The Talisman - Writing Process

[Tom]

First time posting a topic here:

Does anyone know what the writing process was like for The Talisman and subsequently Black House? I've always been fascinated by collaborations. Did the authors alternate chapters or settings? Or did the two just come up with the basic plot-line together and one did the brunt of the writing?

I'm sure there's been something written on the topic before, but I can't seem to find it.

[Squire]

With The Talisman, they wrote the novel sequentially, each writing a section and then exchanging it electronically (by the old telephone modems). They never bothered to change each other's work until it was finished, each copy editing the whole. It apparently worked out pretty smoothly for them.

The above is from Stephen King: The Art of Darkness by Douglas E. Winter.

I'm not sure about Black House, but it reads like Straub wrote the first 100 pages and King wrote the rest. It doesn't flow as well as the first novel.

[Randy]

Also, in Black House, it was Peter Straub that suggested King put in elements of the dark tower series, which may have a lot to do with Squire's previous comment.

[Squire]

Sort of, but the first 100 pages are so stylistically different from the next 650 that there's not other explanation. Straub may have made suggestions for those pages, but King wrote them.

[Becky]

Squire wrote: "I'm not sure about Black House, but it reads like Straub wrote the first 100 pages and King wrote the rest. It doesn't flow as well as the first novel."

If that's the case, then it's perhaps the only 100 straight pages of Straub's writing that doesn't make me hate reading.

I'd never read anything of Straub's prior to having read The Talisman or Black House, and had read both several times before I did try Straub. After that I can kinda see his influence, but I mostly try to forget about it.