Hello. I am an old lady from California. I wanted to send a comment to Mr. King about his introduction to The Shining, wherein he describes his fulfilled desire to create a bad-guy who is three-dimensional. That is a noble goal; one which he succeeded at reaching. I think in his introduction he is perhaps trying to say that most real villains are not two-dimensional; that there are somewhat valid reasons why they do the awful things that make them fit into the villain category. In some cases that is certainly true, however . . . I have met several villains in my life and I have to say that the worst one I encountered was one-dimensional (except, of course, for his 3-D body). The man kidnapped me and held me prisoner for two months and I got to know him inside and out. He was utterly lacking in depth. There was no psychological reason for him to be doing what he was doing to me, other than perhaps the fact that he was a sadistic psychopath, which I believe comes solely from brain chemistry. I guess what I want here is to defend myself (Mr. King indicated that shallow characters are the product of bad writing) because I have written a supernatural horror novel in which the chief villain is based on this freak (and also an old friend of mine: an incredibly shallow sociopath who told me how much he enjoyed cutting the throats of Vietcong soldiers). Mr. King is a much better writer than I; that's for certain. I have to write about what I know, while Mr. King's imagination is much more fertile and allows him to create completely fictional situations which, while dark, have glimmers of light. But despite what Mr. King has to say about flat characters, I think saying that they are always a sign of mediocrity is perhaps not entirely correct. Still--he is a much better writer than I. I am not here to criticize; simply to disagree.
