Storytelling 111: Lessons from Stephen King

Bite-sized Vignettes

"Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something."

—Robert A. Heinlein

“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”

—Peter Drucker

“Too many writers of the fiction of fear are doing the same thing. They failed to learn the real lesson of Stephen King’s success. It isn’t the icky stuff that makes King’s stories work. It’s how much he makes you care about his characters before the icky stuff ever happens. And his best books are the ones like The Dead Zone and The Stand in which not that much horror ever happens at all. Rather the stories are suffused with dread leading up to cathartic moments of terror and pain. Most important, the suffering that characters go through means something. That is the artistry of fear. To make the audience so empathize with a character that we fear what he fears, for his reasons. We don’t stand outside, looking at a gory slime cover him or staring at his gaping wounds. We stand inside him, anticipating the terrible things that might or will happen. Anybody can hack a fictional corpse. Only a storyteller can make you hope the character will live.”

—Orson Scott Card, Maps in a Mirror: Book One: "Introduction”

Stephen King writes long novels, and short chapters. 

This mechanical approach is one of the most overlooked aspects of his career. When a social consensus exists, sometimes it seems that the vast majority of people turn off their brains and forget to think for themselves — crowds prefer to defer and demur to the critical litterateur. Amateurs outsource their judgment to dusty academics. In this environment, the perceived familiarity of aging celebrities lulls fans into a false sense of complacency, so that old opinions become the only opinions, repeated endlessly, for better or worse. 

Laziness is the pockmarked, mud-stained underbelly of efficiency. 

Often this mindless, reflexive acceptance of conventional wisdom is good enough. But even simple patterns can escape detection amid such conditions, when fame serves to obscure and distract from what might otherwise be self-evident. 

This is the duty of the author, the artist, the auteur: To question and observe, to perceive, so that gleaming treasures can be rediscovered and archaeologically excavated beneath the irradiated sand of abandoned tombs and sinister, gothic mausoleums. 

He writes in a conversational, naturalistic style which is easily accessible to a popular, mass audience of casual readers. His prose is mostly functional and efficient, carried along by simple vocabulary, sprinkled with occasional poetic turns of phrase, where his stories aim to deliver a more beautiful image… or a clever observation.

The standard Stephen King story is a blue-collar tragedy: where the impoverished, abandoned American residents of dying small towns struggle with debt, dysfunctional marriages, petty jealousies, myopic rivalries, embittered obscurity, disappointing careers, frustrated ambitions, intractable medical problems, corrosive addictions, wasteful impulses, and the bittersweet end of childhood. Mundane, realistic drama consumes approximately the first third of a Stephen King novel, novella, or short story adventure. 

Trivial anxieties crowd the portrait’s foreground. Supernatural horror gradually, quietly sneaks into the background of the picture. Grim, unsettling omens tease the arrival of a dangerous, monstrous threat. The resulting clash of universal, sympathetic realism and some kind of grotesque, occult catastrophe carries the audience towards satisfaction. 

These are long, rambling novels. 

Rich, cathartic emotional products. 

In terms of length, scope, and scale, Stephen King’s debut 1974 novel Carrie was an outlier, a deviation from his eventual body of work. Carrie was a short 65,000 words. Roughly 10,000 words less than the typical minimum word-count of a fiction manuscript. 

But the novel Carrie seems to have functioned as a useful (and profitable) training exercise, building stamina. Similar to how marathon runners prepare themselves for grand, distant races by committing to brief jogs and sprints. 

Endurance accumulates in tiny, almost imperceptible increments. Both for athletes, and artists. 

Persistence reinforces with each additional repetition. 

After publishing Carrie, after publishing numerous unrelated novellas and short stories, Stephen King’s narrative production climbed, and climbed, and climbed. Rapidly his daydreams expanded higher and larger, higher and larger, swelling to gargantuan scale. 

In his autobiography “On Writing”, Stephen King explains his daily routine, and his perspective regarding the ideal length of commercial fiction:

Stephen King, On Writing:

“My own schedule is pretty clear-cut. Mornings belong to whatever is new — the current composition. Afternoons are for naps and letters. Evenings are for reading, family, Red Sox games on TV, and any revisions that just cannot wait. Basically, mornings are my prime writing time. 

