Stephen King Recalls Nearly Quitting Carrie While Teaching in Maine
Stephen King has described how a struggling Maine English teacher in 1972 began a story about a bullied, telekinetic teenager for a skin magazine. The novel became Carrie, and its 1976 film adaptation launched a pipeline of more than 60 King screen adaptations.
Author Stephen King, now one of the best-selling writers in horror, recalled in a new interview how he began Carrie in 1972 as a struggling English teacher in Maine, and why he nearly gave up on it. The story of how Stephen King threw Carrie in the trash and then saw it change everything has returned as the novel marks 50 years since its film adaptation.
King was teaching teenagers at Hampden Academy by day. At night he wrote short stories and quick tales of terror for lower-tier skin magazines such as Cavalier and Adam. He had a wife, two small children and a growing stack of bills.
The pay was thin. "Two hundred dollars," King said of his typical fee at the time. "Once in a while, it was $500. That was a huge payday. That bought a lot of groceries." The family did not even have a telephone.
Where the idea came from
The story centered on a painfully awkward teenage girl, bullied by classmates and terrorized at home by her religiously fanatical mother. When she discovers she has telekinetic powers, she finally has a way to strike back. Her name was Carrie White.
King drew the opening image from his years as a school janitor. Cleaning the girls' locker room, he noticed the sanitary napkin dispensers on the walls. He began imagining a girl having her first period in the shower, with no idea what was happening, while classmates mocked her.
He combined that with his interest in telekinesis and his memories of two girls he knew growing up who were treated as social pariahs. "I wasn't bullied," King said. "I think that every kid feels a little bit bullied in school, but I had less of it than others."
The girls had it worse. "They were savagely bullied about their clothes, about their hair, just about their lack of social graces," he said.
What stayed with him was how rigid the roles were. "If they tried to wear new clothes or something like that after Christmas, they were bullied twice as hard," King said. "Nobody wanted to let them out of the box."
A quick sale that became something else
King first saw the idea as another fast sale to Cavalier, which he called his "go-to magazine" at the time. He pictured a girl who gets her first period, turns out to be telekinetic and gets back at her tormentors.
Problems showed up almost immediately. He doubted he knew enough about the female experience to make the opening believable. "I didn't know anything about girls' locker rooms," he said, laughing.
Fifty years of Carrie
The book would reshape his career. The 1976 film turned Sissy Spacek into a star, gave director Brian De Palma his first box office hit and crashed the Oscars, something horror films rarely manage.
It also started a long pipeline. King's stories have been adapted for the screen more than 60 times. The legacy now includes several remakes, a Broadway musical and a new Prime Video series.
