History Literature / Misery

** The Roydmans, Annie's oft-mentioned but never seen neighbors, whom she detests (and vice-versa, apparently).

* BreakingPointProfanity: When Annie tells Paul to "fill in his own fucking n's", he and the audience know [[OhCrap things are going to go bad]].

* PrecisionFStrike: When Annie tells Paul to "fill in his own fucking n's", he and the audience know [[OhCrap things are going to go bad]].

* EverythingsBetterWithPenguins: No, seriously. Annie owns a little model of a penguin on a pedestal. It becomes surprisingly memorable. [[spoiler:Five words: "NOW MY TALE IS TOLD!"]]

* BatmanGambit: Confined to a wheelchair, Paul is completely at Annie's mercy as long as she keeps her distance and plans her attacks carefully. Paul knew that setting the manuscript on fire would make her panic, make her desperate to save it, make her forget to be careful..and suddenly she's within reach and the advantage shifts to him.

!!Tropes included:

* AmbiguousDisorder: Annie displays traits associated with an array of mental illnesses (at the very least, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a severe personality disorder with paranoid, antisocial and borderline features, and likely some sort of schizophrenic- or schizoaffective-spectrum disorder). In a special feature on the collector's edition DVD, a forensic psychologist described Annie as a "virtual catalog of mental illness."

* VillainHasAPoint: Paul concedes that some of Annie's criticism of his writing is actually quite perceptive; he especially finds her points about {{Deus Ex Machina}}s and {{Cliffhanger Copout}}s being bad to be spot on, and eventually come to agree with her assessment that ''Fast Cars'' was pretentious.

* SnowedIn: Annie insists they can't leave her cabin due to the terrible weather inside and all the roads being covered in deep snow. This works initially, since Paul crashed during a snowstorm and the weather ''really'' is awful, but eventually the claim becomes a BlatantLie as he figures he's been kidnapped.

* TooDumbToLive:
** The poor rookie cop in the book. He's investigating where Paul was last seen, and [[spoiler:goes OhCrap when Paul breaks a window to call for help. The sensible thing would be to call in for backup, but he's too stunned before Annie brings out the lawnmower]].
** On the other hand, going to the home of a suspected murderer/kidnapper all by yourself isn't a very bright idea. He should've at least informed the state police that Anne Wilkes is a suspect in the case. [[spoiler:Him being alone makes it easy for Annie to kill him when he finds Paul in the basement.]]

* ImprobableAimingSkills: [[spoiler: In the book, Paul hurls an old and very heavy typewriter at Annie in their final confrontation, and fortunately for him it hits her squarely in the head. It turns out that it caused internal bleeding that basically killed her, so their fight was pointless.]]

* OneParagraphChapter: Taken UpToEleven, as they only contain one word: "Rinse."

* AllThereInTheScript: Sheriff Buster's surname is [=McCain=].

-->'''Annie:''' Now isn't this nice?!
-->'''Paul:''' Yeah. I always wanted to visit the other side of the room.

* DeathByChildbirth: Paul had to pay big for making Misery have this fate.

* LoveMakesYouDumb: To an extent; Annie's love of the ''Misery'' novels can cloud her judgement.

* GroinAttack: [[spoiler:See the ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill example. In the film she also does one to Paul in in their struggle, perhaps the one point she is on the defense.]]

* AdultFear:
** Being kidnapped and trapped in a house belonging to a psychotic person who'll hurt you on a whim can happen, and has happened, many times in real-life.
** To a lesser extent, Paul's friends and family realize he's missing. Heck, he has a daughter that he dotes on and supports. So he goes missing for months and reappears minus a foot and a thumb, and a lot of trauma. While we don't hear how his daughter reacted, his agent is putting on a chipper face about it.

* AntagonistTitle: Paul hates ''Misery'' but the character's popularity precludes him from being a more serious writer.

* AxCrazy: Annie is murderously insane.

** By the end of the story, Paul knows better than to correct Annie. Also, swearing also makes Annie really mad.

* BewareTheNiceOnes: Paul is a polite guy and is sympathetic toward Annie [[spoiler: but he brutally attacks her, taking enormous glee in her suffering after everything she's done]].

* BookDumb: Annie is a strange case. She went to higher education, obtained a nursing degree, and has worked in hospitals across the country, so when it comes to medicine and triage she is very knowledgeable. She also has a few areas of practical knowledge to call upon, things a woman living alone in the mountains would need to know such as carpentry and maintenance (and self-defense, as Paul finds when she informs him that she took judo classes). But in most other areas, particularly areas of culture, Annie is shockingly ignorant, being unaware of basic writing tropes such as the DeusExMachina which even most non-writers are familiar with (though as Paul comes to understand, she understands the concept in everything but name).

* ChildHater: [[spoiler: Annie doesn't believe infants have souls; why shouldn't she kill them? She's also responsible for the deaths of three young children and their father as well after setting their shared apartment complex on fire as a teenager since the children (and their surviving baby sister) were her babysitting charges that she referred to as brats.]]

* CreatorsPest: InUniverse; Paul dislikes Misery.

