People praising Stephen King sometimes chalk his popularity up to the way he tells a story. They say that he’s all about the plot, driving it ahead like a runaway train, keeping his readers hooked on the narrative until the very last page. They talk about how you just can’t put his books down, about how they kept turning pages to find out what happened next.
This is about as deep a misunderstanding of what Stephen King does as it’s possible to have. King’s priority isn’t plot, it’s character. This focus is what differentiates him from a lot of genre writers. Dan Brown and Tom Clancy don’t need no stinking characters. But Stephen King? He’s built his career out of them.
[Lots more after the jump]