Christine - Lesson 8 (Point of View)

Characterization in Christine (Signet): Like Carrie the point of view is away from the main character (see this post). In a thriller, this technique does well to heighten the tension and increase the mystique around Arnie and his car.

Dennis does a little detective work in this section, and we get stories from LeBay's brother (LeBay's wife and daughter died in the car). His father tells him about Darnell's business dealings, and then Dennis gets a good look at the car himself and talks to Darnell. Meanwhile, Arnie and his relationship to Christine only loom larger.

Presidential reference: As Dennis looks at Christine at Darnells (122): I had looked at that new tire on that old car and thought it was as if a little bit of the old car had been scratched away and that the new car - fresh, resplendent, just off the assembly line in a year when Ike had been president and Batista had still been in charge in Cuba - was peeking through.

Exercise: Check your story to see if telling it from another character's point of view.

Christine - Lesson 7 (Dream Sequences)

Dream Sequences in Christine (Signet): I've got to be honest about dream sequences. I'm not a big fan of them while reading, but looking back on my writing, I'm horrible about writing them. Maybe I see my character's unconscious as a place to stretch out and see what's really eating at him. I now ask, why not stretch out while the character's conscious?

In Christine, Dennis is plagued by nightmares about Christine - good-old, present tense, in italics nightmares. I'm not sure how effective a dream sequence is in heightening the horror or a character's self-awareness. I know that when I wake up, whatever was in the dream didn't happen. When have dream sequences worked? Other than the book of Genesis and a movie called Dreamscape where dreams were central to the plot, I can't think of any.

I had a professor that told me that dreams are only interesting to the person who did the dreaming - and yet, somehow, I always have the impulse to tell my poor patient wife when I have what I consider a "really weird dream." From
now on I resolve to curb my habit of writing dream sequences (or at least editing them out).

Presidential Reference: I drove a mile and a half down to JFK Drive, which - according to my mother, who grew up in Libertyville - used to be at teh center of one of the town's most desirable neighborhoods back around the time Kennedy was killed in Dallas.

Christine - Lesson 6 (Be Specific)

Being Specific in Christine (Signet): It's always good to be specific. This is what makes the story come alive. On page 9, Dennis gives a flashback about when his cat died:

"When I was nine, we had a cat named Captain Beefheart, and he got hit by a UPS truck."

What makes that passage vivid is its specificity with the cat's name and the vehicle that killed it.

Here's another when Dennis wants to be somewhere else:

I sat there behind the wheel of my car, not sure what I should do, whishing I was someplace else, anyplace else, trying on shoes at Thom McAn's, filing out a credit application in a discount store, standing in front of a pay toilet stall with diarrhea and no dime.

Okay, the last one in that list is pretty funny, but I might have changed the discount store to a specific chain, say J.C. Penny.

Exercise: Check your story for non-specific people, places, and things. Make them specific.

Christine - Lesson 5 (Flashbacks)

Flashbacks in Christine (Signet): in Chapter 2 of Christine, ("The First Argument"), Dennis is in the middle of an argument between Arnie and his parents. Then Regina turns to him and say, "Dennis, I'm surprised at you." This sets off a flashback:

This stung me. I had always liked Arnie's mom well enough, but I had never completely trusted her, at least not since something had happened when I was eight years old or so.

Arnie and I had ridden our bikes downtown to take in a Saturday afternoon movie. One the way back, Arnie had fallen off his bike while swerving to avoid a dog and had jobbed his leg pretty good. I rode him home double on my bike, and Regina took him to the emergency room, where a doctor put in half a dozen stitches. And then, for some reason, after it was all over and it was clear that Arnie was going to be perfectly fine, Regina turned on me and gave me the rough side of her tongue. She read me out like a top sergeant. when she finished, I was shaking all over and nearly crying - what the hell, I was only eight, and there had been a lot of blood. I can't remember chapter and verse of that bawling-out, but the overall feeling it left me with was disturbing. As best I remember, she started out by accusing me of not watching him closely enough-as if Arnie were much younger instead of almost exactly my own age - and ended up saying (or seeming to say) that it should have been me.

