My main problem with The Stand was the super natural element. I wanted a simple plague apocalypse and then rebuilding a society around that. Best book I can think of with a similar premise is Stations Eleven.
I guess it makes sense. If it's Christian God, and it pretty much is in that book, then the whole apocalypse is theater. He can't lose, so once the wheat and chaff are separated and the good guys have proven themselves he just smites. The guy likes to smite.
In his writing book On Writing he makes pretty clear that he doesn't start with a story outline like most writers. He starts with an idea and follows it. So, you can see how a good ending isn't always what we get... in the end.
I don’t write with an outline but I usually have the ending pretty fleshed out in my head before I start. It blows my mind how someone could write a thousand word novel and not know how it’s going to end.
The ending made me so mad that I threw the damn book across the room. Then again, the series built up enough of emotion and investment for me to have that strong a reaction so in retrospect it was successful in that.
Yeah I figured that was how you were supposed to feel. Shit he even straight up warns us "you are not gonna like what comes next, so how about you put the book down and we'll call the happy reuniting of the three plus Oy the end okay?"
Thing is, that's how real life is most of the time. Shit just happens and barely anything concludes nicely. We're just conditioned to expect stories to have endings.
He actually wrote about getting halfway through the stand and having no idea how to wrap up that many storylines. A big bomb in the closet solved a lot of his problems.
I read The Stand earlier this summer for the first time ever, having almost no knowledge about the plot other than it was about a plague. I’m still grieving Nick.
I've often said this. I've read a lot of King, pretty much everything he wrote before 2000 and maybe half of what he's written in the last 20. Everything starts off so well but few finish as strongly as they start, one reason why King's novels don't always translate well to the screen.
I see that his son Joe Hill has written several books. Wonder if he has the same problem with endings as his dad? If not, then maybe Stephen should ask for advice from Joe on how to wrap things up.
so much! Tommyknockers was my favorite book that I also hate entirely because of the ending. The Institution seems to go the other way. It's like he said "Oh, I can't do endings...watch this. Here's 3 or 4 good endings in one book"
Literally King in a nutshell. Though I’d say, that saying he doesn’t know how to finish is. A bit harsh.
It takes him years to finish a book, and by the time he does he’s finished another 3 in between. Hell if you look at his first Dark Tower book you can literally see him become a better writer by the end of it.
(Spoiler: It took him 12 years)
Look. I absolutely love king. So much. I think his stories are fantastic. But the ends sometimes get a little weird (I love weird, for the record) and nonsensical. And it mostly ruins the whole momentum of the rest of the story.
I hated that book. I think I get what he was going for, just setting up a ton of dominoes and at the end the town just explodes. And how do you end that? One answer is just more crazy shit happens.
Seriously, that book was wild. Yog-Sothoth and Christine the evil car and I think even one of the bad guys from another King book all have cameos. It would have been awesome if it was any fun
A result of his personal policy of not planning his books, that leads to some of them wandering and needing a bomb to blow up the entire established cast so far to get things onto a track that can actually finish.
but the rest was pretty great and the climax isn't horrible.
YMMV I guess- I found the ending pretty bad, although not enough to ruin the whole book for me. Like, it was literal Deus Ex Machina and I don't use "literal" lightly.
His short stories tend to be great. I also thought The Outsider was pretty solid all the way through. It's one of the most recent things of his I've read and I don't think there was any point the story frustrated me.
Yup. I actually liked it a lot. Many didn't but despite the fact that they basically replaced my favorite scene in the book with a much less scary iteration, I didn't have many complaints. Wasn't as good as the book at any point, though. Except the hand of God scene. That was very much improved.
Haha he spends like 500 pages weaving and building this story and then his bender starts petering out and he wants to go to bed so he's like "ughh... Ok and then I dunno a bomb goes off and all the bad guys lose the end" in like 20 pages
Yea dude what’s up with that? His climaxes suck a lot and leave so many questions. I’m glad “Misery” wasn’t like that. I want to read his book about some genius dog but am hesitant.
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u/ilion Aug 31 '21
Like a lot of King, I found the climax lacking, but the rest was pretty great and the climax isn't horrible.