Stephen King: The Toolbox

The clear way in which King simply states that writing is telepathy. Writing is the key to plant ideas and stories in reader’s minds. This opening paragraph is really the way that Stephen King justifies and explains his love of writing, the use to give a story to someone else. Although this seemed like some extended or far out analogy, the truth was that the only way to achieve telepathy is through writing. He beautifully demonstrates this in his example of showing various passages and then explaining that anyone who reads the same passage will see the same picture (save a few minor details.)

                The extended metaphor of a toolbox was especially interesting to me as he used it to describe ‘the tools necessary to get the job done.’ Simply, he states pet peeves and techniques that work well in writing and tools that don’t. Specifically, the strangest thing was how King referred to his characters as people. His characters came to life and chose their own story, regardless of what his own original ideas had been. He spends a good amount of time explaining how the characters must be real to develop any story, and his characters did come to life, eventually dictating how his story played out. Despite the fact that King does briefly describe basic grammatical rules he spent the vast majority of his time explaining the process behind putting a story together and the writing styles begging to be used.