Amongst even the most casual of horror fans, you would be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t come in contact with the work of Stephen King in some form or the other. With a career spanning over 50 years and a body of work that touches on film, television, novels, and short stories, King has weaved a tapestry of obscure and compelling tales that have resonated with our darkest fears and anxieties. However, for someone who has achieved such mainstream success and attention, King has had to endure a vehement and passionate backlash from critics and observers who have angrily denounced his status as the "father” of modern horror. Criticising what they deem to be his sophomoric and at times juvenile approach to storytelling, as well as an over reliance on deus ex machina and extremely convenient endings, these voices have at times overshadowed his legions of fervent fans.

For a writer who has continuously pumped out best-selling novel after best-selling novel over the years—at a pace that would have most buckling under the pressure—surely there is a level of depth, sophistication and charm to this legendary figure.

Born in Portland, Maine in 1947, King from a young age was entranced by the horror writings of HP Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, as well as the pulpy novels of Elmore Leanard. It was this fascination with such off-the-beat writers and seeming disinterest in the works of more classically regarded writers, that would have a significant influence on the style of his writing. In a 1997 interview, King admitted to never having read Jane Eyre, and only reading one Tolstoy novel. Rather instead he focused his time on devouring the entire collection of Dean Koontz novels—famed for their notoriety in being lowbrow and verging on the edge of trashiness.

“In every life you get to a point where you have to deal with something that’s inexplicable to you, whether it’s the doctor saying you have cancer or a prank phone call. So whether you talk about ghosts or vampires or Nazi war criminals living down the block, we’re still talking about the same thing, which is an intrusion of the extraordinary into ordinary life and how we deal with it. What that shows about our character and our interactions with others and the society we live in interests me a lot more than monsters and vampires and ghouls and ghosts.”

— Stephen King

It was during his university years that King would seriously take up writing, alongside his wife Tabitha. He began to nurture his style, producing transcripts and notes that would eventually form the basis of well-known classics such Carrie and Salem’s Lot. While the early frameworks of his stories, certainly owed a debt to the gothic movement before him, in their macabre tone and content; King held even in his early days, an intense fascination with the internal musings of his characters. He brought us deep into the mindset and psyches of his protagonists, exploring the tussle between lightness and darkness, between good and evil. This theme would crop up over and over again, in such works as The Shining, where the inner turmoil of a man tasked with the job of looking after an isolated hotel, would slowly unravel into a maelstrom of psychotic behaviour and disaster.

It was this internal struggle for his characters that would hold sway over his curiosity. Take his debut novel Carrie, its titular character is forever torn between two worlds; the subdued, sheltered and extremely religious views of her homelife countered by her need for acceptance and belonging at school. Carrie’s efforts towards living a good life however are in vain, as the story eventually spirals into a gore-filled conclusion of blood and destruction, that has become the stuff of playground legend.

One reason why King has garnered such love and affection from fans over the years, lies in the characterisation of the people who inhabit his worlds. He compels you to care for them deeply, identifying with their trials and tribulations, and cheering them on to the finish line. Often in King’s novels, we find that his characters are social outcasts, misfits, people who have gone against the grain of society. They are not just two-dimensional parodies like some other entries in the world of pulp fiction, rather they are sympathetic, flawed, with hopes and desires the readers can easily connect with.

King has often emphasised the fact, that for true horror, we have to bond with the characters. How can he evoke fear, tension, and anxiety in the reader, if we also have no stake in the fate of these characters? It is this identification and bonding with Carrie White and her horrific home situation, or with Bill Denbrough and his stalwart leadership of “The Losers’ Club” that has us as fans rooting for the underdog and turning each page in anxious excitement.

“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.”

— Stephen King

Another aspect of King’s literary world is his deep connection to his hometown of Maine. The area frequently crops up in his tales, with King drawing inspiration from real-life monuments, streets and landscapes. It gives his world a sense of realism that is emblematic of all good horror. Writers have to borrow from reality, blurring the lines between what is real and the fantastical, to plant the seed of doubt within the reader’s mind. “Could this happen?” “Is this possible?” “What are the limits and bounds of our existence?” These are questions that King wants to conjure within his reader.

“And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity”

— Stephen King