It by Stephen KingMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I've been re-reading some of Stephen King's works to get a feel for his winning formula for story telling, and I've discovered that above all else, he is a master at the short story. One of his early influences, Edgar Allan Poe, wrote that the short story must create a "unity of effect," that each story should produce within readers one single emotional impact. Poe was skeptical of the novel, because he did not believe readers could sit through a story long enough to experience this single emotional effect. But, King, not one to share Poe's skepticism of the novel, found a way around this by separating all of his chapters into short stories, while still relating them to the larger story at hand. Though one might not like the subject matter of King's stories, or not like his seeming long-winded descriptions of minuscule events, he is nonetheless, a master at several literary techniques.
By definition, verisimilitude is the appearance of something being true or real. King is great at getting readers to believe in what he is showing them through vivid description and meaningful digression. He waits to show readers what they suspect is going to happen, by making them wade and wait through pages of digressive material. He uses "little drops of plot," as Alfred Hitchcock would call it, little bits of foreshadowing, to help elicit a mood of impending doom; but, he doesn't use too much, because he wants his Constant Reader to be surprised when he reveals the climactic spectacle. These long digressions are necessary to build up the suspense. The more King makes readers wait, the more he lures you into his web of exhilarating fear.
In his novel, It, for example, the first chapter introduces the main problem that there is a psycho-serial-killer clown on the loose. Instantly, with the images of clowns and carnivals, readers are transported into a mood of the carnivalesque and grotesque (Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes). The monster is introduced in an ambiguous way that makes readers wonder whether he is actual or only imagined. Here, King shows his mastery at layering verisimilitude. Readers aren't sure what this monster of personified fear is, whether it exists in the three-dimensional world or whether it is just imagined. Since it isn't really resolved, it must exist in both. King probably chose the image of a wicked clown, because so many people remember being terrified of clowns, a common childhood phobia. He chose a common childhood fear, maybe even one of his own, and magnified it (hyperbole) in order to navigate the maze of internal conflict, like Theseus navigating the labyrinth of his own mind, to kill the Minotaur (a personification of his internal fears).
As I write my own novel, I keep King's lessons in mind. I write the novel in rough draft, outline form. I just get the overall story down and separate it into chapters or scenes. Each scene is a short story in and of itself, related to the overall story arc (related to the theme). Every morning (yeah right), I work on clearing off the window pane (so to speak), getting more of the story down, letting the layers unfold, much like a painter moves from general shapes to specific details (inductively).
On mornings when the story isn't pouring forth for whatever reason (probably due to sheer laziness), when I'm ambivalent about what to write (i.e. where to take the characters, what to permit, what to veto, making sure all of their decisions relate to the overall story), I've discovered that if the overall story is not coming forth, I can work on an earlier part of the story, "purpling up" the prose. This helps to add thematic layers of depth to the story.
Once I get to a point where earlier chapters feel "finished," "integrated" and "whole," (aka complete), I start writing the next series of short stories, either of another novel or little worlds of their own. It's important to not get lost in the quagmire of a long-winded novel, but, if you use this method, walking along the tightrope of theme, which must be King's method (I don't know, since I haven't asked him and I can't read his mind), you begin to see that all of these stories are related in one way or another. The characters are personifications of one's own internal conflicts and dreams. It's magic. One way to keep the scales on your wings is to master the short story.
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