In defense of Stephen King, or What is good writing, anyway?

February 7, 2:09 AMBook ExaminerMichelle Kerns

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The internet has been swarming with rabid Twilight fans eager to sink their teeth into Stephen King after the details of the interview he gave to USA Weekend -- you know, the one in which he said that Twilight author Stephenie Meyer "can't write worth a darn" and is "just not that good"? -- emerged earlier this week.

The overwhelming majority of Ms. Meyer's defenders have tried to refute Mr. King by relating how obsessively fascinating they found the Twilight books, how people who have never read a book willingly in their lives devoured the Twilight series in a day, etc.. Most Twilight defenders equate Mr. King's condemnation of Ms. Meyer's writing with a criticism of her ability to spin a tale that holds the reader's attention. 

However, nearly no one has directly addressed Mr. King's actual assertion: that Ms. Meyer is a lousy writer; he didn't call her a lousy storyteller -- he called her a lousy writer. 

Which begs the question, is the ability to tell a good story the same as good writing? And, if not, what is good writing?

If you look at fiction writing, you'll see that most works fall roughly into one of two categories:

1. Stories that have an interesting plot with little to no character development or deeper meaning 

2. Stories in which the plot itself is subordinate to the emotional and mental trials of one or more characters in reaction to certain events

While there is an infinite number of variations on these two themes, the most basic of all is the story that is a bare bones account of fictional events with no call upon the reader to draw any moral or philosophical meaning from the tale. In other words, just an interesting story. 

 

Twilight falls into this category. The characters don't change or grow in any meaningful way; the plot does not involve any sort of great sacrifice or universal human struggle; there is no call upon the reader to contemplate any issue or cause greater than themselves. The allure of Twilight is based solely on the reader's reaction to the romance between Bella and Edward and their own emotional reaction to the characters themselves.

Now, don't get me wrong here: I am not saying that Twilight is not a compelling story. What I am saying is that Ms. Meyer did not in any way try to elevate the story above that of teenage angst.

But what about Mr. King's own writing? you sneer. How can he get off dissing Twilight when his own work is about resurrected children getting murderous and possessed cars and killer dogs? In fact, Mr. King's work does rise far above the level of mere freaky storytelling. In each of his novels, Mr. King presents us with ordinary people who are confronted with extraordinary horror and evil and explores the very human struggles that the collision of the two causes.

Consider Pet Sematary. In that story, Mr. King isn't just trying to freak us out over the thought of killer zombies -- he's addressing one of man's most primitive instincts: ambivalence and fear of death. Death is everywhere in Pet Sematary: the main character, the father, is a doctor; his own father died when he was three; his wife doesn't like any reference to death because of her memories of the death of her sister when she was young; the cat dies; the neighbor's wife dies; their own son dies. When the father, knowing exactly what is going to happen (and that it isn't going to be anything good) buries his son in the cemetary, he is acting out what every human since the beginning of time has wanted to do, regardless of the cost -- to cheat death in any way conceivable. It's impossible to read that story and not ponder about what he does -- and come to the realization that we would do the same thing too.

 

And what about that classic of Halloween and teenage slumber parties, The Shining? Ask 1,000 people and you'd be lucky to get one person who won't say that The Shining is nothing more than a story about a haunted hotel and a crazy looking Jack Nicholson. Yet, The Shining (we're talking the book here, not the movie), is actually more focused on the father's struggle to get his abusive and alcoholic act together for his family's sake. In fact, Mr. King has repeatedly criticized the much celebrated film adaptation of The Shining for taking the focus away from this struggle and placing it on the more terrifying elements of the story.

All great writing, whether it be Pride and Prejudice, Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter has a theme larger than itself. These works show the progression of characters who either succeed or fail in their struggle to become the kind of person that can accomplish what they have been called on to do or face. But great writing isn't just about great ideas; the presentation of those ideas -- the nuts and bolts of the writing itself -- is just as important.

Inexperienced writers all suffer from one common failing -- they inevitably rely too heavily on description to hammer their point into the reader's head. They use lots of adjectives and adverbs and lengthy, emotive passages to tell the reader what their characters are thinking and feeling instead of using carefully crafted sentences, word choice, and punctuation to convey the same things more effectively and without obvious effort. That is why the very best and most emotional writing seems so effortless -- because the writer hasn't just thrown words on the page; he or she has labored over each word, each syllable, each comma and semi-colon to make sure the words convey the right feel without the reader even being aware of it.

 

If you want to see some damn good writing, take a look at Dorothy L. Sayers' first Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, Whose Body? (especially the chapters near the end of the book), Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Toni Morrison's Beloved, James Joyce's Ulysses, and any essay E.B. White ever wrote. You'll notice that these authors don't ever tell you what their characters think or feel, yet somehow, you just know. How? The sentences have been specifically crafted to do just that, that's how.

I would even go so far as to include Mr. King's writing along with these greats. Even as a kid, sneaking Christine and Pet Sematary off my Dad's bookshelf so I could read them in secret in my bedroom, I could tell Mr.King had a way with language that plenty of other writers just didn't have. What I picked up on didn't have anything to do with the actual storylines and everything to do with his ability to make the words and dialogue leap off the page and grab you by the throat.

Stephenie Meyer, on the other hand, fails to utilize any sophisticated writing techniques in the Twilight  books. They are all straightforward, first person narrations that rely heavily on Bella telling the reader exactly what she thinks and feels at all times.

Some fans might argue that Ms. Meyer couldn't have used complicated writing techniques anyway since her goal was to tell the story simply and honestly from Bella's perspective. However, a number of gifted writers have used deceptively simple first person narratives to convey incredibly complicated and unvoiced ideas to great effect. An excellent example is Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. The narrator, Kath, seems transparently honest and straightforward; however, the more you read, the more you realize that the important parts of the story lie in what Kath carefully avoids saying. Humans are such impossibly complicated creatures -- they don't just try to deceive other people, they try to deceive themselves as well, and Never Let Me Go captures that complexity to perfection. Ms. Meyer does not attempt this at all. With her prose, what you see is what you get -- which is what keeps the series from being anything greater than an interesting story.

If Stephen King is to be faulted in any way for his comments about Ms. Meyer, it really could only be in that he didn't consider John Updike's Number 1 rule of book reviewing:

Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

Twilight is not an example of good writing, but, really, it wasn't a serious attempt at it either. Stephenie Meyer did achieve what she was attempting -- to tell a compelling story spiced with a bit of danger and a bit of romance. Let's celebrate what she and the Twilight series have achieved, without pretending that it is anything more.