University of Cincinnati Stephen King Thesis Questions I will upload 6 files 5 of them are essay and one file is paper that has 4 questions that you need t

University of Cincinnati Stephen King Thesis Questions I will upload 6 files 5 of them are essay and one file is paper that has 4 questions that you need to get from the essay. ( And please remember to use simple English). W
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Reading to Write
STEPHEN KING
Maine. He worked as a janitor in a knitting mill, a laundry worker, and
Born in 1947, Stephen King is a 1970 graduate of the University of
a high school English teacher before he struck it big with his writing
Today, many people consider King’s name synonymous with the macabre,
he is, beyond dispute, the most successful writer of horror fiction today.
He has written dozens of novels and hundreds of short stories, novel
las, and screenplays, among other works. His books have sold well over
300 million copies worldwide, and many of his novels have been made
into popular motion pictures, including Stand by Me, Misery, The Greek
Mile, and Dreamcatcher. His fiction, starting with Carrie in 1974, includes
Salem’s Lot (1975), The Shining (1977). The Dead Zone (1979), Christine
(1983), Pet Sematary (1983), The Dark
Half(1989), The Girl Who Long
Tom Gordon (1999), From a Buick 8 (2002), Everything’s Eventual: Fine
Dark Tales (2002), The Colorado Kid (2005), Cell (2006), Lisey’s Store
(2006), Duma Key (2008), Under the Dome (2009), 11/22/63 (2011)
The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012), Mile 81 (2012), and The Bazaa,
of Bad Dreams (2015), a collection of stories accompanied by revelatory
notes on how the story came about. Other works include Danse Macabre
(1980), a nonfiction look at horror in the media, and On Writing: A
Memoir of the Craft (2000).
In the following passage taken from On Writing, King discusses the
importance of reading in learning to write. Reading, in his words, “offers
you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what
hasn’t, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what just lies there
dying (or dead) on the page.”
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WRITING TO DISCOVER: In your opinion, are reading and writing connected in
some way? If the two activities are related, what is the nature of that relationship?
Do you have to be a reader to be a good writer, or is writing an activity that can be
learned quite apart from reading?
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If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others:
Read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that
I’m aware of, no shortcut.
I’m a slow reader, but I usually get through seventy or eighty books a
year, mostly fiction. I don’t read in order to study the craft; I read because
I like to read. It’s what I do at night, kicked back in my blue chair. Simi-
larly, I don’t read fiction to study the art of fiction, but simply because
I like stories. Yet there is a learning process going on. Every book you pick
up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more
to teach than the good ones.
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Essay #4- Reading to Write, Stephen King 196-200
A. Read the Headnotes about Stephen King. Do some research to discover current activities
and writings since 2015. (20 pts).
B. Read the essay and write a paragraph identifying his thesis or main point. (25 pts).
C. Write a definition, synonym, and the essay sentences containing the following words.
1. Shortcut (1)
11. The John (9)
2. Fiction (2)
12. Blowhards (11)
3. Craft (2)
13. Weaned (12)
4. Outlandish (3)
14. Ephemeral (12)
5. Prose (5)
15. Prodigy (13)
Narration (6)
16. Concurred (14)
7. Spur (6)
17. Strenuous (16)
8. Mediocre (7)
18. Bravura (17)
9. Nostalgia (8)
19. Trite (17)
(40 pts)
10. Weaned (12)
20. Intimacy (17)
D. Stephen King’s novels often fall into a particular genre that screenwriters delight in bringing
these novels to the movie theater. If time permits it, we will view a S. King novel brought to the
screen by a screenplay writer. After viewing this [DVD], write about the style, plot, and the plot
resolution. If we do not have time to view a screenplay, write the titles of the current movies
based on King’s novels up to 2019-20. (15 pts)
STEPHEN KING: Reading to Write
197
paid a penny
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h the macabre;
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stories, novel
cold well over
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by Murray Leinster, a science fiction pulp writer who did most of his
work during the forties and fifties, when magazines like Amazing Stories
word. I had read other books by Mr. Leinster, enough
which was about mining in the asteroid belt, was one of his less successful
to know that the quality of his writing was uneven. This particular tale,
efforts. Only that’s too kind. It was terrible, actually, a story populated
paper-thin characters and driven by outlandish plot developments.
Worst of all (or so it seemed to me at the time), Leinster had fallen in love
with the word sestful. Characters watched the approach of ore-bearing
asteroids with zestful smiles. Characters sat down to supper aboard their
mining ship with zestful anticipation. Near the end of the book, the hero
swept the large-breasted, blonde heroine into a zestful embrace. For me,
far as I know, used the word zestful in a novel or a story. God willing, I
by
was the literary equivalent of a smallpox vaccination: I have never, so
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Asteroid Miners (which wasn’t the title, but that’s close enough) was
an important book in my life as a reader. Almost everyone can remember
losing his or her virginity, and most
writers can remember the first book If you want to be a writer, you
he/she put down thinking: I can do must do two things above all
better than this, Hell, I am doing better others: Read a lot and write a
than this! What could be more encour- lot.
aging to the struggling writer than to
realize his/her work is unquestionably better than that of someone who
actually got paid for his/her stuff?
One learns most clearly what not to do by reading bad prose-one
novel like Asteroid Miners (or Valley of the Dolls, Flowers in the Attic, and
The Bridges of Madison County, to name just a few) is worth a semester at
a good writing school, even with the superstar guest lecturers thrown in.
