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Stephen KingMid-1980s, on a flight to London (King gives no exact date)

Stephen King's nightmare on the way to London

A writer falls asleep on a plane and dreams of a fan who holds her favourite author captive. The note he scribbled became Misery.

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The dream

Retold in our own words from the sources below, not quoted.

Stephen King has written that he fell asleep on a flight from the United States to England and dreamed about a popular writer who falls into the hands of a psychotic fan living on a remote farm. The fan is devoted to him and utterly dangerous.

When he woke he wrote the idea down on a cocktail napkin so he would not lose it. In London he kept going: he wrote the opening pages in a notebook at his hotel, at a desk that the concierge told him had belonged to Rudyard Kipling.

Where the story comes from

King tells the story in On Writing (2000), his memoir of the craft, where he uses it to show that a story often starts as a single situation rather than a plot. Misery was published in 1987 and filmed in 1990; Kathy Bates won an Academy Award for playing Annie Wilkes.

The dream as King tells it was darker than the published novel, and he says the book changed direction as he wrote it. The date of the flight is approximate; he gives the story, not the day.

How it has been read

Research

Nightmares about being trapped and at someone's mercy are among the commonest threatening dreams. Threat simulation theory reads them as rehearsal, while the continuity hypothesis looks for the waking worry. For a famous author whose fans wrote to him constantly, the worry is not hard to find.

History

King presents the dream as a seed, not a gift: the notebook, the hotel desk and the months of work are as much part of his story as the nap. It is one of the best documented modern examples of a novel that began in sleep.

Questions for your own dreams

  1. Have you ever dreamed of being trapped by someone who says they love you?
  2. Which relationships in your life feel like they ask more than you can give?
  3. Do you keep anything by your bed to catch an idea before it fades?

Symbols in this dream

Had a dream that stayed with you?

Tell us your dream

Sources

Every reading on this page comes from these works. Page references have not all been checked yet; those still waiting are marked.

  1. Stephen King (2000). On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. New York: Scribner.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: section on the origin of Misery (reference not yet checked)
    • Cited at: origin of Misery (reference not yet checked)

  2. Antti Revonsuo (2000). The reinterpretation of dreams: An evolutionary hypothesis of the function of dreaming. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23(6): 877-901.

    cited, not reproducedcontested theory

    • Cited at: threat simulation (reference not yet checked)

    Threat simulation theory: dreams as rehearsal for danger. Influential but contested; presented as one theory among several.

  3. G. William Domhoff (2003). The Scientific Study of Dreams: Neural Networks, Cognitive Development, and Content Analysis. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: continuity hypothesis (reference not yet checked)