his] way. On the contrary, [he] wants them to do things their way.”
The idea of character agency extends to dialog. In order to pen engaging, realistic dialog, we must remain truthful to the characters we’ve created and not succumb to “The Legion of Decency.” For instance, let’s say our antagonist, Big Lou, is a mobster who loves cracking informants’ knees with his Louisville Slugger and massacring enemies with his lead-spewing Tommy gun. Well, when the amoral Big Lou stubs his toe while scrambling into the getaway car, we shouldn’t balk at the big, bad curse word because of The Legion of Decency and have him shout, “AW, FIDDLE STICKS!” If we were to do so, we’d be breaking “the promise to tell the truth of how people act and talk through the medium of the written story.” However, if that contrast between excessive violence and anti-profanity reveals something of Big Lou’s character, then that’s entirely different, because “talk, whether ugly or beautiful, is an index of character.” Thus, at the end of the day, the only person who decides what Big Lou says is not us, his authors, or The Legion of Decency, but Lou himself.
So, let’s all heed Mr. King’s sage advice—snip the pesky puppet strings from our characters, let them stretch their own legs, speak their own minds—and allow truth seep into and enrich our fiction.
You can pick up a copy of Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft from Amazon.com.
Ryan Evans
Jera Publishing
Editor and Writing Coach
ryan@jerapublishing.com