It’s Halloween. And since I have not published on Ruthless since last Halloween, I thought a whole year passing deserves a sycophantic and glossy examination of one of the season’s cultural luminaries—but Vincent Price is dead and hasn’t injected himself into the national conversation in a pathetic attempt to be loved by the septum-pierced chuds who now hate J.K. Rowling, so, I decided on a line-by-line take-down of this douchebag.
I don’t hate Stephen King because of his political beliefs, bed-wetters have a right to their opinions, I’m okay with that, I’m an American, dammit. I don’t hate him because he’s successful, more power to him. I don’t hate him because he writes longhand on yellow legal pads like a crazy person (there’s something there, man, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s there. Something. Something deep, like, his mom made him dress like a girl till he was eight, that sorta thing.)
No. I hate Stephen King because he said this in front of God and everybody:
“Plotting is the first resort of bad writers.”
What-the—didhejust?—Noooo!—the—Him?!
‘Plot.’
‘Bad writers.’
So, by implication, he is a ‘good writer’?
Mu!-tha!-fucker!
Take down: commence.
It’s bad when the whole reading portion of humanity has no clue why you’re famous, you know, like Jennifer Lawrence—in short, I can’t take advice from a guy whose book I threw against my dorm room poster of M.C. Escher holding a chrome sphere whilst driven into a testosterone-ignited rage by the worst prose since the Epic of Gilgamesh.
ALL OF ‘EM!—…save one: The Gunslinger. (The actual book I threw was The Stand—that book proves one thing, King has only met nine people in his life and just two of them were native speakers of English.)
In his book, On Writing he’s even more brazen, he uses the word ‘dullard’ instead of ‘bad writer’ So. Mr. Maine says ‘plot’ is the first resort of bad writers—all right. I have a question, then.
What’s the first resort of ‘good’ writers? You know, like him.
I GOT IT! Creating gray, balsa-wooden characters that talk like a drunk toddler. Because that’s what he does. He ‘s implying that character writing, writing without a plan, generally known as ‘pantsing’, creates the best fiction, and is therefore the first choice of ‘good writers’. Because he’s a good writer. And that’s what he does.
I WISH-TO-GODDAMM KING PAID MORE ATTENTION TO PLOT! That way I wouldn’t have had to march, grumbling, to the student union at 9 PM and buy a replacement Escher—they were out of ‘Silver Ball’ so I got the one with the endless staircase—which is not an upgrade! (I still have a recurring dream about that drawing: my third grade teacher chases me up and down with a giant pair of scissors and she’s cackling ‘The Capitol of Delaware is Dover!’ and I’m, like ‘That’s what I said!” and she says “Come here and get your medicine!” and then I wake up, sweating, in a dank puddle of Big-Tip-For-The-Maid.).
[clears throat] Now then. [nervously straightens desk papers] We can…we can move on.
The character vs. plot conundrum, isn’t a conundrum at all. The guy who carved the runes on Gobekli Tepe figured out that straight character writing (writing in which character is first and what happens [plot] emerges from the character) makes readers look at you like that guy who wore sandals with a suit to your sister’s wedding—“You live in a house of lies if you think that makes you interesting!”
Pure character, where the plot points are incidental bumpers in the pinball machine of the story, becomes, very quickly, an over-indulgent, high-school-drama-student, look-at-me-I-can-do-three-whole-voices-that-aren’t-DeNiro WASTE OF MY FUCKING TIME! (and yes, I’m aware of the irony that my own writing is over-indulgent and performative, but that is a feature of Gonzo, not a flaw, it’s in the first person, not the third, it’s narrative non-fiction and it’s most effectively used in the short form, which, quite frankly, is the only way you can pull off the ‘spastic narrator’ without getting concerned phone calls from cousins you haven’t seen since you were ten).
Quoth the raven: [squawk!] “Plot some more!” [squawk!] ‘You cock-sucking boor!” [squawk!]
The Stand is 700 pages of baby-poop for 200 pages of that thimble she swallowed—wanna guess exactly what ‘first resort’ of the aforementioned ‘bad writer’ is NOT in the 500 remaining pages?