Once I start work on a project, I don’t stop and I don’t slow down unless I absolutely have to. If I don’t write every day, the characters begin to stale off in my mind — they begin to seem like characters instead of real people. The tale’s narrative cutting edge starts to rust and I begin to lose my hold on the story’s plot and pace. Worst of all, the excitement of spinning something new begins to fade. The work starts to feel like work, and for most writers that is the smooch of death. Writing is at its best — always, always, always — when it is a kind of inspired play for the writer. I can write in cold blood if I have to, but I like it best when it’s fresh and almost too hot to handle. 

…

I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months, the length of a season. Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel…

I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book — something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh. On some days those ten pages come easily; I’m up and out and doing errands by eleven-thirty in the morning, perky as a rat in liverwurst. More frequently, as I grow older, I find myself eating lunch at my desk and finishing the day’s work around one-thirty in the afternoon. Sometimes, when the words come hard, I’m still fiddling around at teatime. Either way is fine with me, but only under dire circumstances do I allow myself to shut down before I get my 2,000 words. 

The biggest aid to regular (Trollopian?) production is working in a serene atmosphere. It’s difficult for even the most naturally productive writer to work in an environment where alarms and excursions are the rule rather than the exception.”

—Stephen King, On Writing

Stephen King writes long novels, and short chapters, and this consistent combination is a signature technique — because his brevity empowers verbosity. These short, condensed passages hold the reader’s attention and sustain dramatic momentum throughout the course of a ponderous novel such as The Talisman (243,000 words), Needful Things (219,000 words), Insomnia (223,000 words), Dreamcatcher (198,000 words), Black House (230,000 words), 11/22/63 (266,000 words), Under the Dome (299,000 words), or Sleeping Beauties (220,000 words). 

Perhaps a hideous epiphany begins to emerge, a literary nightmare abandoned and forgotten by Stephen King… a woman-shaped monster promising temptation and delight at the edge of the woods. Her eyes are blue and wide and trusting, radiant sapphires, her perky breasts are full, pale blonde hair cascades across her shoulders in shimmering gold… but when she parts her legs, you see that her bleeding, necrotic skin crumbles at the touch, and beneath the human semblance of a beautiful woman waits wet, slime-drenched scales glistening in the moonlight; the smile of sharp fangs; withered bones and a skeletal, emaciated frame; waits a demon older than the pyramids of Egypt, something fearsome and cruel, and hungry. 

Disguised by the shape of your ex-girlfriend.

You scream, briefly. 

She rips your stomach open, and starts to feed on raw intestines. 

The horror, the horror, imagine the grief and pain and horror. 

Unlike many elegant, advanced techniques, it’s very easy to write a short, condensed chapter, or a miniature narrative which delivers a satisfying emotional payoff in microcosm. 

Consider the demon ex-girlfriend mentioned above (possibly you have suffered similar breakups).

In six sentences, we are introduced to a monster, then seduced, murdered, and devoured (a classic example of feminine entrapment). 

Audiences experience an intense, grotesque scene composed in the fashion of a formulaic horror encounter — but the familiar, spooky nightmare is compressed into a swift, bite-sized vignette.

Concise chapters are fun and efficient. 

One narrow purpose is executed to develop character, advance plot, or deepen theme. Then, as soon as the mission has been accomplished, the chapter ends. 

It’s a beautiful example of minimalism. Naked functionality does its job, nothing more, and swiftly proceeds to the next scene.

Some of Stephen King’s chapters are as short as a single sentence. More often, the tiny chapters are composed of three to four paragraphs, which consist of a total of ten to fourteen sentences. 

These brief narrative scenes flash and disappear in a colorful glimpse, producing a strobing effect which:

• Intensifies dramatic momentum

• Accelerates pacing

• Skips filler content, and reduces boring scenes to their bare essentials

• Alternates tempo, rhythm

• Contrasts against longer passages 

• Provides relief to the audience

• Creates a pageturner psychological effect, where the audience is eager to keep reading, (this is how voracious readers stay up all night to finish a novel, while repeating to themselves the optimistic mantra, “Just one more chapter. Just one more chapter. I’ll stop reading after the next chapter.”)

• Prevents the middle of the novel from dragging and boring audiences, which is a classic design flaw, since the midsection tends to be the least structured segment of the narrative. 

All of these effects are more or less self-evident. Straightforward interactions between author, art, and audience, which make sense as soon as they are mentioned. But there are a few other advantages of writing short chapters which are perhaps less obvious, and their counterintuitive functionality merits a more in-depth dissection. 

