Author, screenwriter, actor, and director Stephen King uses the fear of the unknown, supernatural events, and real life scenarios to scare his readers and viewers. By using these methods in his works he has ultimately become known as the king of horror. King has been a strong influence in the horror genre throughout the years and he still seems to amaze fans of the genre. King is a very important figure in American Literature due to his massive contributions towards the genre that Americans truly love. Because of Stephen King’s many books, there has also been a good amount of comic books, major motion pictures, and television shows have been produced.

Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine on September 21st 1947. When King was very little his parents split apart and he was never very close to either parent after that. While growing up King kept moving back and forth between Connecticut and Indiana, until finally, he moved back to Portland.

King decided to stick close to home while he was at college, attending the University of Maine at Orono. While there he took part in the student council and also wrote for the schools newspaper. Kings “Startling Mystery Stories" consisted of a bunch of short stories in which he wrote during this time. After graduating from college with his degree in English, King's main goal was to pursue a career as a teacher, but he was unable to and so he took a job in a laundromat and while working there King started writing more and more stories.

Stephen King's very first novel, Carrie was one of his most famous and well done works. While writing his draft for Carrie he through the first of his many drafts away after he began to grow frustrated about writing about a teenage girl with psychic powers. After that, King's wife then went and retrieved the draft from the trash and encouraged him to keep writing.

Stephen King's influence in American Literature has spread throughout almost all branches of Literature, including magazines, journals, and comic books as well. In 1985 King wrote a few comics for The Dark Tower, a series of adventure stories owned by Marvel Comics. Not only did King write for Marvel Comics, but he also wrote for their rival company, Detective Comics, or better known as DC. Not many people know that Stephen King helped write for these well-known comic book companies, showing that King has influenced literature without people even knowing about it.

Not only has King influenced American Literature, but he has also influenced other people who have changed what Americans read and what they view. For example, famous director J.J. Abrams was influenced by the work of Stephen King, that Abrams has turned many of Kings Novels into very well done movies, especially "The Dark Tower" series of novels.

Some of the most important features that you will find in most of Stephen Kings works are, supernatural events, brutality, and shocking human behavior. King has attracted many fans of the Horror genre in American Literature towards his books because of his ways of executing the exact type of ways that make horror fans go wild and he will always keep them wanting more. Although In many of King’s books the plot will sometimes get lost as he dedicates entire pages to the imagery of settings. An example being, a moment of time, how someone moves, and what a room looks like. Although he really and truly does show readers the person or room in the way that he sees it more or less, their focus tends to have been shifted from the story at hand to a specific thing that usually ends up being insignificant or very much less important thing in the grand plot. By doing this King seems to be restricting the readers imagination by giving every specific detain about the scenery, which tends to be more unnecessary. But after all, like some people say, you cannot argue with success, Stephen King is an extremely successful

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