While there may often be times that I disagree with some plot choices that Stephen King makes, there’s one thing that I will admit unashamed. Stephen King is a writer’s writer. What do I mean by that? Well, there are certain authors that I enjoy to read. In this group, I would include writers like John Grisham, Tom Clancy, and James Patterson.
Then there are writers that cause me to want to write. I include in this group Joseph Heller (at least in Catch 22), John Steinbeck, Dean Koontz, and Umberto Eco. And, of course, more than any of the others…Stephen King.
I say that pointing out that I don’t like everything I’ve ever read by King. For instance, I hated It and didn’t care much for Cujo either. However, no other author has left me with the feeling, I so hafta be a writer! more often than Stephen King. And of course a lot of his works are also fun to read too. For instance, this week I finished reading The Wolves of the Calla (Sunday), and immediately started The Song of Susannah. I finished that less than an hour ago (and I should note that I worked an hour of overtime at work today too). Now I’m getting ready to finish up the Dark Tower series with, you guessed it, The Dark Tower.
But as I read through those books, more than anything else I’m thinking of the stories I’ve been working on. I don’t get much inspiration from King–not in the sense of getting story ideas, anyway. Rather, he is so good at crafting a tale that it gives me a target to aim for. It literally does make me go, “I can do this. So I will!” And it’s rather ironic since my writing style (when it comes to novels, not my blog) is the exact opposite of King. King is, shall we say, wordy. Or to use his terms, he’s a “putter-inner” while I’m a “taker-outer.” In point of fact, if I had the story concept for The Wolves of the Calla, I probably would have written a book about 300 pages long at most. King’s was closer to 1,000 pages than to 300…
I talked with Travis, a fellow wannabe writer, earlier today about that too. There were certain passages where I know I would have cut entire pages from the story if I had been writing them; but King makes it work. And it’s not to say one is right and one is wrong. But I have a feeling if King had written The 13th Prime it would be about 800 pages long right now (my current version, which still need a few revisions of course, is at 325 pages long).
I remember reading in King’s On Writing that he had a simple rule for after the first draft was finished. The second draft: 10% shorter. (In a way, it reminds me of A River Runs Through It: “Mmm-hmmm, good. Do it again, half as long.”) I, however, probably need to take the opposite advice. I start with about as close to bare-bones as the story will go. After that, I seek to add character development.
Take Public Transit for instance. The first draft was only 36,000 words long: a novella by anyone’s standards. It took me roughly eight revisions before I finally got it to the 50,000 word mark to make it an “official” novel. And the biggest reason I got that far? Because one of the people I gave rough drafts to said, “You really need to develop Emily’s character better.” And that’s when it clicked for me that Public Transit wasn’t just the story of the two brothers, Justin and Steve, but also included Emily. Developing her character gave me the extra words I needed to get it fully novel length (and it was well after I had decided, “If this book needs to be a novella, well, that’s just how long the book will be”).
So think of that. My first draft ran about 36,000 words. The final draft was just above 50,000. Instead of cutting 10% from the first draft, I added 39%.
Oh well. That’s somewhat of a bunny trail from my original point…which is this: after reading through almost to the end of the Dark Tower series, I’m totally ready to go back through yet another revision of The 13th Prime.
But Roland is calling first….
