10 Most Important Features Of Stephen King's Writing

While Stephen King listens out for speech patterns and accents and captures them with accuracy, he has also developed a trademark technique for capturing how we think. Like many novelists, he’ll capture direct thoughts in italics and share them with the reader, but he’s developed a way of showing how our more logical thoughts are often shattered by sudden fears or realisations.

For example, in The Shining, Jack Torrance is having an internal struggle over a snow mobile battery. He grabs it, and:

“It slipped through his shaking fingers

(oh Christ what if I cracked it)

and thumped over on its side.”

Or, even more powerfully, in IT:

“This was some kind of counterforce to that other… to

(oh well you might as well say it)

It.”

This technique captures the disorganisation of our thought patterns when we are reasoning with ourselves or especially in moments of stress... or terror. King uses this in almost all of his stories, perfectly reflecting the way in which our fears and concerns will leap up through more sensible thoughts like some sort of lively but unmistakably malicious creature. There is no better way of mirroring not just how we speak, but how we actually think.