Editing The Exorcist (novel) (section)

==Writing==

Blatty had considered writing a novel based on the Doe exorcism since he had written about it as a college student, even as he became successful as a comic novelist and screenwriter in the early 1960s, but his agent talked him out of doing so when he raised the subject. But after seeing [[Rosemary's Baby (film)|the film version]] of [[Ira Levin]]'s ''[[Rosemary's Baby (novel)|Rosemary's Baby]]'' in 1968, Blatty told his wife that he wanted to write a story like that. He liked the way director [[Roman Polanski]] had kept the audience unsure whether the title character's concerns for her unborn child were genuine or not, but felt the ending was "schlocky", reducing the Devil to a joke.<ref name="Zinoman book">{{Cite book |last=Zinoman |first=Jason |title=Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror |date=2011 |publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=9781101516966 |chapter=Chapter Five: 'Shock or Awe' |author-link=Jason Zinoman |access-date=March 3, 2019 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xKMQiZOQc04C&pg=PT51 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210308101507/https://www.google.com/books/edition/Shock_Value/xKMQiZOQc04C?hl=en&gbpv=1&d&pg=PT51&printsec=frontcover |pages=90–92|archive-date=March 8, 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Blatty believed he could improve on the ending of ''Rosemary's Baby'', making the spiritual struggle a more central theme of the story. After he pitched the story to an editor at [[Bantam Books]] at a cocktail party, he received a $25,000 advance (${{formatnum:{{inflation|US|25000|1968|r=-3}}}} in {{inflation-year|US}}{{inflation-fn|US}}) and began writing at his home in [[Encino, California]], taking stimulants to write for 16 hours a day and finish the novel in the expected 10 months. As he wrote, the story, which Blatty originally envisioned taking place largely in a courtroom, instead moved to the locations of the events recounted and become darker, with the possessed Regan masturbating with a crucifix and screaming obscene words at the priests trying to cast the demon out, all to make the evil more uniformly repulsive to readers.<ref name="Zinoman book" />