A good flashback doesn't take us away from the narrative for too long. This one (2 paragraphs) is a short and sweet. I'm often tempted to write a flashback that goes on for pages and pages - especially when still trying to figure out who the character is. These rambling tomes should be cut (see Kill Your Darlings) Also, a flashback should have a point. In this case the short narrative gives a characterization of Regina Cunningham.

Exercise: When you come upon a flashback in your story, check to see that it's short enough and has a purpose.

Christine - Lesson 4 (Point of View)

Point of View in Christine (Signet): The first section of Christine (a novel in first person) is in the point of view of Arnie Cunningham's high school friend Dennis. This employs a technique of using a narrator who is not central to the action (a technique that goes back as far as The Canterbury Tales and . . . well, the gospels).

A non-central character has the advantage of giving room for a larger than life character to stretch without being bound to telling the story (Think Chief to McMurphy in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Sal Paradise to Dean Moriarty in On the Road, and Louis to Lestat in Interview with the Vampire. (Although the latter proves to be a fantastic narrator in The Vampire Lestat and subsequent books).The reader gets to see the narrator as others see him. With Dennis as narrator, we see Arnie's slide into obsession, and we also see Christine as Arnie can't see her - as something to fear.

However, a non-central narrator must be interesting in his or her own right (something Dennis definitely warms to). Also, there's the problem that a non-central narrator has to be present for key events in the narrator. This can get kind of convoluted (King drops Dennis's first person narrative for the middle section of the book).

Exercise: Check to see if you have a first person narrator who is central to the story. If so, consider whether or not it would be effective to change the point of view to a non-central character.

Christine - Lesson 3 (Characterization)

Characterization in Christine (Signet): I like it when a character's physical attributes mirror his or her personality. A good example Chapter One of Christine is Roland LeBay.

It was an old guy who looked as if he was enjoying - more or less - his seventieth summer. Probably less. This particular dude struck me as the sort of man who enjoyed very little. His hair was long and scraggy, what little was left of it. He had a good case of psoriasis going on the bald part of his skull.

He was wearing green old man's pants and low topped Keds. No shirt; instead there was something cinched around his waist that looked like a lady's corset. When I got closer I saw that it was a back brace. From the look of it I would say, just offhand, that he changed it last somewhere around the time Lyndon Johnson died.

Here the reader looks at LeBay and is able to make his or her own conclusions. I especially like the back brace, that suggests something crooked is going on.

Presidential reference: Stephen King likes to mark time by presidential administrations - it's a lot more fun than saying "a long time" or "five years" (the book takes place in 1978 and LBJ died in 1973 - so the reader gets to do the math).

Exercise: Check the character descriptions in your story and see if the physical description matches the character's personality.

Christine - Lesson 2 (Conflict)

Conflict in Christine (Signet): King hits the ground running as Arnie first sees Christine in Chapter One.

"On my God!' my friend Arnie Cunningham cried out suddenly.

What is it?" I asked. His eyes were bulging from behind his steel-rimmed glasses, he had plastered one hand over his face so that it was partially cupping his mouth, and his neck could have been on ball-bearlings the way he was craning back over his shoulder.

"Stop the car, Dennis! Go back!"

Dennis and Arnie are at odds against each other over buying Christine. Simply put, Dennis is against it, and Arnie (inexplicably) is obsessed by it. King starts with the conflict quickly, and the reader is sucked into the Story.

King mines this conflict very well, while keeping the two teens friends. Then in Chapter Two, he complicates things further by pitting Dennis and Arnie against Arnie's parents.

Adverbs: As a rule, cut out the adverbs. The first line would be stronger without the "suddenly." While King warns against adverbs in On Writing, he also acknowledges that going back to his old work would reveal lots of them.

Exercise: Does the conflict start at the beginning with little preamble? Also search for adverbs and cut as many as it can.