Long chapters immerse readers in detailed panoramas, and vicarious adventures. 

Short chapters cannot provide a similar sense of immersion; they lack scale, and therefore these segments are forced to be lean and efficient scenes which are built upon suggestion and implication, hinting at the outlines of hidden intrigues and landscapes beyond view. 

Brief, evocative glimpses establish a delightful mystique.

Novels tend to overexplain, to destroy their own enigmas. Evocative, ambient scenes correct against this corrosive tendency. And they’re beautiful, stripped-down components of a larger, grander narrative. 

One of the main benefits of accelerating dramatic momentum and inserting more scenes into a novel is the possibility of achieving literary scope, and psychological depth. When executed properly (admittedly a big caveat), the novel’s characters are able to travel much farther in terms of emotional distance. Character arcs must remain plausible to resonate with audiences, and viewpoint heroes and their supporting ensembles can be transformed along remarkable vectors as the timeline expands. Action heroes can only learn, grow, suffer, and sacrifice so much in a single day, or week, or month. But consider a character like The Count of Monte Cristo’s Edmond Dantes (an innocent man sent to prison for ten years, who escapes to find treasure and return seeking revenge under a new name), or Victor Hugo’s Jean Valjean (a petty thief with superhuman strength who is sent to prison, paroled, and rebrands himself as a dignified mayor and factory owner in the novel Les Miserables) — these characters are allowed to reinvent themselves over the course of decades, which involves fascinating changes and moral lessons. 

Smaller scenes and chapters add up to a (potentially) more complex, multifaceted story within the same number of words. 

Short chapters are most useful at the beginning, or middle of a novel. I recommend against their inclusion during an epic’s final passages. Brevity often leads to a lack of appropriate catharsis, which makes it difficult to provide the manuscript with a satisfying resolution. 

Novelists tend to write in a consistent stylistic rhythm.

The start of a novel is delicately, elegantly choreographed. Every detail is meticulously, patiently considered. But time weighs down upon the artist, and as authors wade deeper and deeper into the quagmire of an expansive fictional world, efficiency atrophies; stamina diminishes; creativity dulls; and scenes tend to lose their previous complexity… their sophistication and precisely choreographed arrangements. Fatigue tends to be especially notable after passing the milestone of the first hundred pages. 

Fatigued writers settle into their default patterns of communication. This leads to innumerable forms of sloppiness, as suboptimal solutions are applied to various narrative complications. Tired writers tend to write everything the same, pursuing the path of least resistance, regressing to whatever approach feels most comfortable. One overlooked consequence of this creative exhaustion is that scenes and chapters are written around the same length, regardless of purpose, regardless of how much information needs to be communicated.

Some scenes are hard and complex; others are easy and simple. Complex, busy chapters require more words. Plain, uncluttered scenes can be resolved swiftly. And this observation seems obvious when presented in these terms, but even veteran writers will write chapters that are thousands of words longer than necessary, motivated by a misunderstanding in how to pace their stories.

For this reason, a functional scene that should initiate, escalate, and culminate with three paragraphs might instead mutate into a bloated monstrosity… a thirteen-page filler event which proceeds along perfectly obvious and predictable trajectories, towards a cliche, bland outcome. 

It’s useful to proactively train against this impulse, by adding brevity and terse, graceful construction into your rotation of artistic techniques. 

Some examples selected from Stephen King’s novels have been curated below. Each of these samples represents an entire chapter, which is amazing, because many other professional writers refuse to compose any chapter less than four pages long.

1.)

“. . . Minus 000 and COUNTING . . . Heeling over slightly, the Lockheed struck the Games Building dead on, three quarters of the way up. Its tanks were still better than a quarter full. Its speed was slightly over five hundred miles an hour. The explosion was tremendous, lighting up the night like the wrath of God, and it rained fire twenty blocks away.”

—Stephen King, The Running Man

2.)

“Two months after the newspaper article, the boy was taken into the church. He made his first confession — and confessed everything.”

—Stephen King, Salem’s Lot

3.)

“umber whunnnn yerrrnnn umber whunnnn fayunnnn These sounds: even in the haze.”

—Stephen King, Misery 

4.)

“He drifted. The tide came in and he drifted. The TV played in the other room for awhile and then didn’t. Sometimes the clock chimed and he tried to count the chimes but he kept getting lost between. 

