'Creative Writing Can't Be Taught'....

Interesting commentary by Stephen King. Can Creative Writing be taught? He's mostly focusing here on that the reason writers pursue a career in teaching is to make ends meet while they are trying to become successful as writers, but there is something else implied: taking creative writing classes is a waste of time. The only way to become good/better at writing is to read a lot and write a lot.

Hmm....let me cogitate on it for a while.

Under the Dome: A Writer's Analysis

Hey all. Wrote up a blog post for Under the Dome yesterday for Scribophile.com. I go in to how the book effected me as a writer and, more importantly, the types of things a writer can learn from reading it. I'm still brooding over my experience and how I feel about it and will write a review for thecelebritycafe.com later today.

Here's the link: Under the Dome: A Writer's Analysis.

-Justin Key

The bodies are racking up in Under the Dome...

Amidst Thanksgiving, Internet-outage, and the never-ending job search, I haven't been able to read as much as I would have liked. Either way, I am up to about page 750 or so, so about 3/4 of the way through. And when I can read it, I can't put it down.

And the body-count! I guess I should have expected that this wouldn't be a comedic romp like The Simpsons' version, but dang! Murders left, right, suicides piling up, planes crashing. And all for because of a big ass dome!

It's only been 4 days and some change in the book, so King wasn't lying when he said it only takes up a week. Some things that progress don't seem like they would happen that fast (like the mini-global warming effect or how the town has become so quickly divided...also, there's a character in it that is sick and it seems like they go from relatively okay to terminal in just a couple days, whereas in real life it would take months).

Also, some of the things that are happening seem kind of ridiculous, but more in a way that says 'this could really happen if a town was put in this position and its kind of ridiculous that humans could stoop so low.'

Also, I know now the origin of the dome. Or, at least, what category it falls under. It was what I guessed from the beginning, as it seemed the only logical explanation. There's still a good amount of mystery about it and the person who discovered the source was just thrown in jail, so we'll see how that pans out.

Even though this book is long as life, it's getting to that point where I'm wondering how everything will work out only 300 pages. It feels like I'm more in the middle than rounding out to the end. But I have faith and  hopefully the ending isn't a 'hey, the beings responsible for the sudden application of the dome decided to suddenly take it away, problems solved!' It would be a lot more satisfying if the town fights for and earns its own escape.

400 pages into Under the Dome...

Ok, maybe 395. But who's counting?

Anyway, I've been reading a lot of it lately. Things are starting to get complicated under the dome, and rather bloody, too. It's only been about 3 days since the dome dropped and there have already been rapes, murders, fights, you name it. As expected, the dome has not only cut the people off socially, but democratically as well. The police force is made up of a new recruitment of rapist and killers, all of which hardly old enough to drink. Of course, it makes for some interesting happenings.

I'm starting to think that the source of this is supernatural, after all. I won't go too much into it for sake of spoilers, but I will say that King (and fiction in general) likes to use children as a vessel for connecting with the spiritual/supernatural realms.

There are a lot of disturbing characters in this book, but I'm wondering if I am desensitized from it. I say this because I think if this were the first King book I'd ever read, I'd be fairly surprised at some of the things these characters do/think. But I'm not. Not after the disfigured man who practised necrophilia and cannibalism in Gerald's Game, not after the boy who killed his father in IT, and definitely not after the father who chained his son to a pole like a dog in the cellar to get rid of the 'bad gunky' in Lisey's Story. I'm wondering if there will be a new level of disturbia and one of these characters will surprise me down the line. I actually king of hope not. I'm fine with it right where it's at.

But I do like how even the most disturbing characters have other sides. For example, I had to check to make sure I was still reading from the same character's perpective after one of the more twisted ones showed compassion to a stranded pair of kids. I wholly expected him to just kill them or something.

I like surprises. And, so far, I'm digging this book.

Third Day Under the Dome

The beginning is officially over. The whole town knows the basics of the situation: there's a huge forcefield around the town. The initial chaos has finlly settled down but some interesting things are starting to take place. Of course, the law and social order of the town will change now that they're cut off and that's already starting to happen. There are clear underlying ulterior motives in the people who are bringing themselves in to ultimate power and I foresee a division. Also, characteristic of King, there are some religious zealots in the town that will surely shape up to have interesting roles.

It is still unclear whether there are supernatural happenings going on here. There are some hints of such, but it could just be a coincidence/insanity of certain characters. People have therories of what the dome is so far, but I'd guess the real cause wouldn't be given (even if just a little bit) this early on.

Upon starting this book, I was wondering how King would do with the vast amount of characters he has. As he introduces more and more, I still find some of them hard to keep up with (especially with the nicknames), but a vast majority are surprisingly memorable. King seems to have found a balance between backstory and moving along what's in the present. I was initially worried that a lot of the book would delve too much into each character's past and not enough of the present and while there are still times when I'm rushing through a character's memories to get back to the story at hand, King supplies enough to make these characters feel real without hurting the overall flow.

Another thing I notice about Kin and his progression from his initial novels like Carrie and Salem's Lot to Under the Dome is the use of vocabulary. Two summers ago, while in Ecuador, I read a lot of books and kept a pen to underline the words I didn't know. When reading an early King novel, I could expect almost an unknown word per page. Now, I hardly have any problems with any of the vocabulary. I've noticed this difference widely in his earlier versus later books. I have no preference either way and the writing is definitely not 'simple,' just an observation I made.

