Make your hero suffer like you don't care what your friends think

Title: 11/22/63

Author: Stephen King

Progress: 100%

Platform: Kindle

Amazon Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

NYT BS Hardcover/E-Book List: #1 (debuted at number 1, and still at number 1)

Book 6 out of 107

Annnnnd ... we are back...

The holidays and work got in the way of this little project. Life does get in the way of our big plans, doesn't it? Fate throws things in our way, tests us, makes sure we really want what we say we want. 

That thought ties in nicely with "11/22/63," which is about about fate, about the things we can and cannot change.

When last we talked, I was halfway done reading it and had mapped out the outline Mr. King used for the first two quarters. The second two section fall perfectly into an outline, with big course changes happening at 50% and 75%.

Section Three has our hero, Jake, spying on Lee Harvey, working out if he actually was the JFK assassin or not. This is an important story problem because if Jake knows for sure, this becomes a short book. Jake kills Lee, runs back through the rabbit hole, and boom, done.

With a smidge of doubt, Jake just can't kill Lee in cold blood. He can't murder an innocent man. He has to know for sure.

This section is the most problematic, and Mr. King has said in interviews that he hopes it's not boring, all the logistics of setting up eavesdropping equipment and then doing the tedious work of actually spying on people. 

Mr. King's instinct is right. Those bits are boring. Why? Because Lee Harvey is a bore. He's a snotty, spoiled brat with delusions of grandeur. Until he picks up his rifle and goes out shooting at people, he doesn't do or say anything all that interesting. He's not actually part of a conspiracy, so Jake listens in on family arguments and political chit-chat. 

Luckily we've got the romantic sub-plot to keep us entertained. Will those crazy kids get together, our time traveler and his lovely librarian? We hope! 

The last quarter of the book is devoted to the prevention of the assassination and its aftermath. It's as  an exciting a final act as I have ever read. It's also a clever piece of clockworks that brings together all the gears, levers and springs that Mr. King has spent 100,000 words putting into the place and winding up.

Here are all the parts that come together...

1. Jake tells Sadie that he's from the future and why he is in 1962.

2. Sadie, her face horribly scarred after being attacked by her asshole ex-husband, is ready to help.

3. The mobsters who Jake has been robbing with his 100% accurate sports bet, catch up with him and beat the snot out of him. He is so injured that there is no way he can complete his mission without Sadie's help.

4. The past itself, as it has been for the entire book, makes things close to impossible. To change the future in such an epic way, the past demands a high price, punishing, heartbreaking price.

5. Lee himself reveals himself as the lone gunman, the single, arrogant asshole who decided he was special enough to change the world with nothing but a mail order rifle.

After all that comes together in the sixth floor of the Dallas Library Repository, Lee is finally stopped. The president is saved. We get what we were waiting for, and then we move into the aftermath, the effect of Jake's heroic cause.

I won't get into the ending. Some like it. Some hate it. I liked it, with some mixed feelings. 

I won't spoil the ending for you because it doesn't have anything to do with the lesson of the day. What is the lesson? Make your hero suffer like you hate him.

Yes, sure, absolutely, ever how-to-write-a-novel book says about the same thing. Yet, I've found it's hard to make my imaginary people, especially my hero, suffer. 

Part of me worries that going to far with the suffering would make my story overly dramatic and sensational. Another part of me actually feels bad for my people, doesn't want to hurt them too much, because I like them and want them to be happy.

And there is this other worry I have while writing, the worry about people I know reading my work and thinking...That is so cruel! So gross! I am so weirded out that this nice guy that I know wrote this hardcore, depressing, gross, sick stuff!

When writing, stop caring about the people in your personal life think.
Care only about keeping the reader on the page.

So I pull back. I soften. I sanitize.

Mr. King doesn't. He makes Jake suffer in a variety of ingenious ways, mentally and physically, from a cracked skull and bruised brain to the heartache of losing the love of your life. When Jake is beaten by the gangsters, you feel the pain of each steel-toed kick to the face and baseball bat to the spleen. You want it to stop, hope for it to end, and just when you think it might, Mr. King goes a little further, pummeling you as much as the hero.

I don't think Mr. King cares what the people in his personal life think. He cares far more about grabbing the reader by the neck and not letting go.

I think the lesson is if you aren't going so far that you fear offending your friends and family, you aren't going far enough.

Imagine if Stieg Larrson had cut out the anal rape scene in "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" because he was concerned about what his wife and friends would think. If he does that, the book doesn't work. We never understand Lisbeth's rage and develop the strong desire to see her come out okay. Without the rape scene, the book doesn't set the world on fire, and maybe doesn't even get published.

So what have we learned? Make your hero suffer, really suffer, suffer to the point you worry about what your family will think about you.

Next up, "1Q84."

Stephan King gets sexy in 11/22/63. Surprising!

Title: 11/22/63

Author: Stephen King

Progress: 50%

Platform: Kindle

Amazon Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

NYT BS Hardcover/E-Book List: #1 (debuted at number 1)

Book 6 out of 107

It's been a while since my last post. It's not because I've been too busy. It's because 11/22/63 is a freaking long book. I could have read The Litigators twice by now, but really, who would want to?

I'm halfway done and I remain steadfast in my opinion that Stephen King is lying when he says he doesn't outline. I think he thinks it makes him sound cool, like he's just so talented that he doesn't need a guide to get to the end of a book like the rest of us hack writers, like he's a jazz saxophone player riffing his way to the end of a bestseller without so much as making a note in a margin.

Yet, right there at 50%, bang, a major turning point, our hero Jake being sent in a new direction, one part of the story done, and another just begun.

If I could break into Mr. King's home and take a peek at his notebooks (after looking in his refrigerator, because who doesn't want to know what a guy like that eats?), I think I'd see something like this...

