All Stephen King Books
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Chukzombi
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when i was a kid watching horror movies, i made it a habit of always wearing a crucifix and talismans. my car, right now has rosary beads and these badboys hanging from the mirror.
i'm ready for the fucking vampires.
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Arbitrary
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Chukzombi
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yes, its more than implied. they like Jack, but Danny is one of those "chosen one" types that King enjoys writing about. he supercharges the hotel ghosts and gives them power.
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Namon
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It's not been too long since the last reply. The re-release of the Stand mini series on CBS All Access came out and I watched the first episode and noped out of it when they rearranged the order of how things happened, and then I saw reviews that said it kind of sucked. So I just went to the source material and re-read the book for the 2nd time (first was when the expanded version released in 90). My god I forgot just how non logical the ending was.
Before typing this I went back a few pages and I saw where I said I had finished the Dark Tower I. Which is funny as I thought I had just stopped reading it. Well I picked it up again, and this time I enjoyed it much more. I thought the second book was MUCH better outside of the middle section with the second person. Starting the third. Even though I'm not a fan of horror I realized while reading the Stand that I love King's style. He doesn't overload his text with words to make himself sound fancy. His characters speak in corny slang and feel natural so it's just much easier to read. The fact that he's kind of legendary for botching endings does concern me though, but whatever.
Like I didn't mind the final confrontation, and I thought it was "kind of" fitting, at least enough to be satisfied. It was the final conclusion where Frannie and Stu just decide to truck all the way back across the country. By themselves. With a newborn kid. To live alone. WTF
Before typing this I went back a few pages and I saw where I said I had finished the Dark Tower I. Which is funny as I thought I had just stopped reading it. Well I picked it up again, and this time I enjoyed it much more. I thought the second book was MUCH better outside of the middle section with the second person. Starting the third. Even though I'm not a fan of horror I realized while reading the Stand that I love King's style. He doesn't overload his text with words to make himself sound fancy. His characters speak in corny slang and feel natural so it's just much easier to read. The fact that he's kind of legendary for botching endings does concern me though, but whatever.
Chukzombi
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you can stop with the Song Of Susannah. dont read book 7. it will ruin the love you had for the Dark Tower series. Stephen King in many ways is a fantastic writer, but if you are a real diehard like i once was, you see all the flaws and he becomes not so great. and movie directors hardly ever do his books justice. i used to chalk that up to directors just being dicks, but nah its King selling his shit at bargain basement prices to any hack that comes along. some of those bad movies have become cult classics, but thats not due to them being good movies, its because they were so corny, even back in the 80s or 90s when cheese and corn was king, people were like "i love me some parachute pants and Cavariccis, but this movie is cheesey as fuck." basically, what i am saying is, you wont go wrong with any Stephen King books up to Gerald's Game. Geralds Game is the point where his writing starts to become inconsistent. he is still making some awesome stories, but he is making stinkers too. that wasnt always the case. i honestly cant think of one SK book i hated up to that point, i guess Dark Half is the closest i can think of because its a pretty stupid concept, but it still has its moments, enough to not be bad.
Ritley
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The series peaked at drawing of the three for me, then slowly declined until it fell off a cliff into a volcano in book 7
Namon
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Well I think one of his biggest problems is he has written over and over in his forwards how he writes and it's basically him completely winging it. The dude literally has no idea where the story is even going to go when he starts writing... I know he's hugely successful... but I think that is a big reason why his endings have a tendency to not satisfy. He obviously has hit pay dirt and managed to write it all the way to a satisfying ending in many of his books. But in other cases, I personally think it's fatigue and he has no framework laid down so he just steers his ship to the first port he sees, no matter what it is. I'll have to see this for myself more, but the Stand I completely think that was his problem. He kind of wrote this community that was hitting on all cylinders the moment they formed so it was like "ok now what?" and he just B lined to a point where all major players were removed from the game. Not only that, that thing was a monster tome clocking in at 1300+ pages of edited content. Dude had to be "Dear God end this already!"
But, as someone who has dabbled in writing that is just totally foreign to me. If I come up with a story, I lay out the entire thing up to how it ends before I start writing. It would drive me batty to just... go.
Namon
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Most of his movies/TV are so hit and miss for me. Like I loved the original Stand Miniseries. I kind of liked the Shining. I loved Shawshank and Green Mile. But yeah, there were a ton of real cheese fests like Pet Cemetery and Maximum Overdrive (I believe this was a King thing, maybe not but the cheese was so awesome). And then there were some that were just awful or ended up being awful. The worst was Under the Dome. IT started out great but it very quickly petered out and just went to stupid levels of crazy.
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BrutulTM
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A lot of people would say that if you're outlining your story then it's not an artistic pursuit. That's not to say that you can't go "I'm going to write this" and then write it and the result would have some value, and I'm sure a large percentage of genre books are produced this way, but that's not art. I could be wrong but I doubt that many of the great novels started out with an outline and an ending planned from the beginning. Of course sometimes when you do this it results in a pile of shit, but I think that's the result of the vast majority of artistic pursuits. When it works out you become rich and famous, but most of the time it doesn't. On the other hand, you can crank out a dragonlance book from an outline and a certain number of people will read it and you will make a certain amount of money but no one will remember it or care about it.
Chukzombi
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both Under The Dome and "It" have the same problems. shitty second halfs. thats a Stephen King problem, but because they arent top tier directors and their last name isnt Darabont, they go with the way the shitty second half is and dont try to make it better. I'm sure directors dont even like making his movies because they take heat for what was mostly King's fault.
Namon
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I do agree with that, and maybe not fully bang out a strict outline that you go back and paint by the numbers. But even when I'm day dreaming and get an idea I pursue that at least to a basic ending. I love to read King's forwards, because again I love his down to earth writing, and my impression he just comes up with the elevator pitch and just goes. Which is amazing because his stories have very solid beginnings and middles at the very least. Maybe in a couple years after I've read a more significant numbers of his books, I'll come back here and two posts down I'll express my feelings then. It'll be interesting to see (to me at least).
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Namon
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Yeah I forgot IT. I saw the original mini series on that too, and yeah shit went off the rails in the latter part of that story too.
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Chukzombi
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the "Interludes" are still fucking top tier. you can just read the book for those chapters, each one is like a mini story. i often wonder if there were more because he has way more than 1100 pages written for the "It" novel. the book should have ended with 1957 stuff . all the "present day" stuff was forgettable to horrible.
Arbitrary
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With the remake to IT they needed to tell the story of the Fire at the Black Spot. Get the actor that played young Mike and the actor that played his uncle and put them in a room together and just tell the story. You can do some clever horror camera stuff with a super slow zoom and the room getting dimmer ever so gently but just use dialogue. Then you can release it on YouTube as a bit of viral advertising.
I gave up on Under the Dome halfway through. Stock archetypes including bad guys that are evil just to be evil. I went and checked out the synopsis and do not regret my decision.
I gave up on Under the Dome halfway through. Stock archetypes including bad guys that are evil just to be evil. I went and checked out the synopsis and do not regret my decision.
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chaos
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This thread got bumped and it made me rethink the ending to The Dark Tower and I started to say something about the ending having grown on me. And it has, at least the very ending. But the more I thought about the story, nah, it isn't good. Song of Susannah is worse, I think. But the last book just doesn't really sitasfy in any way. I'm all about not giving that conclusion and leaving room for the audience to work it out themselves, but if you're going to do one it can't be that, that sucked. But that said, I did like the veyr end at least.
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