Why Stephen King Can't Write (according to some guy)

It certainly is, and also it isn't what I'm saying. Dedicated people can become adept at the study of criticism without needing to be 'paying for it', George Orwell is one famous example among many. It is the case, however, that a university is the best place to equip you with the tools needed for critically analyzing a text in the most in depth and sophisticated way, but far from the only place.

Of course they are free to ignore an opinion they disagree with. No one is asking you to listen to my opinions on what would make a text a good piece of literature. I don't care what exactly you think, I am more interested in if you can argue your point. That is how criticism works. Question: do you feel like I am personally calling you ignorant or misinformed?

If they do not have the 'tools' required to appraise a work on it's merits and demerits - and argue their point well. Again, if someone claims my pasta is as good as some top chief like Rick Stein's they are wrong. I don't care if it is their opinion, they are wrong; and the art of cooking is just as creative as literature.

Why would a painter using the wrong brush be a problem if it created the desired effect?

But a writer using a few info-dumps is not really a 'flaw' per-say. Some of my favourite novels have a few info-dumps that come in from outside the narrative. Like Nineteen Eighty-Four (I've been rereading Orwell lately) who describes how the Thought Police manage surveillance by selectively viewing into peoples homes at a time, so you had no way of knowing if you are being watched or not. Now how does Winston Smith actually know this? How he found out we are never told, and this does not mean that Nineteen Eighty-Four is a crap novel because of this. Nineteen Eighty-Four is instead one of the best novels of the last century.

So what about Atlas Shrugged, which is one of the worst? Well, have you read the thing? All the way through? I have, and I really wish I could take that month back because the prose was so excruciating and the philosophy it is based on so child-like. Objectivism really is like a child who has just came to you with a drawing it has done, only the drawing is basic Metaphysics. It's world is unrealistic, seemingly built only to expunge the philosophy of its author. It waffles on for 1,200 pages telling a story that could easily be a third of the length and still have the message of the novel untouched. And before you say it, yes, Objectivism is the point of Atlas Shrugged. The prose and basis of Atlas Shrugged is so hackneyed, verbose and poorly constructed that 'bad' is the only phrase that seems apt. It certainly seems to have a lot of fans. Atlas Shrugged, then, is a bad novel and Nineteen Eighty-Four, even with the out of narration info-dumps, is a good novel, maybe even a great novel because it deals with a subject that will forever be relevant.

When I see someone saying they like a dreadful book like Twilight or Atlas Shrugged, I don't consider them some kind of untermenschen. I don't, and would never do that. A person is far more than the sum of their opinions.

To be honest, I don't think Twilight is as bad as it's reputation suggests. I enjoy it more than Harry Potter for one thing. Like I have said before in this thread, I like reading Stephen King, though this book I'm reading now, Dreamcatcher isn't his best effort I can still say that I'm enjoying it. However, I'm reading it for pure amusement. It is what it is: a Saw film, an episode of Mock the Week; it's not cerebral or particularly dignified, not fine literature, it's just damn fun. Dante is fine literature, Dickens may be fine literature - I don't personally like all of Dickens' works either. That's not snobbery, nor is it snobbery to say Michaelangelo's masterpiece is orders of magnitude better than the amateur painting above it.

 

All opinions are equal, but some opinions are more equal than others.

There's some degree of devil's advocacy to this, but you could argue that the amateur painting actually says more about the human condition than the masterpiece because, for most of us, the human condition is one of mediocrity and ignorance, and of being unable to impose any kind of order or sense on the world around us -- a sort of perpetual and meaningless flailing that amounts to nothing and is quickly forgotten.

But I still think Stephen King is a hack.

 

First of all, I cannot make a comment on whether King is a good writer or not. There is no definitive authority deciding what constitutes good writing. If there were, it would consist of a team of Gods that sit on high and make that decision, and let's face it, they'd have to be immortal Gods who are able to move with the times in order to assess every book every written ... I digress, back to King. What I can say, it that I just cannot get into any of King's novels but I do enjoy his short stories! Different Seasons and Nightmares and Dreamscapes are both great.

