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Why Every Writer Should Read The Dark Tower

A blog post | 4/27/2026

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It is my wholehearted belief that if you do not feel some level of attachment to a character you have written that transcends the page, the keyboard, etc. you are doing something wrong as a writer. And the only reason that I feel like I can say this is because it is a mistake that I have made over and over again in my writing. 

I have written four novels at this point, with hundreds of characters living in their pages. And yet I feel that only a small handful of them are truly alive in the sense that they could be actual people living actual lives and having actual emotions. Captain Jak Cyford in The Ghost of Atrala is one of them. Alacey Durnhap and Coriander Emming are others. Perhaps Meadow in The Fell Hymn of an Emissary gets an honorable mention for being so moody all the time, but beyond that, I have found myself disappointed at best at my character work.

This realization shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, but it has. I realized that when I have an idea for a book, it comes as a package of concept art I see on Pinterest, plot archetypes from stories I admire, and unique and interesting world-building concepts à la the Cosmere (and dare I say, Sanderson’s infamous "Free-Fall Burrito World" iykyk.) To me, these concepts have been my primary motivators as a writer. I think of Roshar, with its dried tidal desert aesthetic. I think of the Ashlands of Morrowind, the Caustic Caverns underneath Sanctuary on the planet Pandora. These environments, these concepts, have been my primary motivator for writing for half of a decade at this point.

It hasn’t been until recently that I’ve realized that most of my characters have fallen flat. They have merely been a vessel for the plot to move forward—avatars wherewith to experience a world that I have built. 

I have failed to realize that it is only through good characters that readers would even want to experience these worlds that I have built. To journey alongside the plots I have written. 

As with most of my surges of inspiration, I was struck with this “character revelation” when I was reading. Specifically for this instance of kite, key and lightning: reading the seven book journey that is Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. Having now read through the series twice in the span of a year (4,000 some odd pages * 2 = a whole lot of following the Path of the Beam) I have so many thoughts that will be difficult to condense in a single blogpost, but I will do my best in this palaver, do you ken? 

*SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE DARK TOWER SERIES BELOW*

I was initially drawn to The Gunslinger, the first book in the series, because it was sold to me as a western fantasy, magic and gunslingers and lawless border towns, which I absolutely adore. My first novel, The Crystalline Rail, I wrote because I felt that we needed more western fantasies in the world. Who doesn't love a wizard with a big iron on his hip?

While The Gunslinger isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, it absolutely resonated for me. From the magnificent opening line “the Man in Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed” to the fated palaver in the place of bones, I was struck with a sense of wonder that few books have managed to make me feel. King had his hooks in me, and I knew that I was in for the ride of a lifetime—thinking that ahead of me lay nothing but rollicking tales of train robberies, dark wizards, and the quintessential “Weird West.”

So imagine my surprise and disappointment when book two, The Drawing of the Three, mostly revolved around Eddie Dean and Odetta Holmes—both from New York in our world—one a common junkie and the other a civil rights activist. I very nearly bounced off The Drawing of the Three. Though it was well-written, King’s prose and ability to craft tension out of nothing always shines through, I was endlessly frustrated by the distinct lack of western fantasy in my western fantasy. Roland gets a nice shootout at the end of book two, but it was in New York, not the lawless border towns of Midworld that I so craved.

Despite book three, The Waste Lands, remedying this by taking place almost entirely in Midworld and in these border towns—fighting giant robot bears and infiltrating a ruined post-apocalyptic metropolis blasting ZZ Top from loudspeakers, I still found that I had to take a break for a while. The hooks that so snared me in book one were nowhere to be found. I did not care for this ka-tet of random humans from New York. Eddie, Odetta (now Susannah, a stable melding of her two volatile personalities) and the boy Jake Chambers. They felt too mundane to be in a story as epic as Roland’s; they felt like dead weight to me. Why did this legendary Gunslinger have to tote around a woman in a wheelchair, a recovering drug addict, and a little boy, Mr. King? You’ve crafted this whacky, exciting fun-house mirror of the wild west and let it brim with magic and mystery, and you fill it with boring old humans from our world?

Then came Wizard and Glass, book 4. A tale set almost entirely in Midworld, a re-telling of an adventure from Roland’s youth. It was everything I wanted in books two and three, and it scratched the western fantasy itch just right. Roland’s companions were no longer average humans from New York, but rather fellow Gunslingers from Gilead. And they were strong! And brave! And… normal. They were just normal folks. I was shocked and a bit devastated to find that Roland’s ka-tet from his youth were nowhere near as interesting to me as Eddie, Susannah, and Jake. The New Yorkers from different times were so fully fleshed out, so fully realized, that even as I sit right now typing I feel that I could sit down with each of them and imagine how a conversation would play out. I know their mannerisms, their idiosyncrasies, their hopes, their dreams, how they would react to modern-day events, even how they would talk to me. I can see them as clear as day. 

I found myself relieved beyond measure when Roland’s 800-page tale from his youth was over and we were back around the fire with Eddie, Susannah, and Jake. It was only in being separated from them for the span of half a book that I realized that they were not just characters, but friends in a way that I had not experienced since my childhood—bonding with Ron and Hermione, and Annabeth and Grover. 