Bing-Bing!
PLOT!
You guessed it! The Stand is a lot of pointless, desperate characterization that impressed NO ONE, excited NO ONE, and, honestly, didn’t even characterize all that much. King tried to prove that he’s a coherent world builder. He wanted to show those snooty people that they’re wrong, even though he probably doesn’t know what his readership thinks because I’ll bet he ain’t fishing for honest feedback at the Bangor Wawa.
(I can hear you stirring, King Fans, don’t belch your half-ass defenses here unless A. You’ve actually read a canon of good writers and can honestly tell me why Lovecraft-after-a-stroke is still good in comparison, or B. You can convince me that writing long hand on yellow legal pads provide an ironic wit or symbolic depth that, as yet, personally fails to register.)
“Okay, Bart, you hated The Stand, jeezus! that’s not the man’s whole body of work—Christ, have a drink!”
Wrong! I believe it is and I shall explain:
[mass groan, someone asks if they can go to the bathroom—”You sit your ass down, Gary, or I swear I’ll roofie your punch, drive you to the zoo and let the gorillas molest you—SIT!…..—SIT, GARY!….(long, uncomfortable silence)…..Okay then.]
Far greater a horse-laugh than Stephen King calling ANYONE a bad writer because plot and concept were their first concerns (had he heard that, Michael Crichton would send him a photocopy of his raised middle finger, the autographed inscription reading: At least when the dinosaurs became irrelevant they evolved into birds.—Crichton) is King—of all people— insinuating that HE is a competent character writer.
Character writers ‘show’ far more than they ‘tell’, here are some glaring warts on the ass of The Stand, at the time considered his Magnum Opus (I’ll get to the Dark Tower later). Just a few passages that are, very nearly, unforgivable if beheld by themselves, but when read in context are absolutely unforgivable for anyone who was never locked in broom closet with an open bottle of ether.
(And I’m not cherry-picking, this is fucking endemic, I had a hard time whittling it down to three.)
“Good” writer characterization sample #1:
“Irma didn’t like people. If everyone on earth had died but her, she would have been perfectly happy.”
And this is how you introduce your character? with that volcanic whopper TOLD to us, boilerplate, like you were describing the Number 7 with rice at your local Hunan Palace? This character was a shut-in: but that’s not what he just TOLD us she was and no characterization of his SHOWED us the maniacal she-Hitler he just described—Hell, I hate people and if the world were to end I still figure I’d need one or two to help me steal Gene Shallit’s corpse and prop it up in the Governor’s Mansion ballroom (my post-apocalyptic address, should anyone want to drop by with a bundt cake…there will be puh-lentyto talk about given my love for collecting rare curiosities).
“Welcome to my home, Wanderer of the Wasteland, well met— you must be exhausted, follow me for refreshments andtogether we may admire my unique, never-before-assembed, one-of-a-kind [creepy laughter] my, shall we say [clears throat] menagerie:
“Both of them. Yes.”
“He wasn’t buried in the pants, I’m afraid—just a burlap sack,two Kleenex boxes for shoes, but I raided the Governor’s wife’s closet and came up with something similar. Do you like it? Please tell me you like it!— I am SO relieved!— Spuds Mackenzie and the ‘Where’s The Beef’ lady are due Monday—Cognac?”
…Now grit your teeth and endure how he introduces his Mega-Bad Guy, Randall Flagg— keep in mind, this is THE bad guy of the Dark Tower series as well, you’ll never have another chance to give the reader a first impression of this, your world-spanning uber-creep, consider that before you settle on a strategy Stephen, just saying. No,I trust you. I’m just sayin;’
“Good” writer characterization sample #2:
“Randall Flagg…strode south on US 51, listening to the night sounds that pressed close on both sides of this narrow road that would take him sooner or later out of Idaho and into Nevada. From Nevada he might go anywhere. From New Orleans to Nogales , from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine…[uh, okay, that’s, um, information—thank you, I guess]He knew where the roads went, and he walked them at night. Now, an hour before dawn, he was somewhere between Grasmere and Riddle, west of Twin Falls, still north of the Duck Valley Reservation that spreads across two states.”[Holy buh-joley! he wasn’t between Grasmere AND Riddle, but I thought that was EAST of Twin Falls, but wait! the Duck Valley Reservation isn’t that far south—is it?? ‘Two states’, you say?! I told her it crossed two states! HONEY! COME IN HERE AND READ THIS! YOU OWE ME FIVE BUCKS!—The Secret to Good Characterization, kids: More. Place. Names. Especially when you mention them only once and they have nothing to do with the story.]
