Stephen King - Why is He so Popular?

Stephen King is a well-known and accomplished horror writer who has written forty plus novels, hundreds of short stories (many published in collections containing ten to twenty stories, such as his recent release Just After Sunset), and various other things such as a monthly column for Entertainment Weekly (entitled "The Pop of King"). Some people dismiss his writing as trash; others such as myself prefer to think he is a best-selling author for a reason - no, Mr. King is indeed quite a good writer, according to people like me. But why? What sets Stephen King apart from the other not-so-well-known and not-so-enthralling writers who make the New York Times lists and fall off just as quickly? What magic does he have with words that draws us into his novels and leaves us wondering where the time went five hundred pages later? Stephen King is simply a very effective writer.

One of the key things to keep in mind is that Stephen King's characters do not only have one dimension. The villain of the story (if there is one) often has a rather likeable side. Take Misery's Annie Wilkes (portrayed by Kathy Bates in the 1990 film adaptation) - she seems rather wholesome and innocent in some strange way, but she is quite adept at torturing and causing, well, misery. King's good characters often have an evil streak. His laughable characters sometimes have strokes of brilliance. The seemingly useless characters may prevail at the end of a story, while the strongest may fail horribly. This is real life, and this is how Stephen King writes. The character that would be the typical hero in any other story may not be the hero at the end of the book. In short, each character is just that - a full character. Not just a hero, not just a loser, and not just a bad guy. Each character is given feelings and a brain, and most importantly, more than one side to their personality - just like we have.

Another reason Stephen King is such an effective writer is that his dialogue is so accurate. He wrote in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft that as an author, you must choose the right word. You can't just use any word - it has to be the right one. The word the character would use (or the one you're looking for). It has to say exactly what you mean. If your character would never in a million years consider saying "we are" instead of "we're," by God don't use "we are" because it's grammatically correct. Your character would never say that, so neither should you. This is why we believe his characters. They aren't just names on paper being fed lines; they're saying their lines because that's what they would do. It seems far more natural to read.

Of course King has written things outside of the horror genre, but most of his novels and short stories have focused on horror. While in this genre, he has written stories which touch on the deepest and most secret of our fears. In It, he writes of a group of children who live a summer in fear of (and try to conquer) a monster that can turn into anything they fear. Be it a mummy, a diseased hobo, or a blood spurt, the being can become it. This book alone touches on countless childhood (and adult) fears. The fear of losing a child or loved one, the fear of disease, the fear of death, the fear of what you can't see...the list goes on and on. In Pet Sematary, he again touched on the fear of losing a child, as well as death and what happens if you try to reverse that process (The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs is quite similar in this respect). In Cujo, he covers the fear of uncontrollable animals and being stranded. There are countless fears and Stephen King has utilized many of them to the best of his ability in his novels.

Why are we scared of such obviously fictionalized accounts, though? We like the characters. We fear the situations or villains they are pitted against. We want no harm to come to them, but if we're anything like the character we so adore (and if we like the character, we probably are), then we are probably scared of the villain, too. We don't think everything is going to be all right. We're worried for the character, and we'll likely turn page after page trying to ensure that the character is going to be okay.

Stephen King also has a habit of bringing up subjects in his novels that we would not normally discuss - social taboos do not always remain taboo in King's stories. In Gerald's Game, he explores the events and thought processes of a woman whose husband dies after handcuffing her to a bed in preparation for sex, leaving her unable to escape. This is not something we tell stories about over a campfire, but terrifying - yes, it certainly is. In It, he covers multiple accounts of child abuse, sometimes quite horrific (in one case it ends in death). In The Stand, all but a few immune people die of a super-flu; an anticlimactic apocalypse, it might seem, but this is not so - again King covers a topic we'd rather not discuss, but we read it anyway. King's covering of these topics adds to the interest and effectiveness in his novels.

Another thing Stephen King does is bring back characters and places in more than one novel. There are multiple references to It in other novels - in The Tommyknockers, for example, a gurgle is heard from a drain in Derry, Maine. He said himself that his Dark Tower series completes many characters' stories. In bringing back these characters for further evaluation, he brings a sense of familiarity and creates his own world. This also makes us feel more comfortable with his writing - we've seen this character before, we know something of this world because we've been there before.

Another element that brings familiarity to his stories is his consistent quoting and referencing to other popular stories and songs. A character might think of a lyric in passing, or a line from an old speech therapy chant may haunt him. These familiar quotes and references are yet one more thing that makes us feel comfortable and draw us into the story. We feel more as if we identify with the character if we know what they're thinking about or recognize the reference.

Something else that makes King's stories alluring to us is the fact that they are, in general, rather timeless. He does date his writing with songs and the like, but it has a feeling of taking place in Anytime, Anywhere, rather than 1986 in Maine. We can always connect with emotions and fears, and King does not skimp on those at all. These things require no time period to exist, thus they give his writing an eternal sort of feeling.

His narratives tend to be written with intermittent thoughts by the characters. Often the thoughts are italicized and enclosed in parentheses, referring to memories or fears of the characters. This technique is especially prominent in his work done in the 1980s, but it continues to appear in his writing to this day. This italicized writing has always reminded me of our thought processes. We don't think in sentences; our thoughts are not pure and complete and finished. They are choppy and worried and incomplete. By reading this on paper, we identify with it more. We understand that the character is really thinking - what terrified person would actually think in a complete sentence? By including this in his writing, King again gives us the impression that the characters are real people who truly think and feel.

One last thing Stephen King often does (and it is literally and deliberately last) is end his stories a certain way. Lest I give away too much about any particular story, I will not get into specifics. Suffice it to say that King has a habit of providing endings that do not really end the story at all. For any horror fan, this is not bad news, but very good news. It allows our imaginations to run wild with the story. It allows us to wonder what became of the characters after the last event was written. We can wonder about the hows and whys rather than having them all explained to us and wrapped in a pretty bow on top of it all. King does not insult our intelligence with such perfect endings. Instead we are handed messy endings, endings that sometimes don't really solve anything. Just like life, and that's what makes it fascinating to read.