Fairy Tale

Fairy Tale

My recent book reading was "Fairy Tale" by Stephen King. It was my first time reading Stephen King's novel (not even in Korean); I knew some of his works, such as Misery, but mostly by the screen adaptation.

I read his memoir "On Writing." In the book, he talks about his writing method. I don't remember it precisely, but it was something like this: make a situation and let characters go through it. And I could get it thoroughly while reading Fairy Tale.

The most interesting thing in the book was that all the characters were so flat: the good guys were good, and the bad guys were bad - no twist. As an old-time anime fan (rather than Otaku), I was used to the plot twists, hidden motivations, and every creative destruction. And I believed that kind of thing made the masterpiece. This book has nothing: no foreshadows. It was fascinating to see how the character just got through the story and reached the end. Later, I heard that it was the usual Stephen King story: simple, straight, fun, and powerful. I had a lesson that I don't need to be too serious about everything. It might not be only in software engineering that, in many cases, the simplest thing is the most powerful.