IV. Through tubes! That’s what those marks on your arms are. 

He got up on one elbow and pawed for the lamp and finally got it turned on. He looked at his arms and in the folds of his elbows he saw fading, overlapped shades of purple and ocher. a hole filled with black blood at the center of each bruise. 

He lay back, looking at the ceiling, listening to the wind. He was near the top of the Great Divide in the heart of winter, he was with a woman who was not right in her head, a woman who had fed him with IV drips when he was unconscious, a woman who had an apparently never-ending supply of dope, a woman who had told no one he was here. 

These things were important, but he began to realize that something else was more important: the tide was going out again. He began to wait for the sound of her alarm clock upstairs. It would not go off for some long while yet, but it was time for him to start waiting for it to be time. 

She was crazy but he needed her. 

Oh I am in so much trouble he thought, and stared blindly up at the ceiling as the droplets of sweat began to gather on his forehead again.”

—Stephen King, Misery 

5.)

“Her voice called him out of his daze. He opened his eyes and saw she was pointing a shotgun at him. Her eyes glittered furiously. Spit shone on her teeth. 

“If you want your freedom so badly, Paul,” Annie said, “I’ll be happy to grant it to you.” 

She pulled back both hammers.”

—Stephen King, Misery 

6.)

“Hank Peters woke up in the early hours of the next morning from a dream of huge rats crawling out of an open grave, a grave which held the green and rotting body of Hubie Marsten, with a frayed length of manila hemp around his neck. Peters Jay propped on his elbows, breathing heavily, naked torso slicked with sweat, and when his wife touched his arm he screamed aloud.”

—Stephen King, Salem’s Lot 

7.)

“The cloud was back. Paul dived for it, not caring if the cloud meant death instead of unconsciousness this time. He almost hoped it did. Just … no pain, please. No memories, no pain, no horror, no Annie Wilkes. 

He dived for the cloud, dived into the cloud, dimly hearing the sounds of his own shrieks and smelling his own cooked meat.

 As his thoughts faded, he thought: Goddess! Kill you! Goddess! Kill you! Goddess! 

Then there was nothing but nothing.”

—Stephen King, Misery 

8.)

“When Herb and Eileen returned to the school that afternoon, Luke was jiving around in front of the pick-up lane with four other kids, two boys and two girls. They were laughing and talking animatedly. To Eileen they looked like kids anywhere, the girls in skirts and leggings, their bosoms just beginning to bloom, Luke and his friend Rolf in baggy cords—this year’s fashion statement for young men—and t-tops. Rolf’s read BEER IS FOR BEGINNERS. He had his cello in its quilted case and appeared to be pole-dancing around it as he held forth on something that might have been the spring dance or the Pythagorean theorem. 

Luke saw his parents, paused long enough to dap Rolf, then grabbed his backpack and dove into the backseat of Eileen’s 4Runner. “Both Ps,” he said. “Excellent. To what do I owe this extraordinary honor?”

 “Do you really want to go to school in Boston?” Herb asked. Luke was not discomposed; he laughed and punched both fists in the air. ‘Yes! Can I?’

Like asking if he can spend Friday night at Rolf’s house, Eileen marveled. She thought of how Greer had expressed what their son had. He’d called it global, and that was the perfect word. Luke was a genius who had somehow not been distorted by his own outsized intellect; he had absolutely no compunctions about mounting his skateboard and riding his one-in-a-billion brain down a steep sidewalk, hellbent for election.

“Let’s get some early supper and talk about it,” she said.

“Rocket Pizza!” Luke exclaimed. “How about it? Assuming you took your Prilosec, Dad. Did you?”

“Oh, believe me, after today’s meeting, I’m totally current on that.”

—Stephen King, The Institute 

9.)

“From the Old Farmer’s Almanac’: Sunset on Sunday, October 5, 1975, at 7:02 P.M., sunrise on Monday, October 6, 1975, at 6:49 A.M. The period of darkness on Jerusalem’s Lot during that particular rotation of the Earth, thirteen days after the vernal equinox, lasted eleven hours and forty-seven minutes. The moon was new. The day’s verse from the Old Farmer was: ‘See less sun, harvest’s nigh done.’ From the Portland Weather Station: High temperature for the period of darkness was 62°, reported at 7:05 P.M. Low temperature was 47°, reported at 4:06 A.M. Scattered clouds, precipitation zero. Winds from the northwest at five to ten miles per hour. From the Cumberland County police blotter: Nothing.”

