Stephen King's Most Outrageous Literary Experiments

1. The Green Mile Serial

Just as styles of writing fade in and out over time, so do styles of publishing. In 1996, Stephen King successfully revived an outmoded form of publishing in the modern day and age: serial novel publishing. Similar to Charles Dickens, who would publish installments of his novels in newspapers and magazines, King announced that a six-part book would come out over the span of a half-year, one booklet per month. It helped that the story of a doomed man on death row captivated readers and left them salivating for the next month's section. It helped even more that The Green Mile was later turned into a blockbuster starring Tom Hanks (although they didn't release the movie in six parts, for some reason).

2. The Plant

It was a gutsy move that would pit King against the publishing world - his bread and butter: in 2000, he decided to use the increasing accessibility and popularity of the internet as the publication ground for his novella "The Plant". In bypassing the print publishers, King hoped to lead the way for a future generation of successful online novelists. In practice, however, it failed miserably. By delivering the tale in installments (he asked for a $1/installment honor system fee), King was asking readers to buy a product that (a) wasn't finished yet, (b) had no reviews on or offline to give them advance knowledge of the work, and (c) was posted in a medium where a mass majority thought that such information should be free, period. Six installments were posted, then King quietly abandoned the attempt.

3. Dollar Babies

King's become notorious for being generally okay with filmmakers taking his work and creating a tortured version on screen. Many people assume he's in it for the money - and undoubtedly, he does make a mint off of some of his screen rights - but a lesser-known fact about King is that he's practically given away movie rights to his works to filmmakers that couldn't afford them. Often, he'd just ask for a $1 payment, coining the term "Dollar Baby". Many Dollar Babies have been made on a shoestring budget by up-and-coming directors, including Frank Darabont (whose 1983 "The Woman in the Room" Dollar Baby led in to The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile projects), and aren't seen by the majority of the movie-going public.

4. Richard Bachman

In 1977, after the raging success of Carrie, Stephen King started to ask himself the question, "Are people buying these books now based on my name alone?" (answer: probably) With a follow-up: "Would people read and appreciate my writing if separated from my name?" (answer: yes). As some writers before him, King created a pseudonym - a guy named Richard Bachman - and spent a good half-decade writing novellas and novels under his name, alongside of his "Stephen King" brand name. Mr. Bachman even had a jacket photo and a wife, which is pretty good for an imaginary dude. Bachman's books did decent sales, nothing on the same level of King's other books, but certainly well enough to prove that his writing wasn't just a fluke based on one hit novel. It took a bookstore clerk with enough suspicions about a possible Bachman-King connection to dig through Library of Congress publishing records and verify that Bachman was the same guy as King. Although Bachman would be killed off by "cancer of the pseudonym", he would return nonetheless.

5. The Regulators / Desperation

As 1996 rolled around, Stephen King was getting frisky enough to take on a fairly bold publicity stunt - to simultaneously release two novels, both interconnected, but one written by King and one by his alter-ego Bachman (published post-humously, natch). Strangely enough, King made no effort to state that he was Bachman or wrote the book, however the twinning of the novels was evident. Both novels contained many of the same characters (albeit in different roles), shared other literary elements, and even formed a complete mureal when the jacket covers were put side-by-side. The reading public saw through the stunt, of course, and although The Regulators ("Bachman's" book) was bought in sufficient numbers to make it a best-seller, Desperation was by far and away the more popular novel.

6. Putting Himself In The Dark Tower

No matter what else he may accomplish in his life, the seven volume Dark Tower series will forever be King's magnum opus. A sweeping epic tale, The Dark Tower cross-blended the western, horror, adventure and fantasy genres into a unique account of a gunslinger moving through a world that's pretty much ended, in search of the lynchpin of the universe. Stephen King began writing the first book in the series in 1970; book VII was finally released in 2004. The wait between books was so long that many people feared he'd never finish the series (in fact, he worried the same thing after he got hit by a truck). By the time the final book came out, King wove dozens of his previous works into the series -- and finally decided to weave himself in as well. Hailed as either "cool" or "insane", King's placement of himself as an actual character in the Dark Tower universe was either meta brilliant or sheer hubris, depending on your perspective. Still, not every author has the stones to break one of the cardinal rules of fiction, eh?

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