Oh the Horror of It All! - Stephen King on Writing What You Know in Thrillers

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reviews |  Beyond the Book |  Read-Alikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

Jack of Spades by Joyce Carol Oates

Jack of Spades

A Tale of Suspense

by Joyce Carol Oates
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (9):
  • First Published:
  • May 5, 2015, 208 pages
  • Paperback:
  • May 2016, 240 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Oh the Horror of It All! - Stephen King on Writing What You Know in Thrillers

This article relates to Jack of Spades

Print Review

Roller CoasterThe consensus across a wide swath of authors and writing teachers is "write what you know." This advice may be even more important when writing a horror story. Sure, horror stories characteristically feature things that are not known, not normal, unfamiliar in the extreme. That's why they exist. People like to be scared by things out of the ordinary. But we can only be scared within the context of what is familiar; by the juxtaposition of what we know and what we don't know. A roller coaster ride is only scary because we know the height of the creaking scaffold, the speed at which the rickety, flimsy little car is hurtling your fragile body through space, and the imagined splat of hitting the ground after brakes fail and the car plunges earthward.

Stephen King's Map of Maine

click for bigger image

Likewise, Stephen King's fictional Castle Rock, Maine - first introduced in The Dead Zone (1979) and a number of subsequent stories - feels known as his characters make their way through this small New England town. King is second to none when it comes to creating a powerful sense of place that is as real to us as newsreel footage of New York's Times Square. But the hairs on the back of our neck rise because of his mastery of something else: slipping something bizarre within the normalcy of those known contexts. Lost in his prose, we believe Castle Rock could be our home, our neighborhood and so when King introduces that bizarre thing, we feel fear. And fear is the horror writer's takeaway, the prize for reading the story. Anyone who has read King's books can never look at a big dog or a clown or even small New England towns the same way again.

Stephen KingKing says, in Writer's Digest, that there are, "three types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it's when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it's when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It's when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there's nothing there …"

But known landscapes and these three types of terror are for naught if cardboard cutout characters populate the story. Here, again, experts insist it is imperative to write what you know. Study the people, they say. Notice motivations, imagine their secrets based upon either those they have shared or your own. Imagine those secrets spiraling out of control. King does this. And Joyce Carol Oates succeeds masterfully at this in Jack of Spades. Her protagonist, Andrew J Rush, fears loss of control more than anything in the world. But it wouldn't be credible if she had not already fleshed him out as a person, somebody you and I might know. He is an everyman. Thus, as weird things begin to creep into the story, the impact is more powerful within the carefully constructed context of Andrew, and his familiar, comfortable New Jersey community and family life. The payoff is a bone-chilling scare, or the reason you picked up the book in the first place.

Roller coaster at Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom in Allentown, PA, courtesy of Magnus Manske
Southwest corner of map of Maine, Stephen King style (notice Castle Rock and other fictional places in green), courtesy of Stephen King's website
Stephen King, courtesy of CyberGhostface

Filed under Books and Authors

Article by Donna Chavez

This "beyond the book article" relates to Jack of Spades. It originally ran in July 2015 and has been updated for the May 2016 paperback edition. Go to magazine.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Cover Girl
    by Amy Rossi
    Find them early enough, and they will always be her girls.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    A Club of One's Own
    by BookBrowse

    Dreaming of starting or reviving a book club? A Club of One’s Own is the essential guide to doing it right.

  • Book Jacket

    Too Old for This
    by Samantha Downing

    A retired killer's secret is at risk when a visitor arrives—her only option? Another murder.

  • Book Jacket

    This Here Is Love
    by Princess Joy L. Perry

    Three people—two enslaved, one indentured—struggle to overcome the limits and labels of their painful shared pasts.

  • Book Jacket

    The Magician of Tiger Castle
    by Louis Sachar

    The author of Holes returns with a magical adult debut about forbidden love and a kingdom on the brink of collapse.

Win This Book
Win All the Men I've Loved Again

All the Men I've Loved Again by Christine Pride

Christine Pride's solo debut explores a woman's love triangle in her 20s that unexpectedly resurfaces in her 40s.

Enter

Book
Trivia

  • Book Trivia

    Can you name the title?

    Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

T T O the T

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.