—Stephen King, Salem’s Lot 

10.)

“At first he thought he had lapsed into delirium. What he was seeing was too bizarre to be sane. When Annie returned, she was pushing a charcoal grill in front of her. 

“Annie, I’m in terrible pain.” Tears coursed down his cheeks. 

“I know, my dear.” She kissed his cheek, the touch of her lips as gentle as the fall of a feather. “Soon.” 

She left and he looked stupidly at the charcoal grill, something meant for an outdoor summer patio which now stood in his room, calling up relentless images of idols and sacrifices. 

And sacrifice was what she had in mind, of course — when she came back she was carrying the manuscript of Fast Cars, the only existing result of his two years’ work, in one hand. In the other she had a box of Diamond Blue Tip wooden matches.”

—Stephen King, Misery 

11.)

“Voices in a haunted room. 

Keep your head down. 

He turned his head on the motel pillow and looked at Charlie, who was sleeping deeply. Charlie kid, what are we going to do? Where can we go and be left alone? How is this going to end? 

No answer to any of these questions. 

And at last he slept, while not so far away a green car cruised through the dark, still hoping to come upon a big man with broad shoulders in a corduroy jacket and a little girl with blond hair in red pants and a green blouse.”

—Stephen King, Firestarter

12.)

“Ann Norton died on the short elevator trip from the first floor of the hospital to the second. She shivered once, and a small trickle of blood ran from the comer of her mouth. ‘Okay,’ one of the orderlies said. ‘You can turn off the siren now.’”

—Stephen King, Salem’s Lot 

13.)

“The other two men from the green sedan were talking to airport personnel. One of them discovered the skycap who had noticed Andy and Charlie getting out of the cab and going into the terminal. 

'Sure I saw them. I thought it was a pure-d shame, a man as drunk as that having a little girl out that late.' 

'Maybe they took a plane,' one of the men suggested.

 'Maybe so,' the skycap agreed. 'I wonder what that child's mother can be thinking of. I wonder if she knows what's going on.'

 'I doubt if she does,' the man in the dark-blue Botany 500 suit said. He spoke with great sincerity. 'You didn't see them leave?' 

'No, sir. Far as I know, they're still round here somewhere . . . unless their flight's been called, of course.'”

—Stephen King, Firestarter

14.)

“It was the last day, and he knew it. 

The sky was an ugly, bruised purple, weirdly lit from above with the first fingers of dawn. Allie moved about like a wraith, lighting lamps, tending corn fritters that sputtered in the skillet. He had loved her hard after she had told him what he had to know, and she had sensed the coming end and had given more than she had ever given, and she had given it with desperation against the coming of dawn, given it with the tireless energy of sixteen. But she was pale this morning, on the brink of menopause again. 

She served him without a word. He ate rapidly, chewing, swallowing, chasing each bite with hot coffee. Allie went to the batwings and stood staring out at the morning, at the silent battalions of slow-moving clouds. 

“It’s going to dust up today.” 

“I’m not surprised.” 

“Are you ever?” she asked ironically, and turned to watch him get his hat. He clapped it on his head and brushed past her. 

“Sometimes,” he told her. 

He only saw her once more alive.”

—Stephen King, The Gunslinger 

15.)

“The fire was down, and the stars had begun to pale off. The wind walked restlessly, told its tale to no one. The gunslinger twitched in his sleep and was still again. He dreamed a thirsty dream. In the darkness the shape of the mountains was invisible. Any thoughts of guilt, any feelings of regret, had faded. The desert had baked them out. He found himself thinking more and more about Cort, who had taught him to shoot. Cort had known black from white. 

He stirred again and woke. He blinked at the dead fire with its own shape superimposed over the other, more geometrical one. He was a romantic, he knew it, and he guarded the knowledge jealously. It was a secret he had shared with only a few over the years. The girl named Susan, the girl from Mejis, had been one of them. 

That, of course, made him think of Cort again. Cort was dead. They were all dead, except for him. The world had moved on. 

The gunslinger shouldered his gunna and moved on with it.”

—Stephen King, The Gunslinger 

16.)

Stephen King, Gwendy’s Button Box:

“The first thing Gwendy notices when she strolls into Castle Rock High on the last Thursday morning of the school year are the somber expressions on the faces of several teachers and a cluster of girls gathered by the cafeteria doors, many of them crying.

