What does Stephen King do that makes his books compulsively readable?

A few years ago I worked out what Stephen King did that made me want to fight sleep to keep reading his books.  Strangely, I hadn’t started out as a fan.  I’d never even seen his films, like Carrie or The Shining, because I thought they would be too scary!  It was only when I read his book ‘On Writing’ and loved it that I got interested in reading his novels.

Within the first page of The Lake I became aware of an almost frantic pull to keep reading.  I wanted to know:

• ·         What happened to his wife?
• ·         Is she dead?
• ·         If so, how did she die?
• ·         What was in her handbag that she just got at the pharmacy?
• ·         What happened at the lake?

And then it dawned on me what he was doing.  He was like an old- fashioned burlesque dancer, taking off one garment at a time, veeerrrry slowly, to keep watchers hanging on, waiting to see more.  He knew everything about his characters and what happened to them, but he didn’t give it away all at once.  Instead he gave information a tiny piece at a time, in a tantalising way that made readers want to know ‘what?’ ‘where?’ ‘when?’ ‘how?’ ‘who?’ and ‘why?’

He was like the friend who says ‘oh, you’ll never guess what I heard about your ex the other day,’ and when you are all ears says ‘oh, actually I probably shouldn’t tell you.’  Suddenly your mild interest becomes a desperate desire to know, which only grows as the friend hmms and hahs about whether to share the gossip.  In other words, Stephen King was a tease.

Once I worked this out, I went back to the memoir I was writing and ‘Stephen Kinged’ it.  I started with a dramatic, life or death scene and asked the question ‘how did I end up in this situation?’  The rest of the memoir was built round answering this question, a little bit at a time.

I also built in lots of comments that were intriguing, that made people ask themselves questions that they needed to read on to answer, and built suspense.  For example, ‘I didn’t know then the significance this person would have in my life,’ or ‘I could feel myself falling in love with him.  I thought he might have feelings for me too, but it wasn’t clear’.  Then I talked about other things for a while before giving a little more information that would answer the questions ‘what significance?’ and ‘how does he feel about her?’ that I hoped were building in readers’ minds.  (Just like I did in the first paragraph of this blog, where you may have been asking yourself ‘what does Stephen King do that makes you want to keep reading his books?’ and read on to find the answer.)

So did it work? (Asking a question like that is another way to hook readers in, by the way.)  Well, that’s what I wanted to know.  So my next step was to send the ‘Stephen Kinged’ version of my memoir out to a couple of my readers. They were friends who knew me pretty well, so I didn’t expect it to have much impact on them – after all, they knew the answers to all the questions!  One friend, an ex, particularly knew the answer to the question ‘how does he feel about her?’ as he’d been the man in question!

So I was surprised – and pleased – when both of them reported they couldn’t put it down.

My ex spent the day at the office pretending to work while secretly reading his way through the whole 200 pages.  When I asked him why he kept reading he replied ‘I wanted to find out the answer to the question ‘how did you end up in that situation?’ Bingo!  The other friend was having an insomnia attack and started reading to take his mind off it.  He similarly didn’t put it down ‘til he finished (which reassured me that at least it wouldn’t send someone to sleep!)  Interestingly, both these men are not great readers to start with, so it was even more significant that they read it to the end.

So there it is – my insight into how Stephen King does it.  I use it in all my writing now, even serious professional articles.  Because it works!

Is it worth getting an agent if you're self-publishing?

I think there are some arguments for getting an agent if you plan to self-publish, even though it can mean giving up 15% of your earnings.  The biggest reason I think it's a good idea is:

• an agent who knows the market can give feedback on your book and suggest changes that mean it sells more, and makes more money.  In the end this could mean more profit, even after the agent takes their cut.  The biggest trap for newbie authors is writing a book that doesn't sell well because they haven't researched the market properly or have rushed into print without doing enough editing.  100% of not much is still not much!  Whereas 85% of a quite a bit is a lot more in the hand!

That said, it needs to be a good agent who's willing to read the manuscript and knows the market.  What do other writers think?

Am I going to give up on this book?

Looking back over past posts, I can see that finding motivation to go on with this (very!) long-term project has been a consistent theme.  A few days ago, after a month of holiday when I intended to work on my book a lot and in fact did nothing, I asked myself the crucial question.  Am I going to give up on this book?  I put away all the 'shoulds' and dug deep to find out if I could find any 'wants'.