First Act -- We explain the rules of time travel, introduce Jake and have him go back in time to kill a guy who deserves killing. This will be a warm up act to the main event. This section is about Jake proving to himself he can take on history and win. 

Second Act -- This is the calm before the storm. Jake falls in love with the 50s, re-falls in love with teaching, then falls in love with a girl. This will make the reader love him and makes the stakes more personal. We will go into the second half of the book not just wondering about preventing JFK's murder, but worried that Jake won't get the girl and live happily ever after.

Stephen King gets romantic in Act Two of 11/22/63. More gore is sure to be around the corner. If King had baked this cake, it would be filled with blood and a time bomb filled with anthrax.

It's all working famously. Mr. King is awesome.

I was once of the opinion that one of his tricks was a little too worn. He will often lovingly develop a character, make you, the reader, care more than you really should about the fate of a fictional person. Then, cruelly and with relish, Mr. King will kill that character slowly, gruesomely and with a poet's attention to detail. I think his goal with his books from the 80s and 90s was only to terrify. The well developed characters were just a trick and felt contrived, created to be killed. This is especially obvious if you happen to read two King books in a row.

These days, as the horrorist revels in his post-death scare artistic phase, the frights don't seem to be the point. The point is about the character, about life, about love. The scares are a spice, but not the point of the meal.

This second act of 11/22/63 could be cut out, edited a bit, and released as a successful novella, a time travel love story between two misfits who find each other, he in the wrong time because of a wormhole, she in the wrong time because of her gender.

Some of the few negative reviews cite this romantic subplot as the bad thing in this book, as the thing they would like to edit out. Dumbasses.

If this were Mr. King's first novel, cutting out the romance would be the first bit of advice an editor or agent would give. Get rid of the fluff. Drive the plot forward. No cares about the characters. Readers want action. Get to the killing, blow some stuff up, can ninjas be involved? Sure, throw a little romance in there for the ladies, and a little sex for the guys, but get back to the guns as soon as you can.

Again. Dumbasses.

What have we learned this week? When your story has a heart, everything else -- the action, the gore, the frights, the dangers, the bad guys -- works better. A lot better. 

Man versus Push Back versus King kicking ass, King wins

Title: 11/22/63

Author: Stephen King

Progress: 31%

Platform: Kindle

Amazon Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

NYT BS Hardcover/E-Book List: #1 (debuted at number 1)

Book 6 out of 107

First off, Stephen King is a liar. He does outline. The evidence? Right there at the 25% mark comes the first big plot point of the book, a big gruesome tent pole moment that completes the first quarter of the story and launches us into the rest of it with great momentum. 


You can tell it’s a big King moment because it comes complete with a bloody struggle, a sledge hammer wielding maniac and a chest skewered with a bayonet. He goes for the horrific gross out and dares you to look away. You can't.

Second off, Stephen King is amazing. What a great read.

There is too much to talk about for one post – time travel, first-person narrative, bringing to life the 1950s – so I will talk about what I think is the most important lesson of the read so far. Let’s call this the lesson of Push Back.

Push Back is whatever is pushing back against your hero. In the last book, Zero Day, the Push Back against our hero, Reacher, was first the mystery of who killed the family, then the mysterious people trying to kill him, and then finally the ultimate bad guy.

A good Push Back, like a good tennis opponent, is tough, quite close to unbeatable, but just a sliver not tough enough to win the battle against our hero. However, the Push Pack should be tough enough to abuse our hero, bruise him, batter him, make him miserable, give him diarrhea (which happens in 11/22/63), and make him suffer in myriad ways.

With 11/22/63, Mr. King had an interesting problem with the Push Back. The story is about a guy who goes back in time to prevent the assassination of JFK. The hero of the story, Jake Epping, does his time traveling via a portal conveniently located in the pantry of a diner he frequents. I’m not going to get into all the details. It’s a time travel story, which means there are paradoxes and logic problem to be found if you look for them. So…moving on.

Jake’s problem, once he gets past dealing with living in the 50s (No I-Phones! No computers! No automatic transmission!), his obstacles are not that big of a deal. It would be easy enough to track a person down, kill him, then hustle back through the portal to home. Not a problem.

So here is the genius thing King does to solve his Push Back problem…Time itself starts pushing back. Every time Jake attempts to make a big change to the future (like saving a family from being murdered by an angry, drunken father), things get in his way. He gets a stomach flu. His car break down. The stairs he’s walking on crumble. He get a blinding migraine.

As convenient and contrived as the idea is, that time would seek to defend itself from being changed, it rings true. There are times, in the real world, when you are urgently trying to complete something and the universe seems to intelligently and methodically conspire against you. Have you ever had to get to the airport to catch a flight that you have just barely enough time to catch? And everything goes wrong that possibly could? Traffic is backed up due to an accident. The long term parking bus breaks down. The line to check-in looks miles long. The security line looks longer. You end up waiting in the one line with the metal detector that breaks. Arrrrrrgh!

When things start pushing back against Jake, you can relate to him, understand how he needs to work to decrease the odds of failure. He putsan extra can of gas in the car, repairs the spare tire, picks up a bottle of Kaopectate, just in case a stomach flu hits him. He needs to be paranoid and prepare for almost anything. 

He’s going to have to earn his chance to re-write history.

That feeling of the entire world being against him, testing him, making him work for his victory, that is powerful stuff and makes for tense, addictive reading. Despite the fantastic time travel plot, there is something extremely relatable about Jake and his struggle to get past fate, and a lovely taste of sweetness when he does.

What have we learned so far? Stephen King kicks ass. And he solved a story problem in a clever way that elevates this story above so many others that cover similar ground. It becomes more than just a time travel story, but a statement about man’s struggle with fate. These are big ideas delivered via a thrill ride. Nicely done.