From book five until the end of book seven, I relished every moment I had with this ka-tet, and upon their breaking, I felt a pit in my stomach that lasted for weeks. 

So what changed my perspective? Was it merely time with a character? Yes, I think that that is a big part of it. It is hard to bond with a cast of characters in a novella or a short novel, no matter how well-written. Relationships with characters take time, and that is something not all authors have the parameters to work with due to format, style, etc. Some authors can do it, and I envy them. 

It took King seven books to tell the story of the Dark Tower. It took me four of those books to fall in love with the characters. How many readers bounced off before the end of Wizard and Glass? A lot, I’d wager. 

I am not one for condensing a lot of wandering thoughts into distinct “algorithm friendly” points, but if I had to take three lessons in character writing from the ka-tet in the Dark Tower it would be:

1. Establish time with characters you want readers to bond with. This is where series have an advantage over stand-alones. Characters are allowed more wiggle room, additional arcs in their broader tale, more struggles to overcome, more chances to win the audience over. One of my personal flaws as a writer that I am working to overcome is not assuming that the audience has the same understanding of the character as me. Give your readers chances to see why you like your character so much. Give them lots of chances.

2. Concept is not a substitute for substance. It doesn’t matter how “cool” your worldbuilding or character concepts are. You may have found the coolest concept art ever on Pinterest and thought “yeah, that’s my main character!” But without grounding traits and relatable struggles, wants, desires, etc., no one is going to care how cool they are. You can replace “coolness” with any other descriptor. No one cares how menacing your villain is in concept if they are lacking in substance. (I’m looking at you, Crimson King. Sorry bro, but you were the worst part of this series.)

3. Characters over plot. Characters over world. Maybe this one is just for me—but I tend to focus far too much on grand overarching plots in interesting settings, and use characters like pieces on a game board to move the plot forward. I am working towards inverting this, and instead having characters be the primary focus and the world I have built being just a supporting cast member. By the end of the Dark Tower I cared more about Roland himself, about Eddie, Susannah, and Jake than I cared about actually reaching the Dark Tower. (Almost like that's entirely the point? Wink wink, nudge nudge.) 

The final point I want to bring up, and the primary reason I wanted to even write this post in the first place, was the transcendent experience I had when reading book six, The Song of Susannah. Prior to book six, Stephen King had hinted that he himself would appear as a character in the series. Father Callahan from Salem’s Lot becomes a member of the ka-tet, and he finds the actual Salem’s Lot book in a book store, amazed to see that it is about himself. That this Stephen King fellow had written a book about his lived experience. From that point, it is slowly revealed to the main characters that their story is still being told, and that King is receiving the story from someplace mystical and writing it down. His “inspiration” for the Dark Tower books is coming to him from beyond this world. How romantic is that as a writer, eh? The idea that you are not inventing the world, characters, and story you are writing, but rather transcribing it from the vast clouds of the Aether. What a concept!

At first, I was a little on the fence about this development. It felt a bit like a case of ego, writing yourself into the story. Having characters depend upon you as a plot point. Very strange, very abnormal, but very, very King.

And then Roland and Eddie show up at Stephen’s door. Stephen King meets Roland face-to-face. He meets Stephen at a time in Stephen’s life when he had all but abandoned the world of the Dark Tower - citing it as too complex, saying that he had other priorities, that he didn’t know where Roland’s story was supposed to go, etc. But Roland told him that he needed to keep writing. King obliged and said that he would try. King was very clear that writing the Dark Tower was incredibly difficult for him. That the idea of somehow bringing the odyssey to a close seemed all but impossible. How could he satisfactorily close out the tale that he had started so many decades previous?

More happens during their palaver, of course, but that is the gist of it. It may not seem like much, but I legitimately cried when I read those passages. I saw myself, and imagined all of the stories in my head, the characters who have stories to tell, meeting me face-to-face and begging me to keep telling their story lest they fade.

Every writer needs to feel that. I repeat - every writer needs to feel that. 

This is not to mention that Jake Chambers literally saves King’s life later on in the tale. In real life, our world, the Keystone World if you will, Stephen King was hit by a car on June 19th 1999. In real life, he miraculously didn't die, and instead suffered a lengthy hospital stay and a painful recovery. In the Dark Tower, he was pushed out of the way at the last moment by Jake Chambers. Jake traded his life for King’s, so that he could continue writing. 

To some this might seem cliché and forced, but dear God in heaven, I have never felt such beautiful fourth-wall breaking recursion in a book—I didn't know such a feeling could exist. A character that you had written, who had spent decades in your head, trading their life for yours so that you would keep telling their story.

It’s just so beautiful, man. 

I don’t have any sort of grand conclusion here, I just want to tell you all to keep writing. If you haven’t started writing, start writing. If you’re scared of AI removing your value as an author, keep writing. As Brandon Sanderson said in a recent keynote about the hidden cost of AI art, “YOU ARE THE ART.” The end product is not the art. The process of becoming, the process of telling, the process of growing...

That is the art. 

Characters coming to life in the pages that you painstakingly craft.

That is the art.

It may take years, decades even, but your art is worth sharing, your stories are worth telling, your characters are worth meeting face-to-face. They want to live. Let them!

-DBS

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