Helping me in this inquiry was a tool I found in the very good book Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar.  This involved drawing three circles of diminishing size, one inside the other, and writing in each the things I 'want to do', 'really want to do', and 'really, really want to do'.  Tal was taught this approach by an economics lecturer as a way to work out what to do with his life once he left university.  His teacher said that working out what you really, really want to do was the best way to decide what to do with your life.  (And who said economics lecturers had no practical use?!)

To my surprise, in the middle of the inner circle of the 'things I really, really want to do', I put 'write my book on happiness'.  It was clear that when I dug down into what really mattered to me, the book was something I didn't want to give up on, despite all the hassles and delays and patches where I'd rather do ANYTHING than work on it!  I guess it's back to what I said in my very first post - writing a book is a marathon.  Like any marathon runner, I need to dig deep and find ways to keep going and reach my goal.

What happened next was equally surprising.  I went from not having any motivation and doing any work, to waking up filled with eagerness to work on the book, and filled with ideas for ways to restructure it and make progress.  Since doing that exercise I've spent hours of my free time writing up a new table of contents, constructing a new document of chapter summaries, and starting on a revised draft document where I pull together everything I've written so far.  The most exciting thing is that it hasn't felt like work - it's been fun!  I've loved doing it and not wanted to stop.

One other thing helped - I decided to stop pushing myself to work on tasks that I found tedious and uninspiring.  Instead I decided to re-connect with the joy of writing, and only do tasks I felt excited about.  Obviously there are going to be some tasks in every book that are mundane and a pain, but I realised I'd been focusing on those tasks to the point that I fell out of love with the project.  Now I'm back in love again and it feels great!

Finished! and now what do I do?

Stephen King, the king of compulsive reading!

Today I finally finished working out the ratio of positive to negative content of the last chapter of my personal story of transforming depression into happiness.  (You didn't think I'd finished the book, did you?  No, that's a long way off.  Sigh.)

Now I'm faced with a dilemma.  Or two.  The first is that I've got far too much grey matter - not brains, unfortunately, but negative content in my chapter.   I'm aiming for a ratio of three happy yellow lines to every 1 grey depressing line, and I haven't achieved even a 2:1 ratio.  So it's back to editing.  Oh, joy.

The good news is that this exercise has made it much clearer what I need to edit.  I need less grey, depressing material.  Not more yellow, happy material, as the chapter is already three times as long as it should be!  I have said in the past that the only way I know to edit is to add more, but this time that's not a possibility.  I'm writing a book, not an encyclopedia!! So words must be discarded, much as it pains me to do it.  I need to cull 169 lines to get the right ratio.  Wbich - let me tell you - is easier said than done.  I love every word I write so much I find it agony to kill any of them.

Which brings me to the second dilemma.  I find the grey material more interesting than the yellow, because it's more dramatic.  Strangely enough, my biggest challenge in writing about my experience of happiness has been making it sound interesting!  Drama is popular for a reason - because it's compelling.  I've compensated as much as I can by 'Stephen Kinging' my story, i.e. building in heaps of hooks to keep people reading (more on this in a future post).  But is that enough to outweigh the positive to negative ratio issue?  I think I better err on the side of caution here and get the ratio at least 3:1.  So it's back to the drawing board.  Sigh.

How do I write about depression without depressing people?!



Kay Redfiled Jamison

 I've read some books by people who've experienced depression that are frankly depressing!  (In fact, almost all of them fall into this category, one exception being the wonderful 'An Unquiet Mind ' by Kay Redfield Jamison, possibly because she suffers from bipolar so there is more of an upside than a story of unipolar depression!  But also because she's a fabulous writer.)  The question is - how do I not fall into this trap myself?

One way is by writing about my experience of transforming depression into lasting happiness, which is what I'm doing.  Although it's not perfect happiness and I have my low hours, days and occasionally weeks (but these days not months on end, which is cause for celebration) happiness is now my default position, my new normal.  This should make for an inspiring and uplifting read, right?

But even that has not been enough to solve the problem.  To make sure that my personal story is uplifting while being totally honest I've been working out the ratio of negative to positive content.  I'm doing this by highlighting phrases and sentences in yellow and grey (or leaving them white when they are neutral, such as statements of fact).

For example:
 As I drive on down the sun-drenched avenue I am filled with an incredible joy, a sense of almost overwhelming well-being.
or
It protects me from the person who’s more dangerous to me than any burglar or gang member or drunk driver.  That person is myself.  I share my life and my brain with a potential murderer and happiness keeps her at bay.  For now, at least.

