On Breaking Up With An Author: An Open Letter To Stephen King

I originally posted this open letter to Stephen King on my Facebook page, but it generated such a lively and sometimes heated discussion that I've decided to share it here. Let me preface what you're about to read by saying I've been a big fan of Stephen King going all the way back to Carrie. Granted, I was only 8 years old when that first book was published, but I started in on King at the age of 13 or so and happily devoured everything he had to offer well into my 20's. Whenever I wanted a good, old-fashioned scare from the type of book I didn't dare read alone at night, King was my go-to source.

In 1999 King was hit by a car and needed an extended period of convalescence. He even spoke publicly about the possibility of retiring. It didn't last, he came back in 2006 with Cell, and he's continued to release new novels, essays and other works since. And I haven't liked a single one of the novels he's written since his return. Book after book, year after year, he continues to disappoint me and make me regret having given him the benefit of the doubt (and my time and money) yet again.

With that said, here's my open letter.

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Dear Stephen King:
It was a lovely reader-author relationship while it lasted, but it's been over for at least a decade and it's time for me to move on. I think it's really wonderful that you've found faith and feel that it, and sobriety, have turned your life around. I just don't enjoy the fact that those two things have become the central themes of virtually every piece of fiction you've written since you discovered them.

I came to you looking for truly frightening, taut, dark and edgy supernatural horror that explored the limits of human strength and character in the face of pure, inexplicable evil. But you haven't been writing that kind of material for a very, very long time and what you have been writing has been so self-indulgent, maudlin and overwrought that's it's difficult for me to believe you even have an editor anymore.

I held out hope that with Dr. Sleep, your long-awaited sequel to The Shining, you would return to form at last. I was wrong. It's less a supernatural horror thriller than an overlong, overwritten examination of sad-sack, grown-up, recovering alcoholic Danny filling in as your usual Christ figure as he takes on your recently-typical cadre of banal baddies.

Again and again you write these characters who are supposed to seem boringly ordinary on the surface yet filled with a churning malice and menacing hunger to destroy and subsume, but they turn out to be boringly ordinary through and through. Selfish and grasping, sure. But not remotely alien or deeply disturbing in the manner of the bad guys from your earlier books, like Black House and The Stand.

So, this is goodbye. I will always remember the good books fondly, and know you'll be just fine without me.

Sadly,
Me.

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It wouldn't be right for me to reprint the discussion that followed on Facebook, but I can share one of my follow-up comments by way of further explaining what my primary issue with King's more recent work is:

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See, if King wants to switch it up and write character studies, that's fine. It's a departure from what made him a bestselling and beloved author, but it's his right and many a creative type has branched out into other types of work and found a NEW audience with great success. But King's publishers just keep on banging that "Master of Horror!!" drum on every book he releases and forcing every new book of his into the "thriller" category (no matter how much the book DOESN'T fit that category), to try and hold on to the old audience, when they know very well the new book is NOTHING like the stuff the old audience originally came for.

I am part of that old audience, and I don't turn to King for character studies, historical fiction or coming of age stories. IMO, there are already plenty of other authors who do those things FAR better than King, and if I want those kinds of stories I'll go to those other authors. What (IMO) King was best at was the supernatural horror-thriller, with evil that's not grounded in any system of religion or morality, but just IS. The fact that it was totally unpredictable, illogical and inexplicable is what made it so scary: if you can't explain or predict it, how can you avoid such evil in real life? There was no soft landing with the old King, there was no "we all learned something today" moment. And that's what made it so great, IMO. It was nihilistic. But once King himself stopped being nihilistic, so did his work. Great for the man, bad for the work.

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As I state in my open letter, King will be just fine without me. There are literally millions of readers out there who are still buying and loving his work, but I will no longer be among them.

I'm disappointed to see the novels of King's son, Joe Hill, going down that same overwritten, poorly edited, more-character-study-than-horror road. Hill's Locke and Key graphic novels (with illustrator Gabriel Rodriguez) and his Heart Shaped Box were right in line with what I loved about the Stephen King of old. But Hill's supposed horror-thriller Horns is about 60% backstory/character study/coming of age tale, and his NOS4A2 suffers from the same problems of repetition and authorial navel-gazing as his father's more recent works.
 

So what can I learn from this experience as an author?

Well, I haven't released any new fiction in a very long time. But I guess my author takeaway is this: if I choose to break with my usual style or genre(s), I have to expect I will lose at least some of my original readership. If I'm no longer giving them what they came for, I can't expect them to keep coming back.

Also, if I should ever be lucky enough to become a bestselling author, I should do everything in my power to ensure I've got editors who are brave enough to be as ruthless with my work as they would be with a manuscript from any first-time author. In my opinion, King's novels have been crying out for a quality edit going all the way back to Cell, and regardless of his changes in tone and content, a quality edit could've vastly improved every novel he's released since his return to publishing.

Finally, categories matter. I should never categorize my books according to what I think will sell without regard to their actual genres, because it makes readers angry when they feel you've basically tricked them into buying a book they didn't want.


Happy trails, Mr. King. Your work will always be part of the canon of my youth.

A Good Edit Would've Fixed That

Once again, I'm judging for Writer's Digest's annual Self-Published Book Awards, and once again, the need for a good edit is crying out to me from the pages of most of the entries.

