Comparison Essay

Stephen King and Carol Shields both write in very different styles. After reading the two articles, it gave me a clear impression of their writing styles. I found Stephen King’s writing technique to be very precise and organized while Carol Shield’s technique was more free willed. Stephen King’s sadistic characters were created through well organized creative ideas. Carol Shield wrote more of humane novels. She exposed and sometimes exploited the characteristics of actual real human. In King’s article I found “never look reference text during first draft” very interesting. I agree with King’s idea of embracing raw materials.
I found King’s choices of characters and Shield’s choices of characters very different. King enjoyed more of fictional characters such as fantasized or completely made up characters. On the other hand, Shield was more comfortable of realistic characters. She even created characters from her own personal experiences. Shield’s regard toward creating characters that were in fact a disguise of her companions was very interesting and agreeable. As a writer myself, I also enjoy creating characters and scenarios from my own personal experience or from a story I heard from a friend. When I am writing about a made up character or a scenario, I tend to imagine myself in the story exploring to be the protagonist or the antagonist exploring through a surreal world. In a way, every character I create embodies partial characteristics of me.
The two writers both embrace creativity in both of their articles. The reason why I enjoy writing is because I can transform simple words into characters, scenarios and even a world where its existence is only approved through my words. I can make a word mean seven different things and I can make the simplest thing into such complicated algorithmic problems. And I’m sure these are the reasons why King and Shield enjoy writing as well. As shown in Shield’s article, a writer can hear 3 facts about the Arctic and write a whole novel on it. Imagination can replace the rest of the forty-five thousand words which the “3 facts” cannot cover.
By reading these articles, I observed my necessities in terms of being a writer. I think my most concerned part is my ability to organize. Sometimes my ideas tend to scramble across the page and it can make my sentence and paragraph structures seem very arbitrary .In terms of character development, I should create characters who the readers can relate to, rather than me being the only person laughing at the characters’ inside jokes. Like stated on Shield’s article, when a character can persuade the readers to believe and relate it is a big compliment. I believe writing is the greatest lie. You can write that the sky is pink where yellow elephants fly, then no so long after, you will find yellow elephants flying across the bright pink sky looking for his friends. The world a writer creates will be the reality for the readers’ world while reading your piece. It is the writers’ skills and ideas that make turns blurry delusions into reality. Persuasion to convey the readers to actually live in a “world” the writer creates is the ultimate task which every writer must accomplish.