Ask A Genius 1320: Writing Murder In Media Res, Stephen King, and Storytelling
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/03/25
Rick Rosner: So, off-camera, I was saying, “Have you ever heard of the principle in media res?” I’m probably pronouncing it wrong, but it means to start in the middle of the action.
The way it usually works is that you’re writing a story—a book, a screenplay—and then someone who knows better than you looks at it and says, Cut off the first chapter. You can move that chapter somewhere else or leave it out entirely. Start in the middle of the action—because that’s the exciting part.
Readers and viewers are sophisticated. They don’t need a long build-up. They can infer how the story got to the action; if they can’t, they’ll at least be intrigued enough to keep reading to figure it out. So, that’s what I’m doing with my novel.
It starts with what is more or less a murder—committed by the main character. However, the main character lacks proper murder tools and struggles. He also hates what he’s doing.
At first, he has a choice—to murder or not. But once he starts, the situation spirals past the point of no return. Sure, he could stop at that point, and the victim might survive—but that wouldn’t be good either. Now, he regrets it, but he has to finish.
The entire thing takes hours—including waiting in the dark and lying in wait. As I was writing it, I kept thinking about Stephen King.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Have you read much Stephen King?
Rosner: A long time ago. He writes long books—rich in detail, and usually, the details are accurate. So, if you write in that style, action sequences don’t happen in a few sentences. They take pages and pages of meticulous, step-by-step writing. I’ve probably spent too many words on it already.
If the book ever gets edited for publication, someone will say, yes, you spent too many pages on this murder scene. But right now, I’m deep in it.
Stephen King wrote an entire book, Gerald’s Game, which they turned into a movie— with Ashley Judd and the guy from Jurassic Park. It’s about a married couple who go away for a weekend, and during a sex game, the husband handcuffs the wife to a sturdy bed. Then, he has a fatal heart attack.
That’s the setup.
After that, the entire book—hundreds of pages—is about her trying to escape before she dies of dehydration.
That’s a huge amount of writing spent on one problem: How do you get out of handcuffs when no one’s coming to save you?
Rosner: That’s a lot of pages to spend on a woman tied to a bed. This murder scene I’m working on also takes place in a bed. It’s got logistical challenges—things that need to be worked out step-by-step. I’ll see how it plays once I finish the rest of the book.
Jacobsen: And you’ve got the rest of the book ahead of you.
Rosner: Another thing. After everything—or at least most—is done, the central character steps out of the bedroom and into the night. For the first time, he sees a ton of stars. This takes place in a fancy house near Mulholland Drive, the crest that divides northern Los Angeles from southern Los Angeles—the valley on one side, the city on the other. I’m guessing I should probably drive up there myself to check, but I assume that with fewer houses and higher up, there’s less light pollution, so you’d be able to see more stars.
When he sees them, he has a set of epiphanies about the nature of the universe—epiphanies that align with IC (Information Cosmology) within the book. That’s how this character starts thinking about IC. Historically, Darwin had The Voyage of the Beagle to start him thinking about evolution. This character has murder as his precipitating event.
Which— is fun. Not for the dead person, obviously, but for everyone else. I’m trying to make the book all candy. Every sentence should be engaging. Nothing should feel like a slog, even though I’ve spent too many pages on a murder. But I want every paragraph, every sentence, to have something that makes it worth reading. Not in an overly jokey or goofy way, but in a way where the reader doesn’t have to trudge through a bunch of filler to get to something they care about.
I’ve probably not succeeded, but I want to get closer to it. Because people don’t have time anymore. No one has the attention span for a slog.
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