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AN ANGRY MOTHER posted:Oh poo poo I forgot about that part, I was thinking of when Roland saw a plane in the sky and thought something like "I hope no one decides to run those into something". I'm pretty sure that line showed up in Drawing of The Three or Waste Lands, easily predating 9/11. Bag Of Ghosts posted:"The Cat From Hell" from Just After Sunset. This is a story about a hitman who is hired by a rich dude to kill his demon-possessed cat. The hitman puts the cat in a bag (this is the stupidest thing) and drives out to the river in order to drown the cat. But the cat claws its way out of the bag and kills the hitman by burrowing down his throat. The End. If I remember correctly, The Cat from Hell was originally a men's magazine contest where King wrote the first 500 words and other people were invited to write endings. The version in JAS has the ending he whipped up in a few hours to see how it would play out, the winner of the contest supposedly wrote a much better one. fishmech fucked around with this message at 01:21 on May 26, 2009 |
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May 26, 2009 01:11
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Proffessor Rapeface posted:Yeah, it's been said before but reading On Writing is really revealing in that it shows that King's greatest criticism (stories that start off strong but go on way too long and have disappointing endings) is a result of him not planning things out anymore. I imagine back when he wasn't so famous/best-selling that he was actually worried about a story not being published he went to a little more effort planning things out, hence why his older books don't have the problem as much. He never really planned things out. In On Writing he said the only book he actually planned out was Insomnia.
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Jun 1, 2009 04:49
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egon_beeblebrox posted:Wow, really? It seems just as 'seat-of-his-pants' as his usual stuff. And that's the reason he gave in On Writing (or maybe at an interview later) why he stopped trying to plan books. Also Cujo was completely written during an extended drug-fueled bender and he has no recollection of wrtiting any of it.
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Jun 2, 2009 05:23
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northerain posted:
Wasn't that in the original Dutch series he adapted? There's a lot of stereotypical King-isms in that show were in the original Dutch.
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Jun 8, 2009 04:15
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Foppish posted:But it wasn't...it was just a lazy shock ending and it cheapened the whole "Mist" scenario. Opened the gates of Hell/a portal to another dimension? No worries, the local militia will come by with flame throwers and take care of that demon infestation. They don't specifically say in the story, but we're able to tell where the mist reaches because areas within it seem to no longer be able to run radio broadcasts. The story mentions first the Bangor radio stations and then the stations down to Boston no longer broadcasting. However, when the main character runs out of gas and stops at a hotel at the New Hampshire/Maine border or somewhere around there, he hears a radio broadcast from Hartford, CT, which would seem to indicate the mist stopped somewhere south of Boston and north of Hartford. And that's why the last line of the story is "One (word) is Hartford. The other is hope."
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Jun 18, 2009 19:57
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Foppish posted:Right, but they just say that the signal *somehow* got through, if it was a signal at all and not just him imagining things. I took that to mean that where ever the signal was coming from was "misted over" as well and managed to squeek through by some unlikely shifting of the mist and that it was likely someone else, marooned, trying to call out, although I can see your side of it as well. I interpreted the fact that he was just barely able to hear the radio from Hartford and indicating that he was both 150 miles away from there, and the mist was probably covering at least half of the distance. We "know" Boston is covered by it because they're not able to be heard at all. If the Mist just reached past Boston, that means that half of the route to Hartford is through the mist. Also there were larger beasts in the story, as the protagonist is driving down I-95 south, there's footprints big enough to swallow semis on the road... In my opinion, the ending of The Mist the movie feels like what Stephen King would have written if the story had been a page or two longer.
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Jun 19, 2009 00:50
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Super Ninja Fish posted:Yeah, it's one of the few things you really can not take away from King. He's awesome at writing realistic dialogue. IT is a great example. It's one of the few books I've seen where the 11 year olds talk like real 11 year olds. I used to think that the dialogue for the characters in his stories was a little unrealistic, but then I spent a summer in Maine. It's actually really neat how he captures the feel of a Maine accent in his writing without resorting to unreadable phonetic stuff for accents like some writers I could name.
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Jun 19, 2009 20:45
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I'd recommend popping down to your local library, taking out as many King books as you can and just going through until you find one you like.
