Is Stephen King mindfully avoiding the Biblical three days? The storm that seemed to signal the beginning of it all was only four days ago. Perhaps the story takes longer to read than the action described within, meaning the pace has been slowed down for us.Īs I write this, it is a quarter to one in the morning, July the twenty-third. Perhaps isochronal (it takes about as long to read the story as it would take to play out in real life). Even someone as open about his writing process as Stephen King is can’t be expected to keep perfect track of his inspirations. No doubt Stephen King was inspired by various things at various times. The storm also really happened, including the water tornado. He wondered what if giant bugs started to fly into the glass. He was in a supermarket with his wife and saw the whole front of the market was plate glass. In a nightline interview King said he was blocked after writing The Stand.He wrote half the story that night, the rest the following week. He was looking for hotdog buns when “My muse suddenly shat on my head.” The image of the prehistoric bird came first. He was in a supermarket with his son Joe and wondered what would happen if a supernatural story happened in that space.

King tells two different stories about his inspiration for “The Mist”: Stephen King himself says he was going for something akin to an episode of The Twilight Zone. “The Mist” is often compared to Lord of the Flies. As these things go, it took another 27 years for the film release. Film director Darabont read it first in this anthology around this time, and immediately thought it would make a great film. A version of “The Mist” first appeared in a 1980 anthology of horror stories. Stephen King was near the beginning of his career, and publishers weren’t keen to publish absolutely everything he came out with, so he had to let this one sit awhile. Though this is a 1980s story, “The Mist” was first written in 1976. There will inevitably be some conflation of those two slightly different stories below, so I’m going to talk about both without worrying about mixing them up. I’ve seen the 2007 film numerous times but only just read the novella. Or maybe you’ve never encountered Stephen King’s Mist story before in your entire life, and you don’t scream to family members, “SOMETHING IN THE MIST TOOK JOHN LEE!” whenever fog descends. This popular science fiction horror contains plenty for discussion and analysis. You may have even studied “The Mist” in literature class - the tertiary level equivalent of Lord of the Flies.

The fog book stephen king