If Stephen King isn’t America’s most critically-acclaimed writer, he’s certainly one of the country’s – if not the world’s – most successful. With 83 novels, most of them bestsellers, 19 movies or TV series he’s directly written, and over 100 film and TV adaptions he has not, when Stephen King gives advice, professionals and amateurs alike do well to pay attention.
So it was interesting when he took to Twitter today to give unsolicited writing advice to the world at large:
“‘World-building’ is a phrase I really wish would be retired. Not only is it sloppy and lazy, it has become trite.”
“World-building” is a term used by writers to describe the process of constructing a fictional universe in which many different otherwise-unrelated stories might share the same theoretically physical space. The most famous example of this in popular culture right now is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is an expansive space that allows such disparate characters as Tony Stark, Peter Parker, and Rocket Racoon to all interact in an alternate-reality New York City.
There is an irony to this call for banning world-building coming from King, a writer who has, over the past 56 years, built a large fictional world centered around the horrors of fictional cities Derry and Castle Rock in the state of Maine.
Reaction from fans and friends came quick, with best-selling comic book writer Tom Taylor zinging King right off the bat:
And L.A. Times Book Review editor Boris Kachka explained that while he sympathized, recently he had to allow the phrase in a review anyway:
If you are an aspiring writer and you love using the phrase “world-building,” don’t be too discouraged. Stephen King also hated Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining to such an extent that King created his own version with Tim Daly replacing Jack Nicholson, so he isn’t right about everything.