** She also [[spoiler: killed most her babysitting charges, their father (unintentionally), and her own father when she was still young.]]

* GenreShift: By having to rewrite the Misery Chastain series effectively at gunpoint, Paul changes the series from pulpy romantic adventures to a Gothic romance full of dark family secrets. This proves a very good thing, not just because it keeps him alive but also because it gives him a chance to explore a character he didn't like before and take her in a new direction. He eventually comes to think this new book is the best one he has ever written.

** The Roydmans, Annie's oft-mentioned but never seen neighbors, whom she detests.

* GoingColdTurkey: A side effect of Paul's captivity. Before crossing paths with Annie Paul had a fairly debauched lifestyle, replete with smoking, bar-hopping and sleeping around with random women, all of which he is forcibly made to give up. Though he hates it, he does note that becoming "Mr. Clean" has had a positive experience on his writing. To add to the irony, he becomes addicted on painkillers.

* {{Hallucinations}}: While dining with his agent in the final scene, Paul briefly visualizes a waitress as Annie. It doesn't help his comfort level at all when the waitress then [[HereWeGoAgain cheerfully introduces herself as his "number one fan"]].

* HiddenDepths: Annie is a repugnant psychopath, but she displays a surprisingly insightful attitude toward literary conventions. With her (very undesired) help, Paul manages to turn Misery from a shallow beauty to a suprisingly deep character.

* KarmicDeath: [[spoiler:Annie is killed by Paul's typewriter after being choked by paper.]]

* LargeHam: There's a reason why Kathy Bates is nowaday best known as Annie Wilkes in the movie.

** [[spoiler: After being forced to burn the book he wanted to publish, Paul gets back at Annie by burning the book she wanted to be the only one to reads (with Paul deciding to publish it after getting out), although, in the written version, he just set fire to some paper with the cover on it]].

* MakeItLookLikeAnAccident: Annie's early murders were set up this way: her very first murders were of a group of kids she babysat, who she killed by burning down the apartment building they shared and making it look like a bum did it. Later she murdered both her father and her college roommate with a variant of this method; she put something in a flight of stairs so they would stumble and fall. With her father, she used a pile of clothes, with the roommate, the corpse of their cat, whom she poisoned.

* NotQuiteDead: Subverted here. The police inform Paul they couldn't find Annie's body...[[spoiler: except she only briefly survived to stagger close by and die there.]]

* PetPeeveTrope: InUniverse - Annie's are CliffhangerCopout and ClusterFBomb.

* ThisIsGonnaSuck: In the book, Paul finds out Annie hasn't completed the latest edition of ''Misery''. He knows how it ends, and knows Annie won't take it well.

* WhosLaughingNow: [[spoiler:After realising escape is impossible, Paul finally snaps and delivers a rather brutal last laugh to Annie, tricking her into believing that he has burned the only existing manuscript to ''Misery's Return''.]]

** [[spoiler: After being forced to burn the book he wanted to publish, Paul gets back at Annie by burning the book she wanted to be published, although, in the written version, he just set fire to some paper with the cover on it]].

** {{Cliffhanger}}: Paul subtly does this as an act of LaserGuidedKarma in the book. When he sets fire to [[spoiler:the cover-sheet of]] ''Misery's Return'', Annie never got to read the final chapter, meaning for her, it ended on one of these.

** [[CreatorCameo Recognise that guy]] [[https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/stephenking/images/b/b0/Misery%27s_return.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130412033745 on the cover of ''Misery's Return''?]]

* BodyHorror: The novel is truly nauseating in describing the damage to Paul's legs: multiple compound fractures that require numerous re-breakings to heal anywhere close to properly. This was thankfully toned down to three simple fractures in the film.

* FreezeFrameBonus: In the movie, during the scrapbook scene, pause whenever any of the news articles are visible. Most consist of only one or two paragraphs that are continuously repeated.

Novelist Paul Sheldon crashes his car in a Colorado snowstorm while driving west to celebrate finishing his latest book. His legs shattered, he is rescued by Annie Wilkes, a former nurse, who takes him to her isolated house in the countryside. She claims that she is his No. 1 fan and loves his ''Misery'' novels, as well as their main heroine Misery Chastain. However, the next Misery novel is released while he's in her care, and Annie finds out that Misery dies at the end. She becomes enraged and forces Paul to write a new novel that undoes Misery's death. Paul, being too injured to leave her house, is totally dependent on Annie, and so begins his fight to find a way to write Misery back to life, all while Annie subjects him to all manner of deranged (and sometimes horrific) ministrations.

** {{Cliffhanger}}: Paul subtly does this as an act of LaserGuidedKarma in the book. When he sets fire to ''Misery's Return'', Annie never got to read the final chapter, meaning for her, it ended on one of these.

* TakeThat: To crazy fans, [[invoked]]FanDumb, FixFic writers, cheesy romance lovers, writers who use deus ex machina... It's more subtle, but the novel also takes this view with the opposite idea, that the mentality of writing "serious" books to amaze critics and win awards isn't much better. Paul eventually realizes that Misery wasn't a bad character: he never put much work into making her shine.