Editing Stephen King (section)

=== Style ===
[[File:Stephen King - 2011.jpg|thumb|right|250px|King in 2011]]
In ''[[On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft|On Writing]]'', King recalls:<blockquote>When, during the course of an interview for ''The New Yorker'', I told the interviewer (Mark Singer) that I believed stories are found things, like fossils in the ground, he said that he didn't believe me. I replied that that was fine, as long as he believed that ''I'' believe it. And I do. Stories aren't souvenir tee-shirts or GameBoys. Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer's job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible. Sometimes the fossil you uncover is small, a seashell. Sometimes it's enormous, a ''Tyrannosaurus Rex'' with all those gigantic ribs and grinning teeth. Either way, short story or thousand-page whopper of a novel, the techniques of excavation remain basically the same.<ref>{{Cite book |last=King |first=Stephen |title=[[On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft]] |year=2000 |pages=163–164}}</ref></blockquote>King often starts with a "what-if" scenario, asking what would happen if an alcoholic writer was stranded with his family in a haunted hotel (''[[The Shining (novel)|The Shining]]''), or if one could see the outcome of future events (''[[The Dead Zone (novel)|The Dead Zone]]''), or if one could travel in time to alter the course of history (''[[11/22/63]]'').<ref name="JennaBlum6">Jenna Blum, 2013, ''The Modern Scholar'' published by Recorded Books, ''The Author at Work: The Art of Writing Fiction'', Disk 1, Track 11, {{ISBN|978-1-4703-8437-1}}</ref> He writes that "The situation comes first. The characters—always flat and unfeatured, to begin with—come next. Once these things are fixed in my mind, I begin to narrate. I often have an idea of what the outcome may be, but I have never demanded a set of characters that they do things my way. On the contrary, I want them to do things ''their'' way. In some instances, the outcome is what I visualized. In most, however, it's something I never expected."<ref>{{Cite book |last=King |first=Stephen |title=On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft |year=2000 |pages=164–165}}</ref> 

[[Joyce Carol Oates]] called King "both a storyteller and an inventor of startling images and metaphors, which linger long in the memory."<ref name=":Oates"/> An example of King's imagery is seen in ''[[The Body (King novella)|The Body]]'' when the narrator recalls a childhood clubhouse with a tin roof and rusty screen door: "No matter what time of day you looked out that screen door, it looked like sunset... When it rained, being inside the club was like being inside a Jamaican steel drum."<ref>{{Cite book |last=King |first=Stephen |title=Different Seasons |year=1982 |pages=302}}</ref> King writes that "The use of simile and other figurative language is one of the chief delights of fiction—reading it and writing it, as well. [...] By comparing two seemingly unrelated objects—a restaurant bar and a cave, a mirror and a mirage—we are sometimes able to see an old thing in a new and vivid way. Even if the result is mere clarity instead of beauty, I think writer and reader are participating together in a kind of miracle. Maybe that's drawing it a little strong, but yeah—it's what I believe."<ref>{{Cite book |last=King |first=Stephen |title=[[On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft]] |pages=179–180}}</ref>