How To Create Characters Like Stephen King
Analysis of "On Writing" by Stephen King
📚 On Writing provides a fascinating look into Stephen King’s process.
🕒 Save time by reading my comprehensive summary.
My summary is broken into four posts:
Part 1: Stephen King’s guide to good writing
Part 2: The 2 things every writer must do
Part 3: Why you should write with the door closed
Part 4: How to create characters like Stephen King
Here is Part 4:
Stephen King has created some of the most famous literary characters of all time:
Jack Torrance from The Shining
Annie Wilkes from Misery
Pennywise from It
His approach to creating characters is directly tied to how he views the process of writing fiction:
“My basic belief about the making of stories is that they pretty much make themselves. The job of the writer is to give them a place to grow.”
Here’s how to create characters like Stephen King:
In Stephen King’s view, stories and novels consist of three parts:
Narration (moving the story from A to B)
Description (creating a sensory reality for the reader)
Dialogue (bringing characters to life through their speech)
He makes a point to note how plot is missing from the list.
“Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible.”
Instead of outlining a plot, he starts with a situation and characters.
The most interesting situations can usually be expressed as a What-if question:
What if vampires invaded a small New England village? (‘Salem’s Lot)
What if a policeman in a remote Nevada town went berserk and started killing everyone in sight? (Desperation)
What if a cleaning woman suspected of a murder she got away with (her husband) fell under suspicion for a murder she did not commit (her employer)? (Dolores Claiborne)
What if a young mother and her son became trapped in their stalled car by a rabid dog? (Cujo)
All of these situations occcured to him (while walking, driving, showering) and eventually turned into books.
The characters in the stories start out in a rough form and gradually grow clearer as the novel is written.
What happens to the characters in his novels depends solely on what he discovers about them as he works.
It’s important to remember that no one is really as they seem. No one is “the bad guy” or the “best friend” in real life, we all believe that we are the main character.
Pay attention to how the real people around you behave and tell the truth about what you see. But King warns against taking characters directly from your life “unless you want to get sued or shot on your way to the mailbox some fine morning.”
A writer’s job is to make sure that his fictional characters behave in ways that:
Act in their best interest
Seem reasonable to us
Help the story
If you do your job, your characters will come to life and start acting on their own.
“I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven.”
Continue reading my On Writing summary:
Part 1: Stephen King’s guide to good writing
Part 2: The 2 things every writer must do
Part 3: Why you should write with the door closed
Part 4: How to create characters like Stephen King
Summaries are available only to C.S.M. Fiction paid subscribers. Thank you for your support.