“What’s going on?” she asks Josie Wainwright at the locker they share.

“What do you mean?”

“Kids are crying in the lobby. Everyone looks upset.”

“Oh, that,” Josie says, with no more gravity than if she were talking about what she’d eaten for breakfast that morning. “Some girl killed herself last night. Jumped off the Suicide Stairs.”

Gwendy’s entire body goes cold.

“What girl?” Barely a whisper, because she’s afraid she already knows the answer. She doesn’t know how she knows, but she does.

“Olive…uhh…”

“Kepnes. Her name is Olive Kepnes.”

“Was Olive Kepnes,” Josie says, and starts humming “The Dead March.”

Gwendy wants to smack her, right in her pretty freckled face, but she can’t lift her arms. Her entire body is numb. Aer a moment, she wills her legs to move and walks out of the school and to her car. She drives directly home and locks herself inside her bedroom.”

—Stephen King, Gwendy’s Button Box

17.)

Stephen King, Gwendy’s Final Task:

“AND NOW THE TIME has come to do that.

Gwendy pulls the lever that dispenses the chocolates. Out comes a butterfly with tiny, perfectly scalloped wings. She pops it into her mouth. Warmth spreads throughout her body and lights up her brain. Then, for the first time in her long and complicated history with the button box, she pulls the lever again. For a moment nothing happens and she’s afraid the box is refusing her, but then another chocolate comes out. She doesn’t bother to examine it, just swallows it down. The world leaps forward into all her senses. The clarity is painful but at the same time wonderful. She can see every grain in the box’s mahogany surface. She can hear every creak as the MF station makes its endless journey through space. She can’t hear the Chinese in their spoke, but she senses their presence. Some are eating, some are playing a game. Mahjong, perhaps.

She takes a deep breath and can feel it filling her lungs and enriching her blood. The knock at the door sends waves of vibration across the room. It’s a V shape, Gwendy thinks. Like birds heading south for the winter.

“Gwendy?” Kathy asks. “Are you ready?”

“Just a second!” She puts the button box back in its bag and stows it in the closet wall safe, which is hidden behind her spare pressure suit. She thumbs the CLOSE button and hears the lock engage. She checks for her notebook in the pocket of her jumpsuit, then shuts the closet, bounce-walks to the door, and opens it.

“Ready,” she says.”

—Stephen King, Gwendy’s Final Task

18.)

Stephen King, Gwendy’s Magic Feather:

“THE FIRST THING GWENDY does after retrieving her cellphone from the kitchen counter (even before she walks to the front door and double-checks the deadbolt) is to make sure nothing has happened to the button box. For one terrible, breathless moment, while she’s crossing from the kitchen into the family room, she imagines that the figure at the back door was a diversionary tactic, and while she was busy conducting her counterattack, an accomplice was breaking into the front of the house and stealing away with the box.

Her entire body sags with relief when she sees the button box sitting on the sofa right where she’d left it.

A short time later, as she makes her way upstairs carrying the box, it occurs to her that she never once considered telling Ryan about it. At first, she tries to use the severed connection as an excuse, but she knows better. The button box came back to her and only her. Nobody else.

“It’s mine,” she says as she enters the bedroom.

And shivers at the intensity of her voice.”

—Stephen King, Gwendy’s Magic Feather

19.)

“GWENDY JERKS UPRIGHT IN bed, clutching a tangle of sweat-soaked sheets to her chest and gasping for breath. Her eyes dart to the closet door across the room — it’s closed tight — and then to her dresser. The button box is exactly as she left it, sitting there in the dark with its watchful gaze.”

—Stephen King, Gwendy’s Magic Feather

20.)

“All the needles on the control panel dropped dead. 

“What the hell?” Claudie Sanders said. She turned to Chuck. Her eyes were wide, but there was no panic in them, only bewilderment. 

There was no time for panic. 

Chuck never saw the control panel. He saw the Seneca’s nose crumple toward him. Then he saw both propellers disintegrate. There was no time to see more. No time for anything. The Seneca exploded over Route 119 and rained fire on the countryside. It also rained body parts. A smoking forearm — Claudette’s — landed with a thump beside the neatly divided woodchuck. 

It was October twenty-first.”

—Stephen King, Under the Dome