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The Loophole Steven King Uses to Supercharge His Writing Productivity
First-person narration as a strategy for breaking writer's block
I recently gave up on a new, very long Stephen King book. I lost interest half way in. The start of the story had me reaching for the Kindle on my nightstand, but chapters later, I found myself scrolling on Instagram rather than reading. So, I let it go. (Yes, I read on a Kindle, and I prefer it for a number of reasons.)
That book I quit on was called Fairy Tale. It’s about a 17-year-old hero, who befriends and helps a gruff old man, falls in love with his dog, and then discovers a trap door to a hidden world in the old man's shed outback. Once we entered this other dimension, I lost interest. But King’s setup to find this staircase down to another universe, I quite enjoyed.
Also, as a writer, I found myself thinking a lot about the particular writing style that Mr. King chose for this book. While reading Fairy Tale, I realized he used the same tactic in the previous Stephen King book I read. More often than not, Stephen King writes as a first-person narrator. A narrator who is decidedly—not a writer.
This is one of the major keys to why he’s so prolific.
Fairy Tale’s First-Person Narrator
In the case of Fairy Tale, the hero and narrator is a high school-aged boy, with a high school-aged vocabulary and thought process. This allows King to dump words on the page as he focuses on the story itself, not the eloquence or brilliance most authors strive for in connecting words poetically.
The first paragraph of the book makes it clear that the story will be told by a novice storyteller. It sets the reader's expectations that we’re hearing from a first-timer, in the same way that someone with a guitar at an open mic night might say, “This is my first time guys, so bare with me.” The audience's expectations for perfection or brilliance immediately melt away.
