10 Best Unfinished Stephen King Novels
1. The House On Value Street
This is one of most tantalizing of the unwritten works by King. This story began as a tale of Patty Hearst, the famously kidnapped granddaughter of William Randall Hearst, the newspaper tycoon who was the inspiration for Charles Foster Kane in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane.
While King could never find an angle that he could latch on to for the novel to work, it became a genesis or jumping off point for one of his greatest works - The Stand.
Donald David DeFreeze was the leader of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the group that kidnapped Hearst. In the story, King penned the phrase Donald DeFreeze is a dark man. While this element of the story, along with the rest of the novel, went nowhere, this idea stayed with King.
The general feeling of unhappiness in the titular house would also remain with King, feeding into the discontent that would fuel so much of the later novel.
DeFreeze would, in part, inspire the character of Randall Flagg, the 'walkin' dude', and the SLA would inspire the people who followed him. While this particular novel would not go anywhere further than a few early drafts, The House on Value Street inspired what many consider the single greatest entry in King's bibliography.