 

So to throw out an opinion, I've tried reading Steven King twice now. First I tried on The Shining. I think I got to the part where they're in the hotel for the first time, learning about it. I bailed. It's just strange. Then I managed to pick up a copy of Under the Dome (say the TV show, tried to give the book a shot). That failed pretty early on. So I personally don't like Steven King. I'd like to, just because he's made a healthy fortune and a career from writing like I'd like to and he'll probably go down in history.

But to what was in the first article, that King focuses on story not the words, I go both ways on that. On one hand you've got Tolkien who has too much description and not enough story, and then we've got King who's got not enough description but amazing story. While it's just preference, and a balance (both receive complaints so neither are perfect of course), in my own personal opinion the words matter slightly more than story.

In TV or movies, the description is visual. The chair is there one moment, it's gone the next. Maybe it's blue because that's what was on set. In painting, maybe the blue chair was in the background so it was painted blue because of color reasons that I won't pretend to understand.

But with writing, you're fabricating your own world. If that chair is blue and is described as blue, it's blue for a reason. Maybe it represents the main character's deep depression (I don't buy into that but I see that as an example used to make fun of high school english teachers for over-analyzing). But it's described as blue. Or if you just say "the chair". But no matter what, you're building that world from the scratch. And the word isn't there one minute and gone another. It's staying there. The reader can go back to it. It's still there for them to look back at, unlike that one scene in whatever movie with the blue chair, that's only there because that was what was on set.

Stories are made of words. The entire world is words, while movies are people and objects. Words are everything, so why wouldn't words matter? If there's a place to make the words matter, why not take it?

Instead, King settles for being the McDonalds of writing (his words apparently, not mine). And he knows it.

Sorry for my rambling if that made absolutely no sense. Disregard this if that was the case.

 

In a nutshell, this is actually a defense of what you refer to as King's "not enough description". The contrapositive of your statement is roughly: if there is no reason to mention that a chair is blue, then why mention that it is blue? Generalizing this principle and applying it thoroughly to a novel results in a novel that approaches King's end of the King-Tolkien spectrum.

Personally, when I notice that a book is laden with description, I instinctively begin to skim through description. This becomes a problem when the author suddenly mentions a blue chair for an important reason but I miss that cue.

I read narrative with minimal description far more carefully.

 

King has that special something that a lot of readers look for. Ease of reading. The writing is simple and unchallenging, you can just sit back and allow the action to unfold. Whether or not you think he's the ants pants really depends on what you like to get out of a book.

Personally I like a bit of challenge to a book. If I can chew through the sentences unchallenged then I will read the whole thing in a night or two. I want to be slowed down and have a bit of a wander about, savouring the words and their magic. So I favour a fussier writing style and feel cheated if things aren't outlined with great artistry. But it's horses for courses, some people cannot abide any slowing in the pace of a thing.

I picked up a John Grisham today, he is another writer favouring pace over fuss. I was bored by the end of he first page. But you know, that's just me.

 

Do you spend much time reflecting on a novel after you finish reading it? Or between chapters, when the book is not in front of you? That is the stage when I get the most out of a novel, which is why I can find intellectual challenge even in a novel with simple, readable prose. You are really the one cheating yourself if you spend no time with a book other than to read it.

 

"I take my seat on the blue chair, and as I shift to find a comfortable position I can feel the course woodwork that the master woodworker had once carved into a beautiful blue chair." This is what I'd skip over. I've never read Tolkien (I write fantasy so I'd rather be untouched by his influence. I'll read his work at a later time), but that's what I assume it's like.

"I take my seat on the blue chair and I shift around to find a comfortable seat." I'd read this.

