Turning the thumbscrews tighter : suspense across versions in Stephen King’s IT

How does a novelist create and increase suspense? How is suspense optimized across multiple drafts and proofs, and what is the role of editors and proofreaders in this? These are the research questions this dissertation aims to answer. Stephen King’s IT (1986), a classic suspense novel, serves as the case study. The methodology combines genetic criticism, the study of how literary texts come into being, with a narratological analysis that focusses on pace, characterization, and focalization. King wrote three drafts of IT: the first on an electronic typewriter and the second and third on a personal computer. He sent two hard copies of the third draft, along with his floppy disks, to his publisher. Most of the editing was done on one of the hard copies, and then continued on his set of proof pages. Patterns can be discovered in King’s revisions of the suspenseful scenes, which reveal the importance King identified in establishing a strong connection between the reader and the character in danger: the pace of the chapters is lowered by giving more attention to the sensory experiences, the character traits, the direct speech and the thoughts and emotions of the focalizing characters. Adding such elements (often at the smallest textual level) delays the outcome of the episode in a way that does not feel digressive or retardatory—in fact, it adds to the reader’s emotional involvement with the character, which also has a favorable effect on sustaining interest to the end of the novel. Contrary to what you might expect, King’s revisions are not meant to appeal to his readers’ fear of the monster, but to their concern for the people in danger. This is entirely in keeping with King’s statement in an interview in 1980 that “you don’t get scared of monsters, you get scared of people.” The advice of Chuck Verrill, King’s editor, while certainly not absent, played virtually no role in optimizing the suspense scenes in IT, further confirming King’s status as a “master of suspense.”