Then I count up the lines of yellow and grey in each paragraph, then total them in each section and work out ratios.  I keep a running count of the totals and ratio for the chapter I'm working on.  Luckily I'm slightly anal in personality so I actually enjoy this.  ('Slightly?!' I can hear my loving friends exclaiming, 'you've got to be kidding!  You are SO anal Kaye!')  OK, OK, I'm very anal, which is lucky for me, as it's a painstaking job.

'Your point being?' I can hear all 2 readers asking.  (Yes, I actually have readers!  It's so exciting!)  The reasons for all this anality (is that actually a word?  Never mind, it is now) is that research by Barbara Fredrickson, Marciel Losada and colleagues shows that a ratio of three or more positive communications to every negative communication results in more work success and positive emotions.  As I want this work to succeed and I want readers to actually come away feeling good, not put the book down in horror, as I have done with some I've read, I think checking out my ratio is pretty important.

But here's the thing (as my favourite TV detective, Mr Monk, is so fond of saying.)  I'm finding it incredibly hard to achieve this ratio.  Even in sections which are about really positive events I find the grey is taking up more than its fair share of space.  This is making me wonder whether this is more about the subject matter or my way of looking at the world.   There's some pretty convincing evidence that people who are prone to depression tend to focus on the negatives in life more than the positives.  So not only am I writing about some pretty disturbing experiences, but it could be that my depressogenic (such a great word - only a psychologist could come up with that one!) habits are leading me to focus overly on the grey material - the half of the glass that is empty, rather than the half that is full.  Which makes checking the ratios and tweaking to get them right even more important.  So it's back to the chapter!

Yay! I'm back to work again!

I'm so excited - I'm back to work on my book after weeks of inactivity!  The last words of  my last post were prophetic - 'and this too shall pass'.  And it did - for a surprising and unexpected reason.  Today I decided to edit  'just for five minutes', one of my favorite anti-procrastination techniques.  So this morning, when my brain was fresh, I started work.  At first it was not fun - I felt irritated, lost, confused and wished I was doing something else.  The dishes!  The laundry!  Even picking up dog poo from the yard!  Anything would have been more enjoyable.  But I was determined to stick with it for 5 minutes.  That meant stopping at 8.55. 

When I next glanced at the clock it said 9.43.  I was amazed!  Not only had I lost 48 minutes, but I'd managed to solve the problem that I'd been stuck on the last time I looked at the chapter.  I'd also created a table that made it clear where I was up to and what I needed to do next, so I wouldn't feel so lost and confused the next time I worked on it.  And obviously, in the course of doing this I went into flow, that wonderful state of being so absorbed in doing something you lose track of time.



Psychic Lisa Williams in action



And the strange and unexpected reason I started today?  It's incredibly random.  While waiting for a TV programme to start yesterday I caught the end of the show before, 'Lisa Williams Live' or somesuch.  I'd thought it was a stand up comedian, so was surprised to find she was a psychic.  One of the messages she gave an audience member was 'your daughter needs to work harder.  She has got stuck on something and has just stopped trying.  If she keeps chipping away at it she'll break through.'  No, she was not speaking to my mother!  But her words reminded me that in the past I've felt like I was getting nowhere with a long piece of work, but when I kept chipping away there would be a sudden breakthrough.  While talking about someone else's situation she prompted me to keep working on my own, and put me in touch with memories of breakthroughs that motivated me to keep going.  So thank you Lisa Williams, whoever you are!

Writers' block - a dangerous solution?

Aagh the dreaded writers' block!  I've heard so much about it but rarely experienced it. Usually words flow out of me like, hmmm, how rude can I be here?!  Leaving aside the obvious sewer references, let me be more lyrical and say 'like water from a spring'.  I don't have any trouble writing because I normally like pretty much every thing I write.  Call me undiscerning, but that's the truth!  But right now I'm stuck, not only because I'm sick of editing, but because I'm bored by my own writing.  Maybe I've read it too many times, maybe I've just been doing fiddly things with it for too long.  It feels like the chapter that will never end.

I'm not sure where to go with this except to do what has always worked for me when I reach a boring, difficult point in a piece of writing, and simply plug away at it.  I've considered working on another part of the book until I feel more like editing this part, but I think that's possibly a dangerous solution.  I'm worried that if I only work on chapters when I feel like it, a lot of the book won't get the attention it needs.  Writing isn't always fun, and it seems to me that the successful writers are those who stick with it.  I know with the other long documents I've written, there have been times when I'd rather have watched Coronation Street or Home and Away (not my favourite programmes!) than carry on with them.  But because I needed to earn money, I found ways to keep going.  As I did the work became easier.  So that's probably what I'm going to do here.  And this too shall pass.