[Skipping ahead]
He walked south, south on US 51, [goddammit, skipping ahead]
—[quick summary of the next 25 lines: mentions he has fifty pamphlets of contradicting political and religious messages in his denim jacket, then he lists them— they aren’t very ‘showing’, they just sound like a list of pamphlets King has personally come across in his tenure at America’s fine truck stops and rest areas…probably near the Duck Valley Reservation—HONEY!]…
[—wait, where does King describe the comical bulge this bizarre collection makes in his clothing….oh, he doesn’t, never mind, silly of me to ask, I apologize.]
[15 lines later] By dawn tomorrow or the day after that he would pass into Nevada, triking Owyhee first and then Mountain City, [Gently. Pounding. Forehead. On. Desk.]
[30 lines later] He strode on at a steady, ground-eating pace. Two days ago he had been in Laramie, Wyoming…Today he was on US 51, between Grasmere and Riddle, on his way to Mountain City. Tomorrow he would be somewhere else.[Forehead on desk. Pathetic whimpering. “Twelve pages!” weeping “This goes on for TWELVE PAGES!— (head rises. eyes bloodshot. jaw slack) Is he a bad dude, Steve? Is he? Is that what you wanted to convey? Oh, I know you said he was a bad dude, but all I saw were cowboy boots, a denim jacket and a piss-poor device of describing PAMPHLETS! ‘Piss-poor’ because they didn’t SHOW me anything, NOTHING showed me anything. This isn’t a SCREENPLAY, you cowlicked Van-Magnet! The audience is actually going to SEE the words you write—I know more about eastern Iowa than I do about your Main Villain after TWELVE-fucking-PAGES! —I don’t know, is it me?! Maybe its me. Is it? Is it me?—I…I need a nap. I’m going for a nap. Excuse me.]
“Hiya, Stevie! I hear you want to write stories, you wanna learn how to write characters that read like actual people and not warped, unreal examples of humanity as might occur in the fever dream of a comatose zoo gibbon?”
“Yeeee-aaah!”
“Then come down here, with me. Here, no one writes like a propeller-smacked dugong, here they all float— you’d like that, wouldn’t you?— Yeah? just give me your hand—there you go. Just reach out. Atta boy.”
—actually how it happened, according to Stevie King’s tormented older brother, Howie.
…And here, ladies and gentlemen, is where I threw the book at my M.C. Escher poster, though I forced myself to finish this mediocrity, it marked the point I was through with Mr. Stephen King, both as a writer and as a human being, because no Just Man of Christendom would steal as much time from an innocent youth as he, without first opening his veins on a candle-lit pentagram and swearing allegiance to Moloch—it’ll come out! We’ll get the truth eventually! Don’t you worry.
“Good” writer characterization sample #3
In this scene, somebody just called ‘The Kid’ (ugh) drives up to another character called the ‘Trashcan Man’ (God, I hate you, Stephen.) Herein, we witness King’s 1) tin ear 2) artless naming scheme 3) his cringey attempts to differentiate his characters by use of catch phrases 4) his ham-fisted mission to craft idiosyncrasies 5) his rain-puddle narrative depth and 6) what can only be termed ‘A cult leader’s disrespect for human intelligence’:
I didn’t have to look long for a short passage that would be the thesis of this article, a few sentences which encompassed every complaint. But find it I did.
Here goes.
The Kid.
Meets the Trashcan Man.
“Getchall a beer out’n the back seat.” They were Coors and they were warm and Trashcan Man hated beer and he drank one fast and said how good it was. “Hey, boy,” The Kid said. “Coors beer’s the only beer. I’d piss Coors if I could. You believe that happy crappy?”