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Jul 29, 2009 20:47
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Well it is a horror novel. 
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Jul 31, 2009 18:03
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Honestly I chalk it up to the fact that Stephen King was a loving drugged-up junkie for a good decade straight. You really need to remember that.
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Aug 3, 2009 04:29
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oddspelling posted:Most of the burnouts I've known aren't obsessed with toe-headed preteens with SPECIAL ABILITIES and thier genetals; and they don't like/write chapters and endings of books that seem like they were xeroxed out of the NAMBLA magazine's short-fiction section. Maybe you just didn't know any sever druggie authors? King doesn't remember writing any part of Cujo, it was all done in a blackout. Think how long it takes to write a 320 page book. Think how drunk/high you need to be to black out for that long.
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Aug 4, 2009 03:26
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CrankyProf posted:Not to mention the fact that it was all psychological horror up until the last chapter or so, when he threw in the deranged, retarded, necrophiliac cannibal -- almost as a drat afterthought. Wasn't that guy a figment of her imagination?
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Aug 4, 2009 18:58
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What was bad about Just After Sunset?
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Sep 24, 2009 06:56
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I never really saw anything really wrong with books 5-7 of the Dark Tower series. Some little things were kinda bad but on the whole they were good books.
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Sep 24, 2009 16:51
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kosherpickle posted:well, right now on King's website is a very, very rough version a 60 page story he started, called The Cannibals, that is something he tried to write initially using the same idea but gave up on. It basically stops just before anything of interest happens but it was right up my alley, I am not bored by his bullshit. I believe he's started this story no less than 6 times, The Cannibals being like the 3rd attempt.
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Sep 26, 2009 05:17
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Evfedu posted:I thought On Writing demonstrated why he'll never be as good as people like Pratchett or Banks (they both have their off days obviously, but bare with me). That whole segment he wrote where he laid out this belief system that the story exists and he can just sit down and write 2000-3000 words in a day then after a year or two he'll have the story. Well King also says when he actually tries to plot things it turns out bad. His example is the novel Insomnia, and I got to agree with him there.
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Oct 8, 2009 22:00
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OR the dome goes down deep enough so that if they try to dig out they hit magma. 
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Oct 15, 2009 18:52
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sigh posted:I know the DK series has been talked to death, but here are my two cents: I can't recall the name of the reader but whoever reads the DT7 audiobook is phenomenal and I really think makes the book a lot better.
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Oct 18, 2009 23:52
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RagingHematoma posted:I thought the Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands was the best in the series so far. I am about 1/3rd of the way through Book 7 and I am enjoying it. Everything except Book 6 has been fine, although I found Wizard and Glass to be a bit long given the story it had to tell. There is nothing to explain, it's just a magic number there. Like how time doesn't work right.
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Dec 5, 2009 06:29
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I recently listened to the Insomnia audiobook and frankly the book is more suited to audio format then printed by far.
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Dec 10, 2009 04:42
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That'd be stupid, frankly. Books 5-7 could use better editing thats all.
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Dec 10, 2009 06:10
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Astfgl posted:Didn't see this answered yet: I'm quite sure I recall seeing nineteen mentioned in a meaningful lane in The Waste Lands and Wizard and Glass, as well as some other pre-accident Tower-related books.
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Dec 10, 2009 22:58
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Magnificent Quiver posted:Didn't some books have retroactive Dark Tower references added? Only the Stand did, but that was a good 5+ years before the accident.
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Dec 11, 2009 02:33
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I want an entire 100,000 page King book that consists solely of fleshing out a town and then utterly destroying it. Like at least a hundred towns, and just let King do what he does best.
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Jan 8, 2010 01:08
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Partyworm posted:Are there other good SK books where the horror is almost all subtlely and suggestion rather than overt and over the top visual horror? Most of his short stories.
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Jan 22, 2010 20:57
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Roadwork is great, yeah.
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Feb 2, 2010 05:27
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Hedrigall posted:I didnt get the kamikaze joke Insomnia
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Mar 12, 2010 18:12
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cheerfullydrab posted:Would anyone else have enjoyed a Stephen King-involved anthology series of the Twilight Zone/Tales From the Dark Side/Tales From the Crypt/Outer Limits type which uses that freaky extra dimensional tale-telling club that appeared in only one of his stories as a framing device? Because I sure as heck would. That club did show up a second time! I forget where the second time was, it might have been in Just After Sunset.
