What Stephen King Teaches Us About Communication, Writing & Success - Part 2

Part 2 & Conclusion...Great communication rarely happens on the first draft. In this episode of the How to Talk to Humans podcast, communication expert Larry Wilson explores the writing habits and success of bestselling author Stephen King to reveal powerful lessons about editing, refining, and improving your message. Whether you're writing a speech, preparing a presentation, selling an idea, or simply trying to communicate more effectively, Larry explains why rewriting, revising, and continuous improvement are essential to success. Discover how Stephen King's approach to writing can help you become a better communicator, build stronger connections, and achieve greater results in business and everyday life.

Hosted by Larry Wilson
Produced by: Verbal Ninja Productions
Producer: R. Scott Edwards
Sponsored by: The Wilson Method

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Transcript

Larry Wilson 0:02

Hi, this is Larry Wilson, and this is How to Talk to Humans. This is the podcast that shows you how to improve your communication skills. Are you looking to get a better job? Are you looking to find a relationship? Are you trying to do things in your life that have frustrated you and eluded you so far? I can show you so easily how to change that. Now, I can only do it with humans. If you're looking to deal with vampires or zombies extraterrestrials, this is not the show for you. But if you're really looking to improve your communication skills, I can show you what I've learned for 40 years in the show business working with the biggest celebrities and superstars in the world, and their secrets are unbelievable. What I'm going to be teaching you during the course of this podcast every week are tools that you can use to communicate toward success. King's first successful novel was Carrie, which was made into a hugely successful movie, of course. You know, starring Sissy Spacek made her into a big star. Brian De Palma was a director, kind of kind of brought him into the mainstream, made him hugely successful. And uh Carolyn Bix was saying she was surprised that in one of the first drafts, uh the story of Carrie, if you don't know it, it's very simple. It's just sort of an outcast girl in high school who's sort of a nobody, and uh she seems to have some telekinetic powers. She's not even sure if that's what they really are, and she doesn't know how to control them. And we, the reader, realize oh, when she gets upset about something, she's able to affect things that are around her. Anyway, some cruel teenagers, as teenagers can be, uh decide to play a terrible prank on her, and it goes horribly awry and stimulates her telekinetic powers in revenge. It's very scary. Uh, but it's he it's about, you know, teenagers. Uh a lot of King's stuff is about young people. I think some of his most powerful characters, Danny, the main character in The Shining, also made into a hugely successful movie, uh, is a little boy, eight, nine, ten years old. The main characters in Salem's Law are kids ranging from eight to thirteen. Um, Carrie, she's I don't know, 15, 16, I guess. Um, you know, this again, hugely successful novel. Oh, suddenly I can't think of what the name of uh the book was or the movie, but you know, it's with this hideous clown who's hiding in the sewers and looks at kids from the uh sewer runoff under the street. Um sorry, I can't think of the name of the book. But a lot of his books are about kids, and I think uh it may reflect uh King's feelings uh when he was a kid. And in fact, in some of the books, the kids reflect on how uh adults don't believe them when they say, oh, there's a boogeyman under the bed or whatever it is. And of course, in King's stories, we see there really is a boogeyman. There is a horrible boogeyman. So um, but in Carrie, it's really just about those feelings of teenage alienation. But Carolyn Bix has looking through the original draft of Carrie, she uh uh she undergoes all these incredibly weird physical things where she grows horns and uh horrifying her skull kind of elongates, and you know, one way of describing it, of course, I guess is uh physically manifests what she feels inside. And what's interesting is that Carolyn Bix, the author of this book, immediately realizes oh, nobody can relate to that. And of course, whether it was an editor who said to King, I don't think so. I think he figured out on his own, that he didn't need to have these physical manifestations happen. He just needed to write about what she was feeling. And when he does that, every young person or person, anybody who remembers being young now can identify with her, now can empathize with Carrie. Doesn't mean we're prepared to do some of the horrible things she does, but the things are also sort of presented as being out of her control, that these powers she has are unleashed because of something uh dreadful and cruel and embarrassing that these other kids do for no reason except that teenagers sometimes can be that way. So uh Karen Bix points out how uh brilliant it is that he saw that and changed it. And well, I said I'm gonna I'm gonna include a link in the uh in the uh replay notes so that you can look at this article because it's it's fascinating. It is truly fascinating. Um and she also feels like um she kind of feels like the Vietnam era when King was writing a lot of stuff. Some of the feelings people had about that era King has incorporated, it doesn't reference Vietnam, but the feelings about that are infused some of the word. And uh I thought one of the most interesting parts was uh in the book the book The Shining, which is I think much scarier than the movie, kind of makes sense because some of the things he describes we're picturing in our head. Anytime you can get people to imagine something, they're gonna do a much better job than anything you could write or show them. Great directors can sometimes show incredibly scary things. Uh incredibly scary things. And I think uh Stanley Kubrick does that in the movie version of uh The Shining, but the book is a towering achievement and really terrifying. And uh there's a scene where the little boy, I keep saying, I don't know how