—Slam! Squeak! Growl! Grunt! Whip! Pop!! “I HATE. THAT. MOTHER. FUCKER! — Did I just rip my poster?” shaking my fist at the heavens, “Escher’s curse be on you, Stephen King!” Roommate shuffles in wearing a towel, brushing his teeth, “Who do you hate?”
“Stephen King.”
He nods, takes out his toothbrush, “Sounds about right,” looks over his shoulder.“Hey, what happened to Silver Ball?”
Dark Tower fans, I don’t want to hear it, I liked The Gunslinger, but what was cool about that book seems oddly lost on it’s author. How do I know? Because the next book in the series Drawing of the Three was a mumble-mouthed half-written butt-hump. The next one, The Waste Lands was only partly salvageable, and from then on the labyrinth of half-popped bubble wrap that is King’s imagination collapses and we’re left with the same dross. But, you may ask, is he completely irredeemable?
His early successes were pulp horseshit—but semi-readable pulp horseshit, Christine was almost a good idea and nearly publishable as is, and that’s what I call a ‘King Category’, they are as follows:
Semi-Good Idea, Semi-Shitty Execution
The Body
Apt Pupil
Cujo
The Dead Zone
Umney’s Last Case(short story)
Semi-Good Idea, Execution that Makes You Want to Go Back in Time and Punch His Pregnant Mother in the Belly
IT
Hearts in Atlantis
Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption
The Stand
Needful Things
Firestarter
Gerald’s Game
Golden Years(teleplay)
Bad Idea, Execution of That Bad Idea So Utterly Without Art or Competence You Are Offended That a Tree Died Just to be Shamefully Tattooed With It….and Then You Pray That When God Sends Him to Hell, Aside From the Burning/Suffering etc. That He Also Make Him Listen to His Own Books Read Out Loud by Lily Tomlin, All While Forcing Him to Stare at a Poster of a Smiling Michael Crichton Giving Jesus a High-Five:
Drawing of the Three
The Mist
The Langoliers
Any Dark Tower after The Waste Lands
Thinner
The Talisman
The Tommyknockers
The Scourge
Delores Claiborne (thrown out of passenger window of friend’s car around page 90)
Every short story I’ve ever read of his BESIDES Umney’s Last Case
There. These are just what I’ve read. Age 14 to 20. My whole youth. Reading that New England Lobster Monkey’s badly-characterized, under-plotted rape of the rotating-soft-cover display at Kroger’s.
Who gave him the unmitigated GALL! to pontificate on the goodness or badness of a writer. Is it his success? The trapped-in-an-airport money he made? Fine. Then let him riff on marketing and product placement, on lateral distribution and public promotion, but if you hear that Human Cornhole ever talk about the quality of literature, putting himself ANYWHERE near the top, you stab him in the eyeball with an oyster shucker, because he’s a thief. A Thief! He stole six precious reading years from me, when I could have been reading Cormac McCarthy or T.C. Boyle—because that’s his business model, get’em before they know they’re buying wholesale yak-shit and retard the natural course of their literacy by funnel-fucking their inner ear with half-composed ape flatulence.
When I think of what I could have read…I want. to cry.
….or buy a gun.
—I just realized that in the heat of my righteous anger, I may have implicated that I want to murder Steven King.
—Let me take this time to legally indemnify myself:
—I do not want to kill Stephen King.
—Killing Stephen King would be wrong.
—Being a bad writer is not justification enough to kill someone, even Stephen King.
—Do not do anything else to Stephen King.
— Do not corner him in a men’s toilet with a buddy who owes you a favor, then wrap his nuts in Gorilla tape and rip it off real fast so now you have a piece of Gorilla tape with a bunch of Stephen King’s ball-hairs on it that you can put in a box frame, in your house, and brag about how you ripped the ball-hairs off not only THE MOST OVERRATED LITERARY HACK OF THE 2OTH CENTURY but SINGULAR PROOF OF UNDETECTED LEAD IN THE WATER SUPPLY—
One Mr. Stephen King.
Don’t do that.
Leave a Reply