How Might the Story Go? Trivia Quiz

Answer: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

It's not to say that Jack Torrance (portrayed by Jack Nicholson in the Kubrick film adaptation) wasn't already a damaged individual, but the Overlook Hotel, situated in the Colorado Rockies, added gasoline to the fire. In both the book and the film, Torrance takes on the job of winter caretaker of the old hotel and brings his wife and young son along for the season, intending to use the opportunity to write his novel, but the isolation and the supernatural powers within press a thumb to the scale of Torrance's psyche (and alcoholism).

All of it seems somewhat inevitable once he starts drinking again. When Wendy, his wife, finds that he's been sitting at the typewriter writing "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", over and over again on reams of paper, it's already too late to come back from the brink. So the story goes that he freezes to death in the hedge maze; the Overlook Hotel explodes when Jack strikes the boiler with an axe at the end of the original book.

Answer: Paperback Writer

"Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?
It took me years to write, will you take a look?
It's based on a novel by a man named Lear
And I need a job
So I wanna be a paperback writer
Paperback writer"

Written by Paul McCartney, "Paperback Writer" didn't appear on a normal album but was released as a single during the same time period as "Revolver" in 1966. The goal with this track, according to McCartney, was to write a song that wasn't about love. Instead, he wrote about an aspiring author trying to get their work published.

The actual story they describe comes in the second verse:

"It's a dirty story of a dirty man
And his clinging wife doesn't understand
His son is working for the Daily Mail
It's a steady job
But he wants to be a paperback writer"

Answer: Bilbo Baggins

J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit", first published in 1937, recounted the fantastical tale of Bilbo Baggins and the group of dwarves he set out with across Middle-earth, inevitably encountering and fighting a dragon named Smaug who'd taken their home. At the end of the tale, it's revealed that Bilbo wrote of his adventure in a book he subsequently titled 'There and Back Again', a somewhat on-the-nose (and simplified) summary of the events therein, as Bilbo left his home in Hobbiton, trekked out, and returned with his newfound wisdom, courage, and treasures.

Tolkien subtitled his own book "There and Back Again" as well and, then, followed it up with "The Lord of the Rings", another there-and-back story, but this time following Bilbo's nephew, Frodo.

Answer: Stolen from other people

Gilderoy Lockhart is a character who first appeared in "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets". Presented as a famous author known for his numerous books, all about events faced in his own life, he would take on the role as the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts, a position left vacant after Professor Quirrell was outed as a vessel for Lord Voldemort the previous year.

As the story seems to go, none of Lockhart's stories were particularly true... at least not for him. He's revealed to be a fraud when Harry and Ron make their way into the Chamber of Secrets and he attempts to steal the credit, revealing that he had a history of finding people who'd actually done interesting things, afflicted them with an amnesia spell, and written as though he'd done those things. He's hit with his own spell when he inadvertently uses Ron's broken wand.

Lockhart was portrayed by Kenneth Branagh in the film series.

Answer: Misery's Return

Paul Sheldon is headed out from a meeting about his tenth and final 'Misery' book when he accidentally crashes his car in the Rockies, inevitably waking up in the care of local woman (and big fan) Annie Wilkes. Unable to move from his bed, he ends up resting until it's revealed that he planned on killing off Misery during childbirth in the last story, a move that pushes Wilkes over the edge as she forces him to write a new book that brings her back and keeps the story going.

So it goes that Sheldon only stays alive as long as he keeps Misery alive, and as he nears the end of the new final book and comes closer to Wilke's decision to commit murder-suicide, he has to make choices to keep himself safe. In the film, he finishes the manuscript, but sets it on fire to distract Annie and smash a typewriter on her head.

"Misery" originally released as a book in 1987. The subsequent adaptation (releasing in 1990) resulted in a Best Actress Oscar win for Kathy Bates.

Answer: Buys her a new diary

Unlucky in love and upset with her place in life, Bridget Jones starts her film (and the original book) with the New Year's Resolution to keep a diary, chronicling her days and attempting to turn her life around with substantial changes. It's a tumultuous year, ultimately, in which she ends up in (and out of) a relationship with her boss, Daniel Cleaver, leaves that workplace and gets the job she wants, and goes about her life in London with her friends.