Mind you, I'm not talking about the occasional typo or missing space between words. Most of you would think those things are nits, just as likely to have been introduced in the typesetting phase as to have been overlooked in a prior editing pass, and I'd agree with you. No, I'm talking about a pervasive inattention to detail, improper usage or faulty constructions running throughout a given book's pages. Has your work fallen victim to any of the following problems?

Repetitive Usage - Do you have certain pet expressions or turns of phrase? It's fine to use them, but use them sparingly. In one of the books I've read this year, the phrase "that's the point" (and its many variants, such as "that's the whole point," "but the entire point of...", etc.) appears so frequently as to be distracting. Variations of the expression are spoken by every character in the book and turn up all too often: in one case, three times on a single page. On another page the phrase appears in two consecutive sentences, spoken by two different characters. Perhaps in that latter case, the author made a purposeful choice to be repetitive. If so, the desired effect isn't apparent.

Convoluted Sentence Structure - If I have to re-read many of your sentences or passages repeatedly to comprehend their meaning, your work fails the clarity test. This seems to be a particular bugaboo of fantasy and science fiction books. Perhaps in trying to achieve a certain tone of scientific realism or mythology, the authors simply go overboard with stilted language. Using big words, lots of technical, philosophical or religious jargon, or many made-up words doesn't automatically inject realism into your work. It's far more likely to introduce confusion. Also, as a rule of thumb, if you find a sentence you've written has more than two sub-clauses or phrases offset by commas, you probably need to think about breaking it up into multiple, smaller sentences.

Losing the Thread of Tense - If your character is recalling or retelling something that happened in the past, the recollection or retelling should generally be given in past tense---and stay in past tense. Consider this (totally fabricated) example:

I will always remember that summer. We went out on the boat nearly every day, and wished we'd never have to go back home. That year, my goal was to catch the biggest bass so I go to town one afternoon, I buy new bait and stronger fishing line. I get out on the water the next morning, earlier than anyone else. I cast my line and wait.

The first two sentences are in past tense, which is fine. The third sentence begins in past tense (goal was to catch the biggest bass) but then switches to present tense (I go to town, I buy new bait) and tense remains in the present for the rest of the passage.

Switching tense correctly is particularly important when the narrative is intended to go back and forth between past and present tense, such as when a detective is investigating a cold case and has to interview a bunch of people about their memories of the events in question. When tense changes, is the interviewee still talking about his past experience, or sharing some new realization with the detective in the present day? Tense is what's supposed to clue the reader in on this sort of thing, so if you're switching tense incorrectly or unintentionally, you're confusing the reader.

Using Internal Monologue for Omniscient Exposition - An internal monologue is nothing more than a character talking to him- or herself. We've all talked to ourselves at some point, we all know what it's like and how we "sound" in our heads when we're doing it.

We talk to ourselves to cogitate on things, refresh our memory of events, go over mental to-do lists and the like, but real-life internal monologues are not like journal entries. They do not provide a factual accounting of events, because the person experiencing the internal monologue already lived those events and knows what happened. They also cannot provide a factual accounting of events that were not witnessed personally by the individual having the internal monologue. Look at the following two examples---again, examples I've constructed just for this blog entry:

Mike couldn't stop obsessing over the events of that night. Three a.m., and his mind was still spinning.

Garrett refused to stop drinking, and I knew I shouldn't let him have his keys back, but I was afraid he'd shoot me if I didn't hand them over. He was doing about eighty when he hit that curve, still swigging from a bottle of Jack. He never knew what hit him. The funeral's tomorrow. I know what everyone there will be thinking, and they'll be right. It was all my fault.

Guilty or not, Mike knew he'd be expected to make a showing at the memorial service.

Compare this example to:

Mike couldn't stop obsessing over the events of that night. Three a.m., and his mind was still spinning.

What was I thinking?! I never should've given Garrett his keys, whether he was waving a gun in my face or not. Now he's dead and it's all my fault. How can I face everyone at the funeral tomorrow?

Guilty or not, Mike knew he'd be expected to make a showing at the memorial service.

In the first example, the author is using an internal monologue to present expository (factual or background) information from an omniscient point of view: the point of view of someone who knows, and can see, all that's happening or has happened to anyone involved in the story or setting, and also knows what any character is thinking or has thought at any given time.

The first monologue relates factual information Mike has no reason to be re-stating in his own head. It also reports on events which occurred outside Mike's presence; Mike might've learned how fast Garrett was going from a police report or news story, but how could he know Garrett was still swigging from a bottle when he hit the curve? And how could he know Garrett "never knew what hit him"?

The second monologue is more realistic. In it, Mike doesn't report on events, he reconsiders his role in them. He expresses his feelings about the events, and fearfully anticipates what's coming next.

This blog post is getting pretty long, so I'll wrap it up for today and report on some other common problems in a future post or posts. Bottom line: if my allotment of books from the contest gives an accurate indication, about 19 out of 20 self-published books need a professional edit---and aren't getting one. It's a real shame when a self-publishing author gets the tough stuff right (believable dialogue, pacing, plot, characterization) but releases a book that's still hopelessly marred by problems like those above---problems that could've been easily remedied by a good edit.