[ebj73]

A vaguely, but tangentially related fact, is that Stephen King actually considers the stories in his books as discovered, rather than invented. He talks about it in his book 'On Writing'. He considers the stories to be sort of preexisting things, and his job as a writer to unearth and discover them, rather than invent them. It's about his frame of mind while writing, I guess, but still.

[ineedasername]

It's a common theme among sculptors too: the shape is already in the stone, they just have to uncover it.

[DagAgren]

Is it? The only time I have ever heard this expressed is as a bad joke.

[ineedasername]

I know from a few general humanities classes I took that it was a common way of thinking about sculpting during the renaissance. And modern learning material on the topic presents it as a visualization aid. Let me be clear: It wasn't some mystical way of thinking there was, literally something that existed in the material. Again, it was more of an aid to thinking about the endeavor.

[wincent]

To me this sounds like an echo of the view that free will is an illusion. The stories that King is going to write are already predetermined by the laws of physics applied to the initial conditions of the system. In a sense, he's really just "along for the ride".

[Trasmatta]

We're all slaves to ka.

[RashadSaleh]

I doubt that he actually said that but I could be wrong.

[Trasmatta]

This is actually a big plot point in The Dark Tower books.

[ebj73]

He describes stories as 'relics'. Here's a direct quote from the book: “Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible.”

The book is pretty good, well worth the read if you're only slightly interested in the topic!