Stephen King Almost Stopped Writing Horror Books After One Of His Biggest Hits

Stephen King’s mastery over horror is indisputable. The author’s horror-focused stories have a way of crawling into our psyches and staying there, appealing to both morbid curiosities and integral truths about the human condition. There is a reason why King’s works are molded into cinematic adaptations time and again , even when some stories inherently feel more suited to the written medium , along with the specific interiority it demands from readers. When King stumbled upon his inspiration for “It” in 1978 while living with his family in Boulder, Colorado, and finally began penning the novel in 1980, it felt like a massive moment for the pulp horror genre, where more people started gravitating towards stories of a similar variety. Although the book’s reception at the time of its release was enveloped by controversy, “It” received favorable reviews for its visceral, uncompromising exploration of the loss of childhood innocence , and the horrors that come with it. “It” was a pretty strong entry in the horror genre, and King followed up its release with projects that did not directly dive into the genre, as he focused on mystery or psychological intrigue instead. According to TIME , the work that followed “It,” “The Eyes of the Dragon,” was an “Arthurian sword-and-sorcery epic” dedicated to his daughter, who disliked horror, while works like “Tommyknockers” and “Misery” were scheduled to release next, focusing on sci-fi exploits and psychological thrills respectively. After “It” was released, King was ready to do something different; he shifted gears from horror completely in favor of works that were more palatable to the masses, and the reason behind it is somewhat complicated to parse. King was plagued with self-doubt after It was released The controversy surrounding “It” and its shocking, graphic sexual content might have contributed to this decision at the time, but King was also hyper-aware of astoundingly talented fellow horror writers whom he deemed better in a sincerely appreciative vein. In a 1986 TIME interview , for example, King had to say the following about horror author and filmmaker Clive Barker: “You read him with a […]

Click here to view original page at Stephen King Almost Stopped Writing Horror Books After One Of His Biggest Hits

© 2024, wcadmin. All rights reserved, Writers Critique, LLC Unless otherwise noted, all posts remain copyright of their respective authors.