Good writing, on the other hand, teaches the learning writer about
style, graceful narration, plot development, the creation of believable char-
acters, and truth-telling. A novel like The Grapes of Wrath may fill a new
writer with feelings of despair and good old-fashioned jealousy – “I’ll never
be able to write anything that good, not if I live to be a thousand”—but
such feelings can also serve as a spur, goading the writer to work harder
and aim higher. Being swept away by a combination of great story and
great writing –of being flattened, in fact – is part of every writer’s neces-
sary formation. You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force
of your writing until it has been done to you.
So we read to experience the mediocre and the outright rotten; such
skperience helps us to recognize those things when they begin to creep
into our own work, and to steer clear of them. We also read in order to
can be done. And we read in order to experience different styles.
measure ourselves against the good and the great, to get a sense of all that
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198
WRITERS ON WRITING: HOW AND WHY WE WRITE
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there’s nothing wrong with that. When I read Ray Bradbury as a kid, I wrote
You may find yourself adopting a style you find particularly exciting, and
lens smeared with the grease of nostalgia. When I read James M. Cain, every
like Ray Bradbury-everything green and wondrous and seen through a
thing I wrote came out clipped and stripped and hard-boiled. When I read
Lovecraft, my prose became luxurious and Byzantine. I wrote stories in my
teenage years where all these styles merged, creating a kind of hilarious stew.
This sort of stylistic blending is a necessary part of developing one’s own
style, but it doesn’t occur in a vacuum. You have to read widely, constantly
refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so. It’s hard for me
presume to write and expect people to like what they have written, but I
believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should
know it’s true. If I had a nickel for every person who ever told me he/she
wanted to become a writer but didn’t have time to read,” I could buy myself
a pretty good steak dinner. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don’t have
time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that,
Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life. I take a book with me
everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in. The
trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows
Waiting rooms were made for books -of course! But so are theater lobbies
before the show, long and boring checkout lines, and everyone’s favorite
the john. You can even read while you’re driving, thanks to the audiobook
revolution. Of the books I read each year, anywhere from six to a dozen are
on tape. As for all the wonderful radio you will be missing, come on how
many times can you listen to Deep Purple sing “Highway Star”>
Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect 10
to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your con
cerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you
intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite
society are numbered, anyway.
Where else can you read? There’s always the treadmill, or whatever
you use down at the local health club to get aerobic. I try to spend an hour
doing that every day, and I think I’d go mad without a good novel to keep
mc company. Most exercise facilities at home as well as outside it) are now
equipped with TVs, but TV-while working out or anywhere else-really
is about the last thing an aspiring writer needs. If you feel you must have the
news analyst blowhards on CNN while you exercise, or the stock market
blowhards on MSNBC, or the sports blowhards on ESPN, it’s time for you
to question how serious you really are about becoming a writer. You must
be prepared to do some serious turning inward toward the life of the imagi-
nation, and that means, I’m afraid, that Geraldo, Keith Olbermann, and Jay
Leno must go. Reading takes time, and the glass teat takes too much of it.
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Once weaned from the ephemeral
craving for TV, most people will find
they enjoy the time they spend reading. I’d like to suggest that turning off
a
y
that endlessly quacking box is apt to improve the quality of your life as well as
the quality of your writing. And how much of a sacrifice are we talking about
STEPHEN KING: Reading to Write
199
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Mere How many Frasier and ER reruns does it take to make one American
whiteboy fatboy Belrway insiders on CNN? Oh man, don’t get me started
life complete? How many Richard Simmons infomercials? How many
Jerry Springer-Dr.-Dre-Judge Judy-Jerry-Falwell-Donny-and-Marie, I rest
When my son Owen was seven or so, he fell in love with Bruce Spring
burly sax player. Owen decided he wanted to learn to play like Clarence.
steen’s E Street Band, particularly with Clarence Clemons, the band’s
My wife and I were amused and delighted by this ambition. We were
would be, that our kid would turn out to be
any parent
talented, perhaps even some sort of prodigy. We
got Owen a
a tenor saxo
shone for Christmas and lessons with Gordon Bowie, one of the local
music men. Then we crossed our fingers and
Seven months later I suggested to my wife that it was time to discontinue
the sex lessons, if Owen concurred. Owen did, and with palpable relief-he
hadn’t wanted to say it himself, especially not after asking for the sax in the
first place, but seven months had been long enough for him to realize that,
while he might love Clarence Clemons’s big sound, the saxophone was sim-
ply not for him-God had not given him that particular talent.
practicing only during the periods Mr. Bowie had set for him: half an
mastered the scales and the notes nothing wrong with his memory, his
I hoped for the best
If
10
I knew, not because Owen stopped practicing, but because he was 15
far after school four days a week, plus an hour on the weekends. Owen
lungs, or his eye-hand coordination–but we never heard him taking off,
surprising himself with something new, blissing himself out. And as soon
as his practice time was over, it was back into the case with the horn, and
there it stayed until the next lesson or practice time. What this suggested to
me was that when it came to the sax and my son, there was never going
to be any real playtime; it was all going to be rehearsal. That’s no good. If
there’s no joy in it, it’s just no good. It’s best to go on to some other area,
where the deposits of talent may be richer and the fun quotient higher.
Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find
something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your
fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no
one is listening (or reading, or watching), every outing is a bravura perfor-
mance, because you as the creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic. That
goes for reading and writing as well as for playing a musical instrument,
hitting a baseball, or running the four-forty. The sort of strenuous reading
and writing program I advocate–four to six hours a day, every day – will
hot seem strenuous if you really enjoy doing these things and have an
aptitude for them; in fact, you may be following such a program already. If
you feel you need permission to do all the reading and writing your little
heart desires, however, consider it hereby granted by yours truly.
The real importance of reading is that
it creates an ease and intimacy
with the process of writing, one comes to the country of the writer with
one’s papers and identification pretty much in order
. Constant reading

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