To me if the chair was dubbed blue it was dubbed that for a reason. Maybe just to later identify it since the character likes that blue chair and it's 'his' spot. Or maybe the color has meaning.

Description is great. There always needs to be description, but if it gets to Tolkien level, there should be a reason.

 

Mostly the reason there is that it was the fashion back when it was published in the late 1930's. Pick up any book from decades ago and you will see a difference in the style of writing. Go back 200yrs or more and it's almost unreadable by today's standards. Communication styles change as much as anything else. Tolkein is tolkein. I didn't have much trouble with it when I was 10, but then I had no expectations about things like language at that age either. I just accepted how it was written.

 

No I get that. I think it's in The Great Gatsby too, where Nick goes on to explain every detail of one of the first parties he attends down to the little details. It's how it was written back then, but now if there's that much detail it should be for a reason.

 

"A detailed description creates a rich and playful game in a reader's mind."

Currently, Fitzgerald is my favourite writer. Some of his passages are quite long, also some descpritions as you mentioned. Like you said, if you describe something, it should be done so for a reason. But what if important detail had been described so bad that it disrupts the flow, but some unimportant detail had been described perfectly? I think these two can go hand in hand.

I actually liked this. The last three words I find redundant, but still... At first I imagined a casual blue chair. But when the author wrote that he could feel the woodwork, my imagination shifted the image into something more like this (with blue leather, of course):
I don't know the context though, so this might be a wrong chair.

 

Man, I am glad you brought that up because, dude, the party descriptions in Gatsby are amazing. It's like you get to go on a free time-warp-aventure-vacation while seated on your couch. I mean, description can be intensely satisfying, even when it serves no narrative purpose -- sometimes the experience of reading, the sensory details, the flow of the language is more important than the story. Anyway, in that case, it seems like he just wanted us to really soak in the decadence of the whole thing, which is in fact very important to that particular story. And beyond that, it's probably due in part to his thoroughness that we feel like we have some sense of what it was like to exist in the jazz age, or whatever, which is totally a cool thing.

In conclusion, description can be some dope shit.

 

It's a balancing act and there's no science to it. To me, at least in the party scene where Nick describes the part for ten pages, well thanks for that beautiful description, but I just skipped it over because it went on for too long (my English teacher actually cut it out of our lesson, telling us to skip it because it was so worthless). I love The Great Gatsby but that scene was odd. It was just too long, and I skipped over it like many might do.

And there's no context. I wrote that just for this argument. You kinda got it right, minus the leather. There's no leather in the chair I described and the wood is blue. So we both interpreted it in different ways. Which is either good or bad. I'm not actually sure how good interpretation is for something like this.

 

Ha, my thoughts exactly!

@Ulramar , unfortunately I don't remember that scene, I read the book a few years book.

As for the chair, yeah I think the context would be relevant here, I didn't know if this was an excerpt from some historic novel or a modern novel, or if it was just a sentence. I interpreted it in medieval manner, because I wanted to, it was a cool throne in my mind. With the blue leather.
But you see, a small detail was quite important, I immediatelly pictured a different chair, as soon as you mentioned woodwork.

 

So here we have a long description and I couldn't even get you to imagine the same image that I imagined when I wrote it (let's just go with the idea that I did that on purpose...). Now, if that chair were important (like, say, how detailed George R.R. Martin makes his Iron Throne) I would have made it much more important and detailed.
The only reason I'd ever describe a chair of little importance as I did in the quote, it'd be to buff up my word count. It's fluff (at least in my opinion).

 

Yes, but like I said there was no context, if I knew in what kind of place the chair was, in what era, who it belonged to, it would be much different.

Well ok I agree with you, it could be fluff. It's also probably the fact that writers have different priorities. Some are more focused on dialogues, others on description... Depends on what their strenghts and weaknesses are.

