In Today’s Journal
* Dean Koontz Revisited
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Dean Koontz Revisited
I’ve long believed Dean Koontz probably writes into the dark. From his interview on “How I Write,” I learned that he does.
But he does so in very much the way Hemingway wrote: one ‘perfected’ (to his standards) page at a time. For various reasons that I’ll discuss tomorrow, I also suspect he probably reviews his pages from a conscious, critical standpoint at times.
Koontz is very aware of readers and clearly understands that what’s ‘perfect’ to him might not be perfect to every reader. Still, his perfect version is the absolute best he can do at his level of skill.
That’s an important lesson to learn: Always do your absolute best.
For him, that process entails going one page at a time. For me, it means cycling over what I’ve written in each session, sometimes several times.
The first quote I gleaned from Koontz was on why he stopped outlining novels:
“If you’re in a creative process, you’re not gonna stick to the outline [anyway] because ideas are gonna come up that are better. If you stick to the outline, you’re going to produce a lower-quality book than you would if you just let creativity flow.”
Here are the other quotes I took from the interview:
“At that point, characters were beginning to drive the fiction for me. If you give the characters free will, [they] go places you don’t anticipate. The characters start having their own thoughts that surprise you. What I learned over the years is ‘trust the character’.”
“The first time I worked this way [WITD] was a book called Strangers, which was the first hardcover bestseller I ever had.”
“There is an encyclopedia of ‘common wisdom’ in publishing: what you’re supposed to do and what you’re not supposed to do. All of it is common and none of it is wise. You have to get aware of that and you have to go your own way.”
“I was working on a book called The Phase and then into my head came a line: ‘My name is Odd Thomas. I lead an unusual life.’ And I stopped and thought ‘What is that? That has nothing to do with what I’m working on.’ And I started to write it down so I wouldn’t forget it, and the first and last time ever, I wrote out thirty-some pages by hand, and it became the first chapter of [another] novel.”
“I put it aside and finished The Phase, and said to myself, ‘That’s going to be crap when I go back to it.’ I’ve never written anything by hand, and it flowed. I went back and read it, and I thought, ‘This is good. Where did that come from? Why did that name pop into my head? Why did that whole story come to me in almost an instant?’ That’s the great mystery that makes it so exciting to do.”
“The reason I can sit there [and write] is because I love it. I love the process. There are writers who like ‘having written’, and the whole process is painful for them. But I like the writing part. The rest of it is of less interest to me. … Facility with character I think only improves with time.”
“Character is the center of good fiction.” He wrote eight novels about Odd Thomas.
On his childhood: “There’s something to be said for suffering as long as it doesn’t destroy you.”
Interviewer David Perell: “In revisions, what is the North Star that you’re going for?”
Koontz: “Fluidity of prose. I want it to be what you said, about vividness. I want to use all the tools in the writer’s tool box. I think American fiction suffered from the attempt to imitate Hemingway. Hemingway stripped it all down, but it was still the mystery and the underlying strangeness of the world there by implication. And all the imitations that came later stripped it down but didn’t have that.”
“When I get mail, one of the things people react to so strongly is the use of the language. It’s fun to bring it along and keep smoothing it and making it more and more vivid so it flows and those metaphors and similes don’t pop at you like showmanship. They’re there but they flow into the music of the language. That’s what I love so much. … It’s polishing the prose and making sure that anyone can read it and take something from it.”
Note: When I get mail about my stories or novels, the most common comment is that the reader felt as if s/he was “in” the story with the character.
“I never give that much thought to ‘suspense’. I just get the character into a knotty situation and I’m pretty sure it’s going to keep being knotty.”
“Suspense is one of the key elements of fiction because it’s one of the key elements of our lives. We never know what’s going to happen to us between now and tomorrow, or between now and an hour from now. So suspense, that is life.” Note: Absolutely spot on.
The interviewer also revealed Koontz’ Four Rules of Writing:
1. Never go inside more than one character’s mind in a scene. Each scene is from a singular viewpoint, and therefore a metaphor or simile should be in the voice of the narrator of the scene.
“Yes, when you go into more than one character’s head in a scene, right then it’s not a novel anymore, it’s the author talking to you. You’ve sacrificed the illusion of reality because you’re showing your hand.”
“[When you stay in one character’s mind during a scene] that forces you into an intimacy with the character that you would otherwise lose. If you go into every character’s head in a scene, you’re being a puppet master.”
Note: Being a puppet master is one form of author intrusion. It’s making characters do and say what you want them to do and say.
“But if you force yourself to live within that character in that character’s scene, you get more intimately involved with that character. You’re not just manipulating anymore. You’re living within that character.”
“I’ve written a book in which I break the 4th wall repeatedly, but I did that intentionally for the humorous effect of it.”
2. Metaphors aren’t meant to dazzle readers, but to seduce them into a more intimate relationship with the story.
“Yeah, but you have to get to the point where [the metaphor doesn’t pop out, where] you recognize it’s within the perspective of the character. You can dazzle, but it has to be felt within the character who’s narrating the scene.”
Note: In my humble readerly opinion, Koontz hasn’t yet gotten to that point. More on this tomorrow.
3. This means that every figure of speech should be consistent with the mood of the scene in which it appears.
4. Metaphors and similes describe a scene more colorfully than a chain of adjectives, and they reinforce the mood.
Note: Of course, he’s right. But again, the point is to describe the scene and reinforce the mood. The metaphor or simile should not ‘pop’. In other words, it should not call the reader’s attention to itself and away from the story.
“Instead of just saying the scene is bathed in moonlight—that sets mood—but you can also suggest in a [simile] the face of the moon wrapped in clouds that began to unravel like the wrappings on a mummy or something. By describing [the setting] more metaphorically than just blunt adjectives, you use words to say more than the word itself says to create moods and states of mind. That’s the value of metaphor and simile.”
You can find the Dean Koontz interview at Storytelling Mastery in 107 Minutes — Dean Koontz.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
States with the Highest & Lowest Tax Rates Nothing to do with writing but interesting.
The Numbers
The Journal………………….. 1300
Writing of
Day 1…… XXXX words. To date………… XXXXX
Fiction for March……………………….…. XXXX
Fiction for 2026…………………………… XXXX
Nonfiction for March.………………….…. 4660
Nonfiction for 2026………………..……… 47960
2026 consumable words………………… 47960
2026 Novels to Date……………………… 0
2026 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2026 Short Stories to Date……………… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 123
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 310
Short story collections……………………. 29