STEPHEN KING

does the same three things

Toni Morrison

described in the prior post

1. Alter consciousness

Q: Okay, so tell me how you go about writing?

KING: The actual physical act is like autohypnosis, a series of mental passes you go through before you start. If you’ve been doing it long enough, you immediately fall into a trance.^{1, p. 101}

2. Autonomous characters

“And if you do your job, your characters will come to life and start doing stuff on their own. I know that sounds a little creepy if you haven’t actually experienced it, but it’s terrific fun when it happens. And it will solve a lot of your problems, believe me.”^{2, p. 195}

3. Control or prune

Q: Have you ever had a character take over?

KING: In Carrie, the old drunk that tells about the explosion in town had to be pruned back...He just wanted to go on and on. And Watson, the night watchman in The Shining, was supposed to be a minor character. He had a lot more to say than I ever expected he would, but I never pruned him back. I’m glad I didn’t.^{1, p. 75}

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King says, “You have to be a little nuts to be a writer because you have to imagine worlds that aren’t there. You’re hearing voices, you’re making believe, you’re doing all of the things that we’re told as children not to do. Or else we’re told to distinguish between reality and those things. Adults will say, ‘You have an invisible friend, that’s nice, you’ll outgrow that.’ Writers don’t outgrow it.”^{3, p. 4}

However, you really don’t have to be crazy. I would guess that about thirty percent of the general public has what I call "normal multiple personality" to some extent. It is just that novelists focus on it and use it professionally.

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1. Underwood T, Miller C (eds): Bare Bones: Conversations on Terror with Stephen King. McGraw-Hill, 1988.
2. King, Stephen: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Scribner, 2000/2010.
3. Rogak, L: Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King. Thomas Dunne, 2008.

Toni Morrison Controls Her Characters
This illustrates that it is normal and routine for novelists to alter their state of consciousness, and then interact with their characters in the same way that people with multiple personality interact with their other personality states: as though the characters and personality states were thinking beings who have minds of their own.

In a 1993 Paris Review interview by Elissa Schappell and Claudia Brodsky Lacour, Toni Morrison describes (among many other issues) how she—like other novelists, in their own way—gets her mind into a “nonsecular space” in order to make “contact.” 

If unsure about how well she is doing during the writing of a novel, she says that she can go to her characters for their reassurance or critique. However, some characters get pushy, and some novelists let their characters take over. But Morrison stands up to them and reminds them whose book it is:

“I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark—it must be dark—and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come...This ritual comprises my preparation to enter a space I can only call nonsecular...Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process…”

INTERVIEWER: Do you have your audience in mind when you sit down to write?

“Only me. If I come to a place where I am unsure, I have the characters to go to for reassurance. By that time they are friendly enough to tell me if the rendition of their lives is authentic or not. But there are so many things only I can tell…”

INTERVIEWER: Do you ever feel like your characters are getting away from you, out of your control?

“I take control of them...They have nothing on their minds but themselves and aren’t interested in anything but themselves. So you can’t let them write your book for you. I have read books in which I know what has happened—when a novelist has been totally taken over by a character...So, you have to say, Shut up. Leave me alone. I am doing this.”

INTERVIEWER: Have you ever had to tell any of your characters to shut up?

“Pilate, I did…I had to do that, otherwise she was going to overwhelm everybody...It’s my book…”

Philip Roth and the Literary Alter Ego

To quote from Wikipedia, “an alter ego is a second self, which is believed to be distinct from a person's normal or original personality. A person who has an alter ego is said to lead a double life. The term appeared in common usage in the early 19th century when dissociative identity disorder [multiple personality disorder] was first described by psychologists...In literary analysis...it describes...a fictional character whose behavior, speech or thoughts intentionally represent those of the author...The existence of ‘another self’ was first recognized in the 1730s. Anton Mesmer used hypnosis to separate the alter ego...a behavior pattern that was distinct from the personality of the individual when he was in the waking state compared to when he was under hypnosis…”

In short, an alter ego is one personality of a person with split (multiple) personality. Often hidden, it may be brought out by hypnosis (or other means). Writers may have literary alter egos, which they bring out when they write.

In his Paris Review interview by Hermione Lee in 1984, novelist Philip Roth discusses his literary alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman. Roth says that everyone has a split personality, but the art of “impersonation” (having and using the alter ego) is the novelist’s fundamental talent. It is an “act” and “pretend,” but the novelist remains both himself and “someone else” when the curtain of the show comes down:

“...The thing about Zuckerman that interests me is that everybody’s split, but few so openly as this. Everybody is full of cracks and fissures, but usually we see people trying very hard to hide the places where they’re split…”

INTERVIEWER: What happens to Philip Roth when he turns into Nathan Zuckerman?

“Nathan Zuckerman is an act. It’s all the art of impersonation, isn’t it? That’s the fundamental novelistic gift...Making fake biography, false history, concocting a half-imaginary existence out of the actual drama of my life is my life. There has to be some pleasure in this job, and that’s it. To go around in disguise. To act a character. To pass oneself off as what one is not. To pretend...Think of the ventriloquist...His art consists of being present and absent; he’s most himself by simultaneously being someone else, neither of whom he 'is' once the curtain is down…Millions of people do this all the time, of course, and not with the justification of making literature...People beautifully pretending to be ‘themselves’…”