Eating Your Heroes

Very recently, I completed reading Stephen King's The Outsider. Being one of my favorite inspirations to draw on, I decided to write a short review of the novel and to share some lessons learned from the master of modern horror.

First aspect of the novel I wanted to highlight was the evolution of the plot from classic crime mystery to the weird and then again to a classic King novel that many have come to know. As the story begins, you feel like you were watching the latest episode of Law and Order: SVU: a young boy is murdered and the cops think it's Terry Maitland, head coach of a boys Little League club and town hero. Maitland is arrested (very publicly) and starts this whirlwind of emotions and doubt. As more evidence is discovered, the characters are faced with an impossible fact: Terry was in another city, miles away with friends, while the boy was murdered. Despite having irrefutable evidence that Terry was in two places at once, the head detective and a few others have discovered that there is an Outsider posing somehow as Terry.

What I admired most about this novel is King's skill in transitioning the narrative from a point that ensnares you to where he wants you to be. As I was reading, I felt as though I was walking down a dark flight of stairs, with only the sensory feedback of my foot hitting the next step as a guide.

The skill I most want to emulate from King is his ability to lure his audience into a false sense of security, a false sense of familiarity. I want to lure my readers into something that feels natural to them, like how a cook might temper eggs by adding hot liquid bit by bit before adding the eggs to a boiling mix. One secret to this, I believe, is knowing who your reader is. Who your audience is and why they would like to read your work. I'll have to look into this further during the semester.