 

The fact that an actual English teacher is telling students that one of the most iconic bits of imagery from one of the most iconic novels in American literature is worthless really baffles me, and I'm now glad I dropped out of high school and read that book on my own instead of for a class. In any case, seems like he or she ought to let students determine it's value or lack of value on their own. I mean, I get having a bunch of rowdy teens skip it because (s)he knows it won't hold their interest, but don't tell them it's worthless! Encourage them to revisit it later when they're older and see how worthless it seems.

 

If there was some context it might have been easier, yes.

Writers do have different priorities and that's fair. But that's why people don't like Tolkien or King. King focuses on story, letting you build your own world while Tolkien drones on and on with world building while slowly telling the story. It's just preference for everyone.

And yeah I was bothered by her telling us to skip it. I ended up going back and reading it (and it did seem kind of aimless in a way, but still) but I was shocked that she said that. Only reason why I liked her class was because it was the furthest from failing I got from English ever...

 

This is solid advice. I feel that a lot of teenagers can't appreciate the books they read in high school or college, especially difficult ones like The Sound and the Fury, which most students at my high school had to read. Revisit these books a few years later, and you'll see a big difference. That's what happened with me and Portrait of the Artist.

 

What I really like about Stephen Kings books, is his characters. I have read 5-6, and he does splendid work with his characters in everyone. The plot may go a bit slow in the start, but the pace eventually picks up, but the characters are interesting from the start. The writing overall is good. Not great, but good. When I really get into a King story, I have trouble putting it away.

 

I agree. Portrait of the Artist is a book I had to read twice to appreciate too, but that book started my love of James Joyce. There are many books I read and liked in high school but no longer see as any good. Or very good, at least. Tastes and opinions are always changing and developing. Sometimes it can take a few years, sometimes (like what happened with me) can take a few days, you just need to approach it in the right way.

When I first tried to read Milton's Paradise Lost I hated it. I could not understand anything, and gave up after a few pages - if that. I actually bought a copy of it in a book shop, went into a cafe to start it, and then after a short time actually took it back for a refund. It was talking about it with a lecturer who said he was amazed I had such a negative reaction to it, and to Milton - since I took to other forms of poetry so easily. I even remember saying that maybe Epic Poetry was not a genre I could like because it is too archaic and outside regular people's experiences. This lecturer urged me to reread it, giving me the hint to either read it aloud or have it read aloud to me, so I went out and bought a new copy of the poem (I respected this lecturer enough to at least give it a second shot) and sat with a series of videos on YouTube that sadly do not exist anymore of a guy reading through the poem and giving funny little quib comments on it. It worked, and I was completely turned on to the poem. When I talked next to my lecturer he patted me on the back and said 'I knew you'd like it'.

Having a taste for fine literature is more than just knowing why something is bad, or even why something is good (which in many ways is even harder to define) but also knowing why something is the way it is, and what it is trying to do - and if it is succeeding. Something like the blank verse of Milton is completely applicable to the esoteric style of James Joyce with it's somehow unconscious narration. The reason why Milton in all 12 book copies of Paradise Lost has a pre-poem 'argument' paragraph is to basically warn the reader that the following poem is in blank verse, because up until him all narrative poems in Modern English rhymed. To have an English poem in the blank verse of 'Homer in Greek and Virgil in Latin' was so shocking it was almost blasphemous. This third qualifier, to recognize an innovation, is where most people fall down, and do not give great works the respect they deserve until a later point of view reappraises it. It is absolutely the case that a second point of view is vital.

 

Oh man if these books get better I'm going to enjoy reading very soon....

 

Oh yes, they get better.

 

I'm surprised King's The Dark Tower series is not mentioned in these kind of threads more often. I haven't read any of his other books yet, but that series has had me hooked from book 1 all the way to book 7 (which I'm currently reading).

 

If this guy put as much energy into his books as much as he does dissing and discrediting Stephen King's writing capability, he'd sell a hell of a lot more than eleven books. This whole article is like me stating that i'm a better poet than Walt Whitman or Edgar Allan Poe with only two poems published to my name.