10 Most Important Features Of Stephen King's Writing

Childhood suffering is a key theme across the work of Stephen King. Both as abuse from bullies or, far worse, fathers, but also suffering from the intense fear of fear itself that all children are so very vulnerable to.

Too few books aimed at an adult audience revisit the pain of young childhood. Older teenagers seem to get considerable coverage, but young children are often left unexplored as if adults have forgotten the relevance or importance of these formative years. King, however, helps us inhabit the mind of a child in many of his best works such as IT, The Shining and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.

King says, “We think in a different way as children. We tend to think around corners instead of in straight lines.” It is this fascination and, more importantly, appreciation of childhood that makes him so able to capture the vivid imagination of the young. This, in turn, has led to some horrifying moments as characters that so effectively represent the most vulnerable members of our society are subjected to pure terror.

If children are under-represented in much of adult fiction, so too are the elderly. But not so in the fiction of Stephen King. Jud Crandall of Pet Sematary is in his eighties, Ralph Roberts of Insomnia and Bill Hodges of the Mr Mercedes trilogy are retired main characters and Mother Abigail from The Stand is a staggering 106 years old. It takes real awareness and sensitivity to help someone genuinely imagine the life of the elderly as the majority of readers simply haven’t experienced it, but King helps his readers to truly empathise with the advantages and disadvantages of reaching advanced years.

Few writers are as able as King to take a reader back into their childhood or project them forward into old age, but King has done both of these many times over and with tremendous success.