10 Most Important Features Of Stephen King's Writing

In the film world, a cameo can be an off-putting moment designed purely to get a rise out of the audience, but in a series of books, a cameo can take on a different significance.

In some important ways, and a surprisingly large number of less noticeable ways, Stephen King’s written world is blended together. Shawshank Prison is mentioned in both IT and Dolores Claiborne and Andy Dufresne himself appears in the story Apt Pupil. The fictional towns of Derry and Castle Rock are used as settings multiple times. A character explains to Annie Wilkes in Misery that he is writing an article on The Overlook Hotel. Cujo is mentioned by Jud Crandall in Pet Sematary… and the list goes on and on.

Most famously, The Dark Tower series holds links to a great many of the other stories in King's canon. As he said in the afterword of Wizard And Glass: "I am coming to understand that Roland's world (or worlds) actually contains all the others of my making..."

The Dark Tower was created as the linchpin of the time-space continuum and has made it possible to connect our world to all of the others that King has written about. Randall Flagg, the villain of The Stand, is the most prevalent example, appearing under different names and situations multiple times, but characters such as Patrick Danville from Insomnia and and Father Callahan from 'Salem's Lot also find their way to Mid-World.

The effect of all of these cameos and connections is that Stephen King’s work is given depth and breadth – as a set of 50-plus stories should. When you’ve finished reading one of his books and the characters or places return – if even for a moment – in another, it’s as if those characters or the story itself continue to have an impact on the world even after you’ve finished reading. It's as if your connection to them does not end when the book is back on your shelf, but that they live on and that you may never know when they may cross your path again.