Some of the use of technology seems forced/out of place. Maybe its because a lot of the books I read I'm not used to seeing mention of main gadgets that have evolved over the past ten years, but at times it feels like King wrote the first draft without them and then when he went back through he just plopped them in. Either that or it feels satiric. Which is fine, but it would seem that in any time period you write a book in, there would have been something new (the television, the microwave, cell phones, the Internet) and I don't remember these 'new' things standing out so much in old books. Maybe it's that now-a-days the popular things have more of a name brand than before. Instead of 'smart phone' it's iPhone or instead of mp3 player it's iPod. And then there are the well known internet names like Facebook, Twitter, and Google. When I see these mentioned in books, it feels like a certain statement is being made.

Well, those are my thoughts so far. It really is a great read. I had to stop myself from reading last time instead of wondering when the next chapter would end so I could finally go and do something else. I just wish it didn't have to end.

That being said, it would be col if King did a web-series that he wrote on everyday/weekly that went on indefinitely. Kind of like a tv show....

Second day Under the Dome

People are starting to realize that there's a serious problem. The initial chaos of the first few hours is settling as Day 1 comes to a close. Now we can expect the real conflict to begin, and for the different reactions of all the characters to start to collide and bump heads.

And there are a lot of characters! There's actually a list of residents for the small town at the beginning of the book. As of right now, it's easy to get them mixed up, especially since King likes to give all of his characters nicknames that he uses as reference on and off. I expect that as I read more and am introduced to each character's unique quirks, telling them apart will be easier.

Under the Dome offered a great beginning. Now, let's see if it will keep it up.

And yes, I do realize that maybe I am a little too excited about this book. But hey, I'm a reader. I'm a writer. I love this shit.

Book Review: The Talisman by Stephen King & Peter Straub

I first started this book when I was around 10 years old and didn't get far in it at all. I don't know the reason (actually, there were a few Stephen King books I started back then but never got around to finishing....maybe my brain just wasn't ready yet), but I picked it up again a few weeks ago and the ride has been awe-inspiring and a real testament of the imagination.

Meet Jack Sawyer, a 12-year-old boy who's tall for his age. At the age of 6 he had to deal with his father's death and now cancer is eating away at his once-Hollywood-star mother. In a hotel in New England he knows that his mother is waiting to die, and it seems like there is nothing in the whole damn world that he can do about it. Until he discovers that there is this other world waiting for him. This world where his mother is someone important and her death would be mean destruction and chaos. A world where Jack is the only one with the power to be the hero.

The Talisman is one boy's quest to find, well, a magical talisman to save his mother's life. He must do this by traveling from coast to coast while discovering horrors both in the world and the next--the Territories. The novel really shines in its imagination. Nothing is spared here--King and Straub bring out all the sparks. Every environment Jack encounters (and there are a lot) is rich in originality and just as scary in it grimy detail. And, surprisingly, some of the scariest things are found in this world rather than the next. And that is where the writing really hits home, when it's not some dark wizard, demented ghoul, or led astray werewolf that is terrorizes the town, but rather the good 'ole, reliable stench of human nature. The characters that Jack meet are all colorful and wholly distinguishable. From the bordlerline cowardly cousin who just can't for the life of him accept magic and parallel universes and all of the crazy stuff happening in front of his eyes, to the werewolf we come to have more of an emotional connection to than most humans we meet in novels, to the main villain, whose evil persona has no redeeming qualities: anything that was ever good in him died a long time ago. Even characters that are just passing by have memorable qualities and little unique quirks that show both the horror and glory of the human spirit.

This brings me to a point about characterization that I notice in a lot of King's works. His world is bad. And what I mean by this is humanity's ugliness exists in a lot of King's characters, and this book is no different. While in other novels/movies it seems that the majority of people a main character meets has more good than bad, it is backwards with King. Along the way, Jack comes across child molesters, crooked cops, men who beat their wives, their children, drug addicts, religious zealots that kill in the name of the lord, etc, etc, etc. Even other kids around Jack's age seem to have deep-rooted inherent evil. A typical character in this world is rough around the edges, has seen some pretty f'ed up things in their lives, and most likely looking out for themselves. This makes it so that the main villains have to REALLY do some crazy stuff to stick out in the reader's mind and anyone that is a genuinely good person/being also has a last effect. It comes to a point where the child molesters and wife-beaters almost become forgettable because they are the status-quo. It makes for an interesting read, but it makes me wonder about the King's background. I don't know how much this is attributed to Straub, but it's something I notice in a lot of King's works.

Or maybe the world isn't as sugar coated as I see it.

The writing is fantastic, as always. King has a way of going deep into his characters, sometimes veering off right at a heart-wrenching part to relate to some part of the character's past, often shedding a brand new light on what is happening in the present. Also, even though the book follows Jack Sawyer, it has little interludes where it switches to the perspective of other characters, sometimes the main villain himself.

One thing that I didn't care for so much was the use of time. King/Straub would often start a new chapter 3 or 4 days from where the last chapter (just a turn of a page) left off, with the main character in a completely different mindset because of the harrowing and yet-to-be-known events of the last few days. This makes for some heightened interest from the reader, but I often found myself confused and having to backtrack as the authors would almost go backward to catch the reader up. A lot of times during these points in the story I didn't know exactly at what point in the time lines the things that I was reading had happened. Fortunately, though, telling events in this fashioned wasn't used too much and were more so in the middle of the novel. Now that I think about it, it was almost like an experiment that the authors decided wouldn't be good for the whole book but decided to leave remnants of anyway.

All in all, without spoiling too much, The Talisman is a great read. The things that you will see in this book (and trust me, you WILL see them) will stretch and fold your imagination, sometimes making you cringe, sometimes making you laugh, and sometimes making you just have to take a break from reading for a moment, not because it's bad, but because your brain may need to recover from the overload. I'm glad I was able to finally finish the journey that I started some 10 years ago and my only regret is that it's over.