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On Writing...why, and on fandom, what...
Jun. 29th, 2009 08:20 pmPicked up Stephen King's The Stand at the local bookshop over the weekend, and have begun to read it. Am a moody reader and this for some reason or other is hitting my mood at the moment. Have never the book, just seen the made for tv miniseries. But over the years, it has been recommended to me by numerous people - the latest a bookshop clerk.
In the preface, King explains why he reissued The STAND with the 400 pages that had been deleted from the original version restored.
The reason was not an editorial one: if that had been the case, I would be content to let the book live its life and die its eventful death as it was originally published.
The cuts were made at the behest of the accounting department. They toted up production costs, laid these next to hardcover sales of my previous four books, and decided that a cover price of $12.95 was about what the market could bear. I was asked if I would like to make the cuts, or if I would prefer someone in the editorial department to do it. I reluctantly agreed to do the surgery myself. I think I did a fairly good job, for a writer who has been accused over and over again of having diarrhea of the word processor.
(Shudder - this dear friends is one of the many reasons I am not pursuing a career as a professional novelist. Death by paper-cuts sounds less painfully annoying. )
If all of the story is there, one might ask, then why bother? Isn't it indulgence after all? It better not be; if it is, then I have spent a large portion of my life wasting my time. As it happens, I think that in really good stories, the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts.
He goes on to give what amounts to a summary statement of Hansel and Gretal - demonstrating how less sometimes is a like looking at "a Cadillac with the chrome stripped off and the paint sanded down to dull metal."
Then he states something interesting about books being made into movies and vice versa:
"In the end, I think it's perhaps best for............[he lists the characters in the Stand] to belong to the reader, who will visualize them through the lens of imagination in a vivid and constantly changing way no camera can duplicate. Movies, after all, are only an illusion of motion comprised of thousands of still photographs. The imagination, however, moves with its own tidal flow. Films even the best of them, freeze fiction - anyone who has ever seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and then reads Ken KEsey's novel will find it hard or impossible not to see Jack Nicholson's face on Randle Patrick McMurphy. That is not necessarily bad...but it is limiting. The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way."
He ends this preface with one sentence that I keep pondering.
Finally I write for only two reasons: to please myself and to please others.
( Read more... )
In the preface, King explains why he reissued The STAND with the 400 pages that had been deleted from the original version restored.
The reason was not an editorial one: if that had been the case, I would be content to let the book live its life and die its eventful death as it was originally published.
The cuts were made at the behest of the accounting department. They toted up production costs, laid these next to hardcover sales of my previous four books, and decided that a cover price of $12.95 was about what the market could bear. I was asked if I would like to make the cuts, or if I would prefer someone in the editorial department to do it. I reluctantly agreed to do the surgery myself. I think I did a fairly good job, for a writer who has been accused over and over again of having diarrhea of the word processor.
(Shudder - this dear friends is one of the many reasons I am not pursuing a career as a professional novelist. Death by paper-cuts sounds less painfully annoying. )
If all of the story is there, one might ask, then why bother? Isn't it indulgence after all? It better not be; if it is, then I have spent a large portion of my life wasting my time. As it happens, I think that in really good stories, the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts.
He goes on to give what amounts to a summary statement of Hansel and Gretal - demonstrating how less sometimes is a like looking at "a Cadillac with the chrome stripped off and the paint sanded down to dull metal."
Then he states something interesting about books being made into movies and vice versa:
"In the end, I think it's perhaps best for............[he lists the characters in the Stand] to belong to the reader, who will visualize them through the lens of imagination in a vivid and constantly changing way no camera can duplicate. Movies, after all, are only an illusion of motion comprised of thousands of still photographs. The imagination, however, moves with its own tidal flow. Films even the best of them, freeze fiction - anyone who has ever seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and then reads Ken KEsey's novel will find it hard or impossible not to see Jack Nicholson's face on Randle Patrick McMurphy. That is not necessarily bad...but it is limiting. The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way."
He ends this preface with one sentence that I keep pondering.
Finally I write for only two reasons: to please myself and to please others.
( Read more... )