👋 Hello Writer!
Stephen King is amazing.
The guy churns out a novel a year. He writes every single day—even his birthday and Christmas. Sure, he’s slowed down a bit as he’s aged. He used to write for eight hours and crank out 2,000 words, now he writes for half that time and maxes out at 1,000. But he says he gets just as much out of it.
I was rereading The Dead Zone recently. It’s bloody great. It’s absorbing, funny, and most importantly, given the choice, I’d rather be reading it than scrolling on my phone. The sign of a truly juicy read.
The Value of Narrative Detours
The Dead Zone is about Johnny Smith, a schoolteacher who can see the future.
But it’s also about Johnny’s relationship with Sarah. It’s also about Johnny’s parents. It’s also about the doctors that study him. And it’s also about a really intense dude who kicks dogs to death and has a taste for fury. There’s also an entire chapter about a fire insurance salesman.
Often, I realise I’ve become engrossed in a subplot about a character that’s never going to return. It’s not as if the scenes are short asides. King spends hundreds of words setting these people up in your mind, giving them dialogue that feels unique, and colouring an entire backstory.
One scene begins like this:
On the first day of 1975, two small boys, Charlie Norton and Norm Lawson, both from Otisfield, Maine, were in the Nortons’ back yard, having a snowball fight. Charlie was eight, Norm was nine. The day was overcast and drippy.
That is pretty tight writing. No word wasted. We’ve never met these kids and — spoiler alert — we never meet them again after this scene. In their solitary scene, they came across something that feeds into another subplot of the book, which I’m assuming will later feed into the main plot of the book. But in the meantime, we get entire passages of prose about these kids.
For example:
Norm gobbled again and shifted irresolutely from one foot to the other. These were Charlie’s woods, not his. Charlie’s territory. Norm loved a good snowball fight when he was winning, but he didn’t really want to go down there if Charlie was lying in ambush for him with half a dozen good hard slushballs all ready to go.
The upshot of all this writing is that as a reader, you can’t help but become engrossed in these kids’ story. Then, barely a page later, they’re gone!
What the hell is the point in that? Couldn’t King just have said, ‘On the first day of 1975, two small boys stumbled upon—’ and tell us what the point of the scene was? Save us a bunch of time? Save himself a bunch of keyboard clacks and his editor some red pen ink?
Stephen King paints these seemingly unimportant characters, settings and beats with the same detailed brush he uses on his main characters and plots. I’m glad he does, because:
💎 Every Real Emotion Counts
Every moment we spend inside the world of the book matters. The better these inconsequential scenes are written, the more trust we have in our author, and the more we can let ourselves relax into the story.
Think about a castle constructed from stone. Let’s say this castle is 500 years old and you’re inspecting it up close. You run your finger along the underside of a crevice and come across a polished loop of iron. It’s what the archers must have used to hang their lanterns on. You look closer and see minuscule patterns, delicately etched into the iron.
You think “wow, they really put a bunch of effort into the smallest things, huh?” and you feel your appreciation and wonder for the entire castle grow just that little bit more.
The main towers and walls represent your primary plot and characters, commanding attention from a distance. But it’s the craftsmanship in the smallest details that convinces visitors the entire structure is authentic.
It’s like that with books. Every small detail helps the overall picture.
🏰 Build Your Castle
Apply the castle concept to your writing. Spend time on offshoots. Whenever you feel interested in a particular side character or subplot, follow that instinct and just play for a bit. You can always strike it through on your next pass, but it might help build your castle.
King has described his writing process this way:
I wake up. I eat breakfast. I walk about three and a half miles. I come back, I go out to my little office, where I’ve got a manuscript, and the last page that I was happy with is on top. I read that, and it’s like getting on a taxiway. I’m able to go through and revise it and put myself – click – back into that world, whatever it is. I don’t spend the day writing. I’ll maybe write fresh copy for two hours, and then I’ll go back and revise some of it and print what I like and then turn it off.