The Science of Stephen King

Richard Chizmar: “I absolutely believe he is experiencing a renaissance. I often give talks at local high schools. A decade ago, the majority of the students I spoke with only knew Stephen King through the film adaptations of his work. They loved Carrie and It and The Shining, but knew nothing about the books they were based on. That has all changed now. The sheer number of King projects, plus online marketing and publicity, has steered it all back to the books. I love what is happening.”

Meg:“Can you tell us about your future projects? What can we look forward to?”

Richard Chizmar: “I have a couple of graphic novels due late in 2020, as well as a relatively slim nonfiction collection and a not-so-slim collection of my first nineteen Stephen King Revisited essays. I’m currently working on a novel now that should (hopefully) come out sometime in 2021, as well as a collection of four novellas. Plus, as always, a handful of stories and scripts.”

Kelly:“What is your favorite work by Stephen King? The one book or story that has stayed with you, above all.”

Richard Chizmar: “My all-time favorite is It. Reading that novel when it first came out (I was in college at the time) cemented in my mind that this is what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. It didn’t just open that door for me—it broke the door down. And I’ve never looked back.”

We agree with Richard Chizmar that It is a King masterpiece! It was a pleasure to ask questions of someone who is not only a colleague of Stephen King, but also an impressive author, editor, and screenwriter in his own right.

At the end of Gwendy’s Button Box, Gwendy, now in college, has had her time with the mysterious box and must give it up to the next person deemed suitable to handle it. She has proven herself to be noble, only using the box to murder, once, and for a justified reason. It leaves us curious to find out what happens in Gwendy’s Magic Feather. And we can’t help noticing that King has given Chizmar the same sort of responsibility, allowing him to write within the strange and enigmatic town of Castle Rock.

SECTION FOUR

The 2000s

CHAPTER TWENTY

Dreamcatcher

Stephen King was struck by a vehicle while walking in 1999 and his world changed forever. His right hip was fractured, his right leg was broken in nine places, and one of his lungs collapsed. He notes in 2001’s Dreamcatcher that he was never so grateful to be writing than while writing this novel. Suffering from physical pain, he relished the opportunity to handwrite the entire book, saying it put him back in touch with language. The story has several supernatural elements to it including telepathy, aliens, and body possession. King recalled using oxycontin for the pain from his accident. “I was pretty stoned when I wrote it, because of the Oxy, and that’s another book that shows the drugs at work.”1

A 2017 survey reported that 47 percent of Americans believe in aliens, which is about 150 million people.2

The novel was turned into a movie in 2003 and although Stephen King didn’t write the screenplay adaptation for it, he has adapted many of his stories for the big screen. In order to understand this process, we spoke to writer Kara Lee Corthron about her experience working on the television series You (2018–).

Meg:“How do you approach adapting a novel for a television show? How does it differ in pacing compared to other writing you’ve done?”

Kara Lee Corthron: “This is more a question for Sera Gamble, the series creator. I’m on a team of multiple writers and at the beginning of our work on season two, when I joined the staff, our task was to adapt Caroline Kepnes’s second book, Hidden Bodies (2016), while holding on to all of the organic work that came out of season one. As a result, we used a lot from the book, but also changed a lot. It’s tricky because once the book becomes a show, it’s its own entity separate from the book. So, while respecting the original text, we have to write what serves the story best in the TV genre.”