By the end of the story, in true Jane Austen fashion, Bridget finds that the man she actually wants to be with, Mark Darcy, actually does love her back. When all of this comes together after Christmas, he happens to stumble across her diary and, in a climactic scene, Bridget chases him through the snowy London streets in her underwear... only to find that he's not mad about what she's written about him. Instead he's bought her a new diary so she can start fresh.

"Bridget Jones' Diary" proved a bestseller for Helen Fielding upon its first run in 1996. The movie adaptation, released in 2001, resulted in an Oscar nomination for Renee Zellweger and a handful of sequels (also starring Colin Firth and Hugh Grant).

Answer: The Orchid Thief

Although an original story, "Adaptation" is a bit surreal in how it approaches its own plot, about a screenwriter who can't seem to pull a story out of the real-life non-fiction book "The Orchid Thief" (by Susan Orlean), which itself is about rare orchid poaching in South Florida. Where "Adaptation" really takes things off the rails is when screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, played by Nicolas Cage, gets himself involved in writing a script based on the book, attempting to make it a straight-forward story about flowers. Instead, he gets himself into a plot that involves Orlean (played by Streep), his own twin brother, orchid thief John Laroche, and a drug made from the plant that alters the mind.

The script is eventually finished, but the plot deviates so far from the adapted material that it's unrecognizable. Many main characters end up dead or in jail with only Kaufman being able to walk away from the incident.

In real life, Kaufman (and, interestingly, his fictional twin brother) would be nominated for the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, but would lose to Ronald Harwood for "The Pianist".

Answer: Carrie Bradshaw

In real life, Candace Bushnell only wrote articles for "The New York Observer" for a few years, but the success of those op-eds led to her publishing the works in the 1996 book "Sex and the City", and that was created as a hit HBO show by Darren Star which subsequently ran for six seasons starting in 1998.

Although the show changed some of the characters' jobs and details, it was based on Carrie Bradshaw (the author surrogate) and her friends, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte. It also ended up featuring Mr. Big and Stanford Blatch and others. And in the show, Carrie wrote her own column, also called "Sex and the City", in which she discussed dating and relationships and fashion and the like in 1990s New York City (though she wrote for 'The New York Star', which doesn't exist).

And so the story goes that when the story ended, it would return for two feature films and a revival series called "And Just Like That..." in which Carrie would continue her musings in podcast form. She, like Bushnell, would also author a number of books relating to her life and experiences, naturally.

Answer: In the Mouth of Madness

"In the Mouth of Madness" was part of John Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy, a trio of films in which its characters faced threats that spelled the end of humanity, albeit in very different ways (with "The Thing" touching on an extraterrestrial threat and "Prince of Darkness" looking at a Biblical horror). "In the Mouth of Madness" was cosmic to its core, following investigator John Trent (Neill) as he was hired to search for missing author Sutter Cane. It only got weird from there as Trent made his way to a town featured in Cane's novels, experiencing events as they occurred in the author's newest horror novel and finding himself not only being an active participant, but potentially a driving force in bringing forth arcane beings from beyond time and space.

In the movie, Cane's final manuscript is delivered to its publisher and results in an adaptation, and the whole thing proves to be a recursive series of horrors beyond Trent's control.

Answer: Departure

These troubled writers keep getting blocked, don't they? In "Alan Wake", a 2010 horror game made by Remedy Entertainment, the titular protagonist finds himself in Bright Falls, a Twin Peaks-esque destination in the Pacific Northwest that proves itself to be a frightening place, especially when Alan starts finding pages of a manuscript for a story called 'Departure', a tale that appears to be written by himself. The real problem is that a dark entity has been using Alan to emerge from his mind via said manuscript. The only way to make things right is by entering another realm, finishing the manuscript, and hoping for the best.

Alan spends thirteen years in 'The Dark Place' before he escapes in "Alan Wake 2", writing a new story called 'Return' that chronicles the events of the game as you experience them.