8 Alternative Endings To Stephen King Novels That Were Originally Planned

In his memoir On Writing, King mentioned that his 1987 novel Misery nearly had a very different and much more gruesome ending.

To recap, Misery follows novelist Paul Sheldon who is taken in by an obsessive fan after a car crash who, displeased with his change in genre and killing off her favorite character, physically and psychologically tortures him into writing a new novel that will revive said character and course-correct the perceived failings of his new output. When she learns of his escape attempts, she punishes him but cutting off his foot and thumb and leaving him wheelchair-bound. By the end, Paul manages to fight back and eventually free himself of his tormentor.

King pre-plotted the book's story in advance. Initially only intending it to 30,000 words (it ended up being four times that length) and under the working title The Annie Wilkes Edition, King's originally ending saw the titular Annie kill and skin her captive, feed his remains to her pigs, and then bind the book he's been forced to write in his own skin. King said of that ending;

"...it would have made a pretty good story (not such a good novel, however; no one likes to root for a guy over the course of three hundred pages only to discover that between chapters sixteen and seventeen the pig ate him), but that wasn't the way things eventually went. Paul Sheldon turned out to be a good deal more resourceful than I initially thought, and his efforts to play Sheherezade and save his life gave me a chance to say some things about the redemptive power of writing that I had long felt but never articulated."