Stephen King And His Unique Writing Style

Stephen King is considered one of the greatest horror writers of our lifetime and of all time. King’s works span over the course of forty-five years starting with his first novel, Carrie, in 1974 and releasing a novel almost every year since with his most recent release being The Institute, released in September of 2019. Stephen King was born September 21st, 1947 in Portland, Maine to parents Donald King and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. When King was just two years old his father left to get cigarettes from the store and never returned home, leaving Nellie to take care of her two sons on her own, taking jobs as a laundry presser and doughnut baker to make ends meet (“Stephen King, Authors and Artists”). During this time King moved around the New England area until finally landing in Durham, Maine when he was 11 where he would live the rest of his young life.

King attended Lisbon Falls High School which he graduated from in 1966. After graduating from Lisbon Falls, King went to the University of Maine at Orono where he would eventually graduate with his Bachelors of the Arts in English in 1970. After graduating, King married Tabitha Spruce and began working as a High School English teacher at Hampden Academy, in Hampden, Maine. King kept this job until he received an advance for his first novel, Carrie, in 1973 and his novel was published by DoubleDay the following year. Carrie was an instant hit and allowed King to quit his job teaching to focus on writing novels to support his family and giving him the time to write and release a new novel each year since 1974. (“Stephen Edwin King”).

Stephen King’s rise to horror superstardom did not happen by accident. King’s ability to blend components of the supernatural with popular culture gave way to a never before seen style of horror writing (Kraft). King essentially revitalized the horror genre by writing novels with characters that audiences can relate to and feel attached too. King’s novels themselves have become a symbol of popular culture with many of his novels being adapted to film and becoming wildly successful. Several of King’s novels have been published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, because King wanted to release more than one novel a year, and in order to avoid his novels competing against each other he used a pseudonym to avoid oversaturating the market of Stephen King novels. King’s first published novel under the pseudonym Richard Bachman came in 1977 with the novel Rage (“Stephen King, St. James”). King’s other novels under this pseudonym include The Long Walk, Roadwork, The Running Man, Thinner, and The Regulators.

Thinner is the novel that gave up King’s secret identity as the novel was so closely related to style of writing that King was famous for (“Stephen King, St. James”). A recurring theme in Kings work is the empowerment of estranged young people (“Stephen King, Authors and Artists”). This repeating theme might stem from King’s childhood traumas surrounding his father’s disappearance and the poverty-stricken lifestyle he was left to endure. In King’s novel Christine the main character is an estranged boy named Arnie Cunningham and his love triangle involving his new girlfriend, and his haunted car, and Rage focuses on a young man’s descent into derangement and murder. Kings most evident look at alienation in childhood comes in the novel It. It is a creature that feeds off of children, on their bodies and their emotions, with a focus on fear (“Stephen King, Authors and Artists”).