Analysis of Stephen King

Stephen King: On Writing

Stephen King is a man of many talents and personalities; not only is he able to scare his readers immensely, he is also able to make them laugh. I chose a passage from Stephen King’s On Writing for this assignment; the passage stuck in my mind for a long time after I finished the book. His writing style is unique compared to the other autobiographies I have read over the years. Everything that a person writes has a meaning or purpose whether it’s a letter or an essay and voice, tone, and style play a very important part in how the reader views the piece of writing. King manipulates the rules of writing in order to emphasize the meaning of the passage, which is to describe an early childhood experience, so the reader will come away from it with a better understanding of the man behind the book.

It is obvious that King is not writing an academic piece of work, although this is a memoir about his life, which also includes instruction about writing. His style is extremely informal and it shows in the voice of his work. His use of first person throughout the piece, as well as his use of diction makes it seem as if he is sitting in front of you, on the couch, telling his life story. His style of writing makes the reader feel as if they have witnessed the events firsthand. You can almost visualize and feel what he went through when he wrote, “After having a two-hundred-pound babysitter”. The hyphenation of the words two hundred pound place emphasis on her size and brings it to the readers’ attention that this is a huge woman. King chose his words carefully in order to make the greatest impact on his readers.

The tone seems to be a mix of reminiscent, carefree, exasperated, and somewhat horrified. He is reliving a part of his past that wasn’t particularly pleasant. You can tell that his family had moved frequently by his choice of words, “…during our Wisconsin period”, stress placed on the word period. “…a stream of babysitters” is the way he chose to describe the amount of people that watched him and his older brother. He lets the reader know right away that there were many babysitters. In the description of his most memorable sitter, he chose to italicize the word “dangerous”. By choosing this type of font, it causes the word to stand out and places emphasis on the type of humor she had.

In the first paragraph, in one sentence there