six years old, maybe six, he and his parents, his father takes a job as a caretaker in this hotel in Rockies in Colorado, because the hotel is snowed in every winter. It doesn't have any customers. So they have to hire a caretaker just to make sure the place, you know, is still standing in the spring when they open for spring and summer. And terrible things happen. That it holds the terrible energy or vibrations of horrific things that have taken place there. It's uh at one point, this little kid, Danny, you know, has free reign, is wanders loose in the place, and he sees a lot of things. Now, we were told that he has some kind of psychic ability, or he's sensitive to certain energy or things, but he sees things that adults are not seeing. And the way kids are, and I think this is true, it doesn't even occur to him to think, oh, that's weird or that's impossible, because kids are quick to believe, oh, yeah, it's entirely possible. And the one thing that he keeps being warned about by some of his psychic visions, and then by he makes a friend with a man who has similar psychic abilities, says, Whatever you do, do not go into room 217. He won't tell him why, just says, Whatever you do, do not so of course you know he's at some point he's gonna go into 217. And what he sees in 217 is horrific. Now I won't spoil this by telling you, but what uh King uh shares with uh Catherine Biggs is that he either he'd outlined things or he knew this scene was coming up where uh when Danny opens the door, it's um I guess he goes oh, he can hear the shower going in the bathroom. And he's terrified and wants to leave, but can't make himself leave. He wants to see what's in the tub, and when he goes in, there's something in the tub, but the curtain is drawn, and you know, this is scary just talking about it here. But uh she says that King uh said in an interview, he said when he was rewriting, and that's the word he uses, he said he knew that he was gonna come to that scene with the tub. And as he got closer to that point, he said, I would say to myself, eight days to the tub. Then six days to the tub. And then one day it was the tub today. When I went down to the typewriter that day, I felt frightened, and my heart was beating too fast. What does this mean? Surely you know what it means. What it means is that he's writing about things that he genuinely feels. And God, what a great place to be. It doesn't mean that King thinks these fantasy books he writes are real. I don't think he does. But he understands that when he's telling a story, he can make that story real by writing about real feelings. Am I hitting this too hard for you? Writing about things that really mean something to you. It could be a work of fiction, could be a work of nonfiction, it could be something for your business, it could be your story. This is you know, the Larry Wilson story. I grew up here, I want to do this, this is what happened, and then you know, I I won't go into a big deal about this, but I'll tell you this much. I always, since I was really small, was of course in love with film. And I wanted to make films when I grew up. And I went to the University of California and I studied film and television production and made films there. And when I graduated, as I say, it's funny. Uh I certainly don't want anyone to feel sorry for me. It just when I graduated, everybody had just graduated from film school. And I grew up in Los Angeles. I knew a lot of people, didn't matter. Everyone I knew was scrambling trying to find work, any kind of work in the filmmaking business. And people I know who are much more talented than I was as filmmakers were taking terrible jobs for no pay. And I thought, this is crazy. How can you support yourself on no pay? And it's not like they had a clever plan, they just they want to do anything. I guess they thought if I my name is in there or someone knows me, they may, if they see I'm a hard work, I don't know what they thought, but I thought I can't do that. And I managed to get a job on a low budget, very, very low, some people might argue, no budget film, uh as a sound recorder, which is usually a very high-paying job if you're good at it. And I was good at it, but I wasn't getting high pay. But I was being paid $175 a week, six days a week, 18 hours a day, and I felt like I was on top of the world because I had all these friends who weren't getting paid anything. And after a few weeks, I was like a zombie because I was getting no sleep, and some of the actors on this uh low-budget film had no real training, and so uh I'm not criticizing their acting ability, but they could not deliver a consistent performance. Every time they would do a take, it would be different. And as a sound recorder, I was it's probably totally different in jazz, but in those days, I was using a NAGRA 4 recorder, and I had to try to adjust the levels of recording so that I could get the optimum sound. And I remember one time, really politely, I said to the leading lady, I said, you know, uh, the reason I ask you to give me a level before we shoot the scenes, I'm trying to get an idea of how loud or soft you're gonna be. And she said, Well, I can't. And I thought, ugh. And she said, Do you think Meryl Streep does the exact same performance every take? And I foolishly said, Yeah, I do. Because Meryl Streep is clearly, besides being enormously talented, is also highly trained. She's professional. So I've met a number of people, uh, I've become really good friends with a number of people who have incredible acting ability. They could do the exact same performance 30 takes in a row. Now, they may play certain emotions differently, their facial affect, all these things may be different, but by God, it'll sound the same. This has been Larry Wilson. I want to thank you for spending this time with me, and I hope you found this information useful. If you're looking for more, you can find it at thewilsonmethod.com. There's a ton of stuff there. If you want, you can even speak to me because I'm human. Send me an email at info at WilsonMethod.com because I read every single one. I hope that you'll join us next week in this continuing journey. And you'll be with me for the next episode of How to Talk to You're the East.