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Mar 17, 2010 18:37
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iostream.h posted:It loving sucks. Worse than Cell. Worse than anything. Man, you got to read Duma Key. It's basically the most early-King-ish book he's written since the accident.
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Apr 5, 2010 04:25
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He said he did plan a few books, Insomnia and one other, and I think we can all see that planning doesn't change anything for him.
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Apr 20, 2010 14:13
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Local Group Bus posted:I think it is. It's almost a campfire style. Or at least it used to be. Most of his novels can be started by, "This happened to a friend of mine," and when boiled down the plots were very simple. And on that note, I LOVE when he's reading the audiobook version of his books.
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Apr 21, 2010 15:11
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Shempt_The_Mighty posted:"Eyes of the Dragon". I hate this book so much. It still hold the distinction of being the only book that I have physically thrown across a room. 10 bajillion chapters of buildup and....nothing. GAH! To be fair, it's a fairy tale written for his then-14 year old daughter.
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May 10, 2010 17:45
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oldpainless posted:King specifically calls out adverbs ending in "ly" in On Writing. He basically says they suck and shouldn't be used and no good writer would resort to using them as a crutch. Like I said earlier, what happened to the guy who wrote On Writing that caused him to disregard all the rules and guidelines in his own later works? The thing is he was also doing that poo poo before On Writing. I'm pretty sure somewhere in it he mentions that this is something along the lines of "do as I say, not as I do, because I have the luxury of being a famous author and you are just starting out and can't get away with what I do yet".
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May 27, 2010 17:08
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juliuspringle posted:Read the Taken or the Taking or whatever it is. It has all 3 Koontzian endings in one book. I would at least read the parts in 5 and 6 about the priest from Salem's Lot (heck take those out of 5 and 6 and they'd make an excellent short story or novella), and definitely read 7.
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Jul 9, 2010 23:36
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Darwinism posted:You don't have a problem with an apocalyptic book that just suddenly morphs, disjointedly, into a modern fantasy book about a magic deaf-mute and a magic evil dude with magic retard-followers. What? As if a virus that kills 99.44% of the world and spreads everywhere in under a week isn't magic.
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Jul 18, 2010 07:15
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Mister Kingdom posted:I liked it, too. It was pretty much what I expected it to be. If readers were paying the least little attention to the theme of the story, they would have guessed it, too. I was surprised at how many people got pissed off. I'd like to see the Dark Tower books rewritten as taking place after the end of the 7th, now that Roland has things a bit... different. Leovinus posted:All it boils down to is guy sees the future, tries to change the future, succeeds, is admonished by the Time Police. click ♫ Never run away from the time police / you will not survive ♫ fishmech fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Aug 7, 2010 |
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Aug 7, 2010 15:37
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Tommyknockers WAS a book about a village of magical retards yo.
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Aug 9, 2010 02:56
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Automatic Jack posted:That's the one. So he has dreams in which he really really wants to mess Jews up bad, and sinks progressively deeper into his twisted Nazi fantasies. Then in the end, he grabs a rifle and starts picking drivers off the highway or something, and the police take him down. I tried really hard to convince myself that one had anything to do with the other, but I gave up. Maybe someone here knows what the ending is supposed to mean. Did you really miss how during the months he spent with the Nazi dude,he was killing bums at an increasing rate? Kid was a latent psycho just waiting for an excuse to really snap!
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Aug 10, 2010 03:14
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Stationary Bike is a novella length excuse to his wife for why Stephen King wants to not exercise as much as she says he should and also have some donuts and poo poo. I read it mostly as a light-hearted humorous thing. There's no way that Imaginary construction worker who clears up all the poo poo from the bad food you eat committing suicide because he can't get enough work due to you being healthy isn't funny!
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Oct 5, 2010 17:49
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NosmoKing posted:Ya know why he wrote a book about Florida? Because he's done the snowbird thing the past few (several) years with his wife, with a place in FL for his winter stop. This is also the same kind of reason why The Shining and a large chunk of The Stand are set in Colorado (temporary move out that way and all